Valuing our clothes

Waste campaigners WRAP have produced a  ground breaking report which provides the first big picture look at the financial and environmental impacts of clothing. 

'Valuing our clothes' is a summary of the key findings of a major technical report, plus evidence from a new survey of consumer behaviour. The report highlights that changes to the way the UK supplies, uses and disposes of clothing could:

• reduce the carbon, water and waste footprints of clothing by 10-20% each; and
• cut some £3 billion per year from the cost of resources used in making and cleaning clothes.

The report sets out opportunities for the clothing sector to reduce the resource impacts of the clothing – and gain business benefits from doing so.

Key findings include:

• the average UK household owns around £4,000 worth of clothes – and around 30% of clothing in wardrobes has not been worn for at least a year;
• the cost of this unused clothing is around £30 billion;
• extending the average life of clothes by just three months of active use would lead to a 5-10% reduction in each of the carbon, water and waste footprints; and
• an estimated £140 million worth (around 350,000 tonnes) of used clothing goes to landfill in the UK every year.

Download the report here [pdf]