At first , a five-dollar T-shirt looks like a bargain. Fast-fashion brands now release new styles every week, and the average shopper buys far more clothes than twenty years ago while wearing each item fewer times. Behind the low price, however, lies a growing of waste: by some estimates, the equivalent of one rubbish truck full of textiles is burned or buried every second. In the second-hand markets of Ghana, traders buy bales of used clothes from Europe and North America, only to find that a mere of items in each bale are good enough to sell.
Many shoppers feel when they hear such facts, yet few change their habits. Brands, meanwhile, have come under the of media attention and responded with “green” collections. But labels such as “sustainable” or “eco-friendly” very little, because the rules governing them remain : in many countries, a company can use these words without offering any proof.
Critics argue that the problem is a one as well as an economic one, since the true costs are paid by workers and communities far from the shops. Several governments are now international standards that would require brands to report how much they produce and what happens to unsold stock. Factories that fail to the new rules could lose access to major markets.
Regulation alone, though, will not solve the problem. Consumers also hold a powerful of change: buying fewer but better clothes, repairing what they own and passing it on. The cheapest T-shirt, in the end, may be the one we never buy.