With an event targeting the industry. the United Kingdom’s Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) launched their first Sustainable Action Plan (SCAP) report revealing the data about the extent and impact of the country’s clothing waste.
Key findings include:
- the average UK household owns around £4,000 worth of clothes – and around 30% of clothing in wardrobes has not been worn for at least a year;
- the cost of this unused clothing is around £30 billion;
- extending the average life of clothes by just three months of active use would lead to a 5-10% reduction in each of the carbon, water and waste footprints; and
- an estimated £140 million worth (around 350,000 tonnes) of used clothing goes to landfill in the UK every year.
With this report, we have for the first time ever hard facts and relatively accurate numbers available with regards to the extent clothing consumption impacts the environment.
Further SCAP results will be released around September 2012.
One of the most important insights they will provide at that time: the results of research into alternative business models including financial modelling of pay back time. The preliminary information of the results made available to the event participants gave access to a number of rather stunning insights. Most importantly: that the most profitable alternative business scenario is ‘lease-and-pay-back’, whereby retailers offer a re-use section for own-brand garments within their store.
Interestingly, this is a scenario already practised by the Swedish brand Filippa K since 2008.
Further information:
- The SCAP 2012 report can be downloaded from this link.
- Further summarised insights about the launch event and the data: click here.
- The full set of data that came out of the research leading to the report is available from this link (right column).
- Further information on the WRAP’s clothing related activities and insights are available from the project website.
