The United Kingdom, and London in particular, is regularly cited as being at the epicenter of a certain kind of fashionable cool. According to the fashion press, the streets of this ancient isle are bustling with fashion kids wearing clothes typically described as  individual, edgy, thrown together, eccentric, and raw.

Outside of the pages of the style magazines, however, the truth is much more prosaic, with most people shopping for the same clothes at the same shops, on identical high streets dominated by a handful of very successful and very cheap retailers.  

A TRAID clothes depository. (Courtesy of TRAID)

These garments are unapologetically thrown away, cheaply produced, and on trend. Until recently, there has been little reflection on the impact fast fashion has had on people’s lives –- for example, the working conditions of garment workers –- or on the environment, like the dramatic increase of textiles going to landfill.

Textile Recycling for Aid and International Development (TRAID) is a registered charity committed to fighting global poverty and reducing waste through its clothes reuse and recycling activities in the U.K. 

I work at TRAID and am based at our warehouse in London where approximately 3,500 tonnes of unwanted clothing and shoes are collected via our network of clothes-recycling banks for resale in our shops every year. This is the just the tip of the clothes mountain with the Department for Environment, Food, and Environment estimating that over one million tonnes of textiles is annually sent to landfill in the U.K.

Among the trends TRAID is seeing in the nation’s wardrobe are:  increased textile donations of poorer quality as cheap brands have strangled the high street; an overall decline in the quality of clothing as retailers have to compete; and garments from well-known cheap brands that have been donated but have never been worn.

TRAID’s primary strategy for reducing textile waste is to encourage more people to reuse clothing.  TRAID reinvests donated clothing with value by reselling them in our nine charity shops in Brighton and London. We also run a recycled fashion label called TRAIDremade which remakes damaged textiles into unique garments. 

It’s not just about collecting and reselling second hand clothing; it’s also about creating and improving the market for sustainably sourced clothing. Since TRAID was launched in 1999, we have actively worked to change the face of charity shops, consistently and successfully challenging the widely held perception that secondhand means second best.

It’s an environmental imperative that we stop sending clothing to landfill where the decomposition of wool and other fabrics releases harmful gases like methane into the atmosphere. For the fashion industry to change, consumers need to send a message to retailers by turning their backs on cheap fashion and investing in fewer but better made pieces that are sustainably sourced. 

With a growing awareness of the true costs of the fashion industry, it is no longer acceptable to dismiss the act of clothing oneself as mere frippery.  Indeed, in the 19th century, Mark Twain identified the importance and power of clothing when he said, “Clothes make the man.  Naked people have little or no influence on society.”

With clothes comes responsibility in how we manufacture clothing, what we buy, and what we do with garments when we no longer want or need them.