Wealthy Cities Are Generating And Exporting Mountains Of Textile Waste

Researchers call for urgent action to tackle this unregulated side of the fashion industry

Urbanites are buying and disposing of more clothing than ever. Somewhere between 80 and 150 billion items of clothing are produced each year; that’s 10 – 19 items for every person on Earth. UNEP says that “The average person is buying 60 per cent more clothing than 15 years ago, while each item is kept for only half as long”, but those figures are from 2016. In a world filled with fast and ultra-fast fashion, it seems likely that things have deteriorated further since.

The environmental impact of all this clothing is staggering. Producing textiles requires vast quantities of water – a simple cotton-shirt consumes as much water as a person would need to live for 2.5 years; 2700 liters (713 gallons). In fact, the fashion industry as a whole consumes more water than almost any other industry; only agriculture beats it.

Global fiber production – which includes all fibers “used for apparel, home textiles, footwear, or any other application” – reached a record high in 2023. While wool and cotton are still popular, synthetic fibers now dominate the landscape. Polyester, which is a type of plastic made from petroleum, takes the top spot, with around 70 million metric tons of it made that year; 57 % of total fiber production.

Those statistics are reflected in the consumer textile market. For example, polyester represents more than 75 % of ultra-fast fashion behemoth Shien’s “fiber portfolio”. And even more worryingly, the overwhelming majority (87.5 %) of polyester produced in 2023 was virgin, or non-recycled, meaning that ‘new’ fossil fuels were used to make it. For nylon – the second most used synthetic fiber – just 2 % came from recycled sources.

As a result, the emissions footprint of the fashion industry continues to rise. In 2018, it was estimated to be responsible for up to 10 % of global carbon emissions. If no action is taken, it may well reach 26 % by 2050. By their own reporting, Shien nearly doubled its emissions in a single year; going from 9.17 million metric tons in 2022 to 16.68 million metric tons in 2023. That’s about the same greenhouse gas emissions as four million gasoline-powered passenger vehicles produce in a year.

Urban footprint of fast fashion

But our clothing obsession has much more visible impacts, too. Jam-packed racks at high street charity shops. Full bins at thrift stores and flea markets. Piles of clothing in urban landfills and dumps. It’s these indicators that RMIT researcher Dr Yassie Samie and her colleagues have focused on in their new, first-of-its-kind study.

Published in Nature Cities, Samie’s research looks at what happens to textiles once consumers decide that they no longer want them. They focused on the fate of these post-consumer textiles in nine wealthy cities – Amsterdam, Austin, Berlin, Geneva, Luxembourg, Manchester, Melbourne, Oslo and Toronto. One of the challenges the team faced was the lack of data that’s available for discarded textiles. “The reason for this is that textiles are not regulated whatsoever,” said Samie, speaking to me from Melbourne, where she is based. “It’s also a relative newcomer as a category of waste, which means that most studies on solid waste management in cities don’t even include it.”

So, Samie and her co-authors had to collect relevant information on each city via a range of sources – policy and other government documents, academic literature, so-called ‘gray literature’ (reports published by non-governmental organisations) and through detailed interviews with representatives from city governments, charity organizations, and waste management organizations – basically anyone involved in the process of dealing with discarded textiles.

From this, they found that in most of the high-income cities they studied, post-consumer textiles (PCTs) collection and sorting are managed not by councils, but by charities and commercial resellers. This makes charities “…the most important collectors of PCTs in wealthy cities.” The exception to this was Amsterdam, where municipal authorities manage discarded textiles. This is something, Samie says, is unlikely to change in the future “Charities have always been part of the solution, and will continue to be because they have that trust factor, that community factor, and a wealth of knowledge.”

But charities are struggling to cope with the current deluge of low-quality donations. In Geneva, rates have increased 1200 % in three decades. 3000 metric tons of goods were sent to the city’s charity shops in 2021 alone – that’s about the same weight as twenty Statues of Liberty (without the base).

And while some unwanted textiles make it to a local charity shop floor, the study showed that most of it is exported to overseas markets. 97 % of clothes donated in Oslo are shipped out of Norway entirely. In Luxembourg, just 3-4 % of incoming donations are redistributed or resold locally. The destinations for these exports are typically poorer countries in the Global South. Once there, this non-biodegradable waste can wreak havoc on the local environment. Unsurprisingly, this practice is now described as “waste colonialism”.

Affluent cities making their discarded textiles somebody else’s problem is a situation that cannot continue, says Samie, if we are to meet our climate goals.

So what can we do?

When it comes to waste, you’ve likely already heard of the three Rs – reduce, reuse, recycle. But these are actually part of a larger framework, called the Circular Economy 3.0 that focuses less on waste management and more on avoiding waste, by making the materials we produce last for as long as possible. In that framework, there are ten Rs – Refuse (R0), Reduce (R1), Resell/Reuse (R2), Repair (R3), Refurbish (R4), Remanufacture (R5), Repurpose (R6), Recycle materials (R7), Recover energy (R8), Re-mine (R9).

For Samie, there should be much more focus on the first two Rs – refuse and reduce – because they reduce demand for new resources. “Overconsumption and overproduction are just beyond comprehension. And no matter how much we try to have systems in our cities that can handle it, when we produce and consume too much, it’s just too much.”

The average Australian buys 56 new items of clothing each year, making the country the second-largest consumer of clothing in the world per capita, after the US. “Yes, we also have a fantastic culture here of donating to charity and buying from charity, but with these numbers, you can see it’s just not enough. We can’t digest the amount of new textiles that are being produced,” she says.

The next two Rs – resell/reuse and repair – can also reduce demand, but only if taking these actions then stops people from buying a new product. This is an area where local governments, city planners, and charities can play a big role, Samie says. “I’d like to see more second-hand and swap shops, as well as places for repairs and alterations in the locations where families already go in big cities – shopping malls, and big retail parks. Not solely on the high street. Adopting those other business models might help charities reduce their reliance on direct resale or exports.”

“Ultimately, we want to create smaller, local loops for the things we make and use, instead of the harmful, wasteful, global practices we have now.”

Local governments actions must step up

Samie stressed that every city the team studied had some incredible grassroots initiatives in place that are slowly chipping away at the mountain of textile waste. But for true, sustainable change to happen, urgent action is needed at the municipal governmental and policy level.

On this front, she is cautiously optimistic. “Since the start of 2025, all EU states have been required to roll out dedicated collection services for used textiles. Separating it out from other solid waste is a very important first step. It becomes easier to do reuse, recycling, all of these other activities. It also gives us a clearer picture of the scale of the problem.”

The hope is that this move from the EU will spur other countries to take textile waste seriously, but says Samie, it needs to happen quickly. “We’re in a race against ultra-fast fashion that continues to ramp up production. I hope it’s not too late.”