Out of style: Australia’s fashion waste needs a makeover

It’s official: Australians are the biggest addicts of fast fashion in the world.

On average, we buy a whopping 56 pieces of clothing each year, beating out Americans who buy 53 pieces, the Brits who bring home 33 items in shopping bags, and the Chinese who shop for 30 new garments.

But how do all these items fit into the closet? They don’t — we send 2.25 million tonnes of unwanted garments each year straight to landfill, an environmental crisis caused by textile waste.

While recycling efforts are underway, most of these new clothes cannot be recycled because of the polyester and elastane fibres used in their production. 

We’re crying out for a solution now, not in several years when technology can finally catch up to another of our self-inflicted fashion dilemmas.

So what’s on the table to tackle the waste fashion creates? The government has proposed a new tax — 4 cents to be added to each garment — via the national stewardship program Seamless, and effectively put the clothing industry on notice that harsher penalties could be on the horizon.  

So where does this leave the fashion industry?

Any business owner, anywhere in the world if faced with increases to the cost of goods won’t be willing to take a hit to their bottom line – pardon the pun. Not when they can pass on the additional production cost or in this case, tax to the consumer adding to what is for many Australians an already inflated cost of living. 

Instead of slugging businesses, I ask the government: why not use a carrot instead of a stick?

There is an enormous opportunity to create a circular economy where everyone benefits from our unwanted fashions. 

If the government announced some well-placed incentives, I’m sure everyone would be clamouring to get on board.

Go back to natural fibres

There is a huge opportunity for the government to incentivise the use of natural fibres like hemp, bamboo, and wool. 

Hemp is a natural, environmentally friendly fabric. Its highly renewable qualities and the fact it is a regenerative crop that repairs the environment throughout its growth cycle makes it an obvious choice to incentivise the use of. 

If the government incentivised manufacturers to use natural fibres, they would become the fabrics of choice for our clothing. We could stock and sell clothing that had a greater lifespan than the current one-wear-wonders many of the large chains tout. 

We need to offer consumers a choice of good quality cheaper clothing and in turn, consumers need to be encouraged to step up and refuse the offering of poor-quality items that are often dumped with their tags still attached, proving they haven’t even been worn before they are cast aside. 

The circular economy 

Promote the second-hand clothing economy. If you’ve got some good quality clothing in your wardrobe you no longer want or need why not sell it? Turn our unwanted items into one element of a circular economy. 

Consumers have a couple of options. Either use an online sales platform like vestiairecollective.com or depop. Or sell it to a bricks-and-mortar store run by a small business owner. 

I’ve tried the online versions – while efficient it can take months or even years to sell items and the vast competition of the sheer quantity available makes it hard for your humble black trousers to stand out. 

There are already consignment-based second-hand clothing stores. Goodbyes is a great one. They are very choosy with what they take meaning customers are forced to recognise that some of their clothing isn’t worth a second go at the retail market. And shoppers get to buy good quality items at a discounted rate. 

But their few stores just don’t cope with the quantities of unwanted clothing. This is where the government on a federal level can step in and work with small businesses.

Give small businesses a helping hand

To open a bricks and mortar shop is not for the faint-hearted. You need to be an expert in everything from business insurance to Instagram. If you want to hire help you need to be on top of your employment law to know what you can and can’t ask that employee to do. Then there is provisional tax, GST, insurances and merchant fees. If you’re lucky you may just be able to pay yourself in the first year. 

What if the government worked with, for example, merchant companies to reduce the fees to start-up businesses? Abolish provisional taxes on small businesses. Give them a go so they can build up their cashflow to grow their businesses. We all know cashflow is king. 

Give small businesses (the largest employers in Australia) a better chance to succeed. The government could incentivise small businesses to trade in recycled goods, even clothing. 

Relieve the pressure on charity and op shops

The government also needs to work to relieve the enormous pressure this unwanted clothing puts on our charity shops. 

Charity’s prime focus is to provide support and financial aid to those in society who need assistance. Their vast armies of paid and volunteer workers shouldn’t be monopolised sorting unwanted (and often soiled) clothing. 

The cost to charities to dispose of these unusable donations is estimated to be around $18 million per year. Imagine the further good they could do if they didn’t have to dump our unwanted clothing because a new style has hit the town that we have to stock.

Would this mean charities received less of our support? No, people will always donate and support those who need help. It’s in an Aussie’s DNA. 

What it would mean is that the consumer would buy better quality items. Knowing that if there were items they didn’t want, there was a way, to earn a little cash from their unwanted wardrobe stash!

And for the humble shopkeeper – it would mean small, individual businesses would be emboldened to support an economy that in turn supported them. 

Jane Crowley is the co-founder of Dirty Janes vintage emporium with stores in Canberra, Bowral and Orange.

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