You’ve had a spring clear and decluttered your wardrobe, and now you’re questioning what to do with the pile of undesirable garments within the nook.
With the expansion of on-line secondhand gross sales channels comparable to eBay and Vinted, the alternate options to placing outdated garments within the bin have grown. However are these a inexperienced choice?
Globally, most discarded clothes is landfilled or incinerated. However most undesirable clothes in Europe is appropriate for reuse – many individuals do away with clothes as a result of it’s gone out of vogue or it doesn’t match, not as a result of it’s worn out.
Is reselling a sustainable selection?
So what about promoting in your undesirable garments on Vinted or eBay? Extending the helpful lifetime of clothes reduces its environmental influence, comparable to water and chemical utilization, carbon emissions and textile waste, in addition to the useful resource consumption and waste concerned in producing new items.
However don’t overlook on-line promoting requires transport particular person gadgets to particular person households, which entails carbon emissions from the supply course of. Corporations use a mixture of on-foot deliveries, e-bikes and a variety of autos.
Some parcel operators are innovating to scale back emissions. As an example, Royal Mail has 7,000 electrical vans and a fleet of e-bikes, whereas DPD has additionally invested closely in electrical autos. In 2025, Royal Mail claimed to have the bottom common CO₂ emissions per parcel within the UK market (165g).
It’s also value utilizing cardboard or paper wrapping in your Vinted parcel, as plastic packaging isn’t simply recyclable. Even when it may be reused just a few instances, it finally ends up being incinerated, landfilled or littering. Incineration generates carbon emissions whereas landfill and littering result in microplastic air pollution.
Secondhand gross sales symbolize a small share of the general world clothes market (10% in 2025), however that is predicted to develop twice as quick because the broader garments market as much as 2030.
Rising secondhand purchasing might scale back the necessity to produce new clothes, counteracting the environmental impacts of manufacturing and end-of-life textile waste. However reselling or donating undesirable clothes doesn’t handle the basis explanation for vogue’s environmental influence, which is overproduction and overconsumption.
Certainly, some proof from the US means that utilizing secondhand gross sales platforms could inadvertently drive, relatively than mitigate, elevated consumption and shorter garment retention, particularly in youthful shoppers.
How does it examine to charity donations?
Donating to a charity store might be an environmental bonus, as you most likely received’t want to make use of packaging to get your merchandise there. Decrease ranges of transport are additionally prone to be wanted (presumably you’ll stroll to your native store).
Nonetheless, some charities battle to promote excessive volumes of quick vogue and low-resale-value textiles. The rest are handed on to textile recyclers, who could ship gadgets on the market into world second-hand markets or recycling.
So what about simply placing your undesirable gear in a recycling financial institution? The UK textile sorting sector manages roughly 469,000 tonnes of textile waste yearly, with the bulk (421,000 tonnes) exported for reuse or recycling, whereas 34,000 tonnes is saved within the UK for recycling. On prime of that, round 727,000 tonnes of used textiles are incinerated or put in landfill.
This scale of reuse continues to be extra environment friendly than particular person on-line gross sales, as gadgets are packed into bales weighing between 55kg and 200kg, which can include as much as 600 clothes. These are shipped in containers to worldwide markets.
However the mounting avalanche of undesirable clothes exceeds the capability of the various originating international locations to kind and course of. This implies collected gadgets are incessantly exported for sorting, processing, and resale – typically taking lengthy and circuitous routes, solely to be resold within the nation they have been initially collected from.
There’s rather a lot to consider, however there are steps you’ll be able to take even earlier than you make the preliminary buy to make your garments purchasing extra sustainable.
It’s value contemplating that almost all fashionable clothes is constructed from materials blends comparable to polyester/cotton or cotton/elastane, that are tough to recycle. Latest analysis confirms the rise in blended materials is prone to enhance the prices and complexity of recycling. Due to this fact, it’s unlikely that your undesirable garments constructed from these materials will likely be recycled into new clothes.
Moreover, the proportion of those textiles (predominantly quick vogue) going into UK family residual waste is rising. They produce excessive ranges of greenhouse gases throughout incineration.
Listed here are some straightforward steps you’ll be able to take to be a extra sustainable garments shopper.
5 methods to go greener
1) Objects for resale ought to be in good, clear situation – a great take a look at is whether or not you’d be pleased to purchase it your self.
2) If donating to charity, attempt to share gadgets between totally different charities if potential.
3) Maintain it native – organise a garments swap or go gadgets on to neighbours, pals, household or local people teams.
4) Maintain garments in a great state of restore to assist longer product lifetimes. In the event you can’t do the restore your self, ask a pal or member of the family, or use a restore cafe.
5) Reuse packaging to scale back plastic. Embody clear photographs, measurements and descriptions together with your advert to make sure the client could make an knowledgeable determination about whether or not or to not buy, and keep away from returns.
