The Purpose of a Clothing Swap.
The purpose of a clothing swap is to address current environmental issues with textile waste, and help limit the amount of clothing that customers purchase from environmentally unethical brands.
In 2018, the Environmental Protection Agency found that 17 million tons of textile waste ended up in landfills within that year. On top of that, the textile decomposition rate is quite slow, and it often takes more than 200 years for clothing waste to decompose, which leads to textiles inhabiting landfills for long spans of time. Meanwhile, clothing has seemed to develop a shorter life span in regards to how long consumers are wearing items they purchase, and this leads to landfills being filled at a faster rate. Clothing swaps allow attendees to, as the name suggests, swap clothing and know that their clothes are going to a new owner who will wear them and not to a landfill.
Tasha Lewis, a professor in Cornell University’s Fiber Science and Apparel Design Department expressed, “It used to be four seasons in a year; now it may be up to 11 or 15 or more.” Meaning that clothing is going out of style quicker and quicker. According to The Council for Textile Recycling the volume of textile trash has risen by 40 percent between 1999 and 2009. Also, UNECE reported in 2014 the average consumer purchased 60 percent more items of clothing compared to 15 years prior. A large cause of this trend is social media. Clothing trends become popular with large groups quicker through the instant connection the internet provides and influencers on social media.
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Another cause is fast fashion. Merrium-Webster defines fast fashion as, “an approach to the design, creation, and marketing of clothing fashions that emphasizes making fashion trends quickly and cheaply available to consumers”. Companies take the demand created by speeding trend cycles and produce new clothing as quickly as possible.
On top of the large amounts of clothing waste this process creates, fast fashion also often leads companies to create clothing unsustainably and unethically. The World Resources Institute found that on average it takes around 2,700 liters of water to produce one cotton shirt. Additionally, the environmental activist organization “SustainYourStyle” asserted in 2017 that 20% of water pollution stems from chemicals used to treat and dye clothing. Other unsustainable clothing production issues stem from companies creating clothing cheaper by utilizing synthetic fabrics which contain plastics and are often made using fossil fuels. According to BBC Future, the fashion industry accounts for 10% of anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions. Fast fashion companies also often use unethical labor practices such as child labor to create their clothing as cheaply as possible. Therefore, the purpose of a clothing swap is to allow participants to gather new clothing without purchasing from companies that may be unsustainable and/or unethical in their practices. Overall, clothing swaps reduce the impact that fashion has on the environment.