Black Friday is just around the corner. Many brands are preparing for a huge devaluation of their goods. People are already on the lookout for the best deals, and signs like “shop until you drop” are everywhere. Right before prices are about to drop low, we would like to share our view on this. And hopefully, inspire you not to let the madness get to you. Here’s why.

The impact of our consumption behaviour

Together, all around the world, we consume 100.000.000.000 pieces of clothing EACH year. This number has doubled in the last 15 years. However, we are wearing our items much less - about 36% less on average and even fewer in Western countries. And we buy new stuff as easily as we throw away our clothes. Our generation is known to toss clothing away twice as likely compared to older generations because we think it’s ‘unfashionable’ or we are just into something new. All in all, a massive amount of clothing is discarded each year. “But we are recycling, right?” is what we hear a lot. It might seem like recycling is becoming the norm, but sadly enough, 73% of all clothes still end up in landfills or are incinerated, and only 13% are repurposed. Only 1% of the discarded clothing is actually recycled into new clothing.

Out of all the materials that are used for fashion production, nearly half of them are cotton, but not even 1% is organic. Using genetically modified cotton in production takes an extensive amount of water and chemicals such as pesticides and insecticides. 20% of worldwide industrial water pollution is due to the textile industry. A fibre even more frequently used is polyester, which takes around 98 000 000 tons of oil each year to produce and therefore has a huge impact on our planet.