Advertisement

Fast fashion ending up in bin

A report launched during Melbourne Fashion Week says Australians each buy an estimated 27 kilograms of new fashion and textiles a year – more than double the global average – and throw out most of it within 12 months.

Oct 11, 2022, updated Oct 11, 2022

The Monash University Sustainable Development Institute report reviewed the latest research on Australia’s fashion and textiles industry and said Australians each buy an average of 56 new items per person year, with an estimated 90 per cent discarded.

Fashion consumption is increasing exponentially on a global scale while the number of times clothes are owned and worn has declined, report author Aleasha McCallion said.

“We’re certainly leading the pack as far as the amount of textiles and clothing and fashion that we’re able to consume per capita for such a small country,” she said.

Australia manufactures 38 million items of clothing each year, but that’s a mere three per cent of the amount of fashion imported into the country, according to the review.

Most of those garments end up in charity recycling bins or the trash, with 800,000 tonnes of textiles going to landfill each year.

Fast fashion in particular is contributing to water shortages and pollution, biodiversity loss, soil degradation and climate change, according to the Monash researchers.

The report calls for measures including a reduction in the resources used to make textiles, a ban on destroying finished products and incentives for the use of recycled materials.

McCallion said Australians no longer understood what it took to make the textiles everywhere in everyday life, from clothes to towels and car interiors.

“We touch textiles all day long – arguably they’re closer to us than our phones, which is saying a lot – and yet we often completely disregard their value in our day-to-day life,” she said.

Clothes made locally tend to be more expensive and the million-dollar question is whether consumers will pay more for sustainable items, especially given current pressures on the cost of living.

“We know that more and more consumers want to make sustainable choices, but it’s a very complex environment in which to make decisions,” McCallion said.

She wants to see better regulation of the production chain, so sustainability claims can be properly verified.

Melbourne Fashion Week runs until October 16.

-AAP

Local News Matters
Advertisement
Copyright © 2024 InDaily.
All rights reserved.