Duurzaam omgaan met mode

The Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro (June 1992) was successful in bringing the theme of sustainable consumption to the attention of governments and business alike (Agenda 21, Chapter 4, Changing consumption patterns). Most definitions of sustainable consumption refer to the need to minimize the impact on the environment over the life cycle of services and products.

Aspects related to the last phase of a product’s life (disposal) have received attention both from researchers and policy makers for glass; paper and plastic (Birtwistle-Moore 2007). Since many years, the Dutch government has encouraged a policy of collecting and recycling for glass and paper. From the January 2008, plastic is also collected and recycled. Less attention has been given to textiles, even though organizations such as the Salvation Army have containers for collecting textile in all major Dutch cities.

Limited attention
When it comes to research, clothes disposal has received limited attention even though changes in consumers’ attitudes and behaviour have resulted in a steep increase in fashion purchases and a quicker disposal of clothes. Clothes are rapidly perceived as unfashionable and in some case they do not even seem to be made to last more than few times. It is important to note that textiles present particular problems in landfill as synthetic products do not decompose, whilst woolen garments decompose and produce methane, which contributes to global warming.

This brief report is based on a Dutch study, which is part of an international research programme led by Professor Grete Birtwistle, Glasgow Caledonian University. In line with this work, the first two aims of this study are to evaluate consumers’ attitude towards purchasing of fashion garments and towards recycling of fashion items. To this scope a questionnaire was designed and data collected in the early summer of 2007 in North-Netherland. To achieve the last aim of the study, to explore possible paths to increase consumers’ awareness of the need to re-use and recycle fashion items, focus group could be held in spring 2008 with managers/volunteers at charity organizations.

The young dispose
The research is still in progress. The first results of the quantitative and qualitative analysis of the Dutch data were presented during a dedicated session at the EIRASS conference in June 2008. As expected we have found that young, fashion adopters buy more and dispose more. They seem to be less aware of environmental issues than the less fashion sensitive young women. In concrete, this means that they tend not to reuse their clothing and not to put them in a garments’ recycling bin but tend to dispose of them as trash. If this trends continue, the environmental problems delineated above will increase. It is therefore necessary to find way to reach this young group of very modish women and communicate clearly to tem the benefits of recycling.

An unexpected, interesting (and in the light of what is said above a bit scaring too) result is that charity organizations give to the public contrasting information on what can be put in garments’ recycling bins. Some only asks for proper, usable clothes; others for all garments, even if they are worn out or broken, because there are many ways to reuse them. Garments that cannot be worn any more, for example, can be used as filling material for auto chairs and dashboards: in an average auto 40 kilos of textile is used. From a sustainability point of view, it would be better if all Dutch organisations would agree on letting people put all their textile in the recycling bins; from the point of view of clarity of communication a choice has to be made, communicated clearly and defended.

A last point to be made is that, even though charity organisations are very clear on how they handle the retrieved clothing and textile, the people we interviewed still think that the clothes they dispose of in the recycling bin will be used for charity scope only, i.e. they will be donated to people in need and not sold. Actually, most clothes are sold to finance relieve operations by charity organisations or for profit by the commercial organisations operating in the garments recycling market.

As a conclusion, I would like to thank all organisations that permitted us to look at their premises and where willingly to share with us their knowledge of the recycling system in The Netherlands.

This research project is conducted by Elena Cavagnaro with contributions by Annemarie Bosma and Maaike de Jong