Refusing to learn: Why do we keep generating more trash?
Visiting different shopping malls in one of the world’s richest capitals, filled with luxury, fast-fashion and other brand shops, was a recent shock that I was forced to encounter and spend a significant part of my spare time thinking about. Hundreds of square footage of space filled with hundreds of stores. Stores filled with merchandise. Most of it apparel and shoes. In that specific geographical context, a city of about 2 million people could be fully clothed from scratch and still the shops would have tons more merchandise to sell. With the naked eye, without statistical data, without calculators and computers, without data on income, prices and sales, it was very obvious to me that shops do not sell all of their merchandise. It is impossible; there isn’t enough demand.
So what happens to all this stuff that is being peddled out there after it has not been sold? Well, one educated or experienced or simply smart guess would be that it remains in stock and is promoted again during sales or clearance periods. This, in fact, is correct. But it is only partly correct. Because even after the sales and after the clearance, there is still merchandise left over as stock. So what happens to it then?
According to a recent report by the European Environment Agency (EEA) (2024), an estimated 20% of all merchandise in the textile and clothing sector, produced in the EU, remains unsold after crossing all the possible stages of the consumption path. In 2022, this sector reached a turnover of 167 billion euros, employing 1.3 million people across 192,000 companies in the EU alone, while total household spending on textiles and clothing reached €282 billion, an average of €630 per capita per year, with another €68 billion spent on footwear.
There are two obvious matters arising from the figures above: a) why do we produce so much, and b) why do we consume so much? The EEA report does a good job summarizing the reasons behind overproduction. However, before we go into the specifics it is important to remember that, regardless of the reasons behind overproduction, with 20% of production effectively going to waste, firms are still profitable!
Inaccurate sales predictions, limited physical space in stores (Tanaka et al., 2019), increased risk of not being able to meet demand on time (Roberts et al., 2022), cheap labor cost in a labor intensive industry (Dzhengiz et al., 2023), economies of scale and economies of scope are some of the economic factors explaining profitable overproduction.
So, all the economic factors that lead to a 20% overproduction of textiles and footwear create an additional problem: what to do with this 20%. In order to avoid ever decreasing textile and footwear prices due to oversupply that will eventually lead to extremely low profit margins, firms need to remove this 20% from the market once it is not sold. But once you remove it, what do you do with it?
All the economic factors which lead to a 20% overproduction of textiles and footwear create an additional problem: what to do with this 20%
While writing a paper on sustainability, I came across different articles on the subject, only leading me to an aggravating fact: destruction of textiles and footwear!
Well, if you don’t sell it, there isn’t much you can do with it. Thus, you should destroy it. “(T)he EEA considers the destruction of returned or unsold products as the discarding or intentional damaging of these products after which they become waste.” Recycling, incineration and landfilling of returned or unsold products is also considered destruction. The EEA estimates that the amount of textiles destroyed in 2020 (EEA, 2024) was in the range of 264,000 to 594,000 tons.
Fiber production leads to greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, with a severe impact on the environment. The range of the impact on the climate is between 0.5 kilograms and 9.5 kg of CO2 equivalent per kg of fiber (EEA, 2022). The highest possible estimate of GHG emissions stemming from the production of fiber that is being destroyed, after being unsold, is equivalent to the emissions of 1 million petrol cars driving for one year! Or simply put, it is slightly lower than Sweden’s emissions in 2021.
The legislators of the EU are deciding on a direct prohibition on destruction of unsold items of textiles and footwear. While the lobbies and the economic interests of the big multinationals are preventing or delaying that from happening, don’t we as consumers have the responsibility to a) be informed about all the above, and b) be more conscientious regarding our consumption patterns and levels?
Marina-Selini Katsaiti is an associate professor and chair at the Agricultural University of Athens’ Department of Regional and Economic Development.
