The industry\u2019s outsized impact has grown in tandem with the rise of fast fashion. Retailers like H&M, Zara, and Shein release new items at lightning speed and sell them at prices that are cheap enough that people can constantly refresh their wardrobes. McKinsey<\/a> found that annual clothing production exceeded 100 billion garments in 2014, more than double what it was at the start of the millennium. Consumers are also keeping their clothes for half as long, according to the report, discarding some pieces after seven or eight wears. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Enter resale, or the curated selling of used clothes, which has the power to put a sizable dent in apparel\u2019s environmental impact. \u201cEven with the shipping, the transportation, the cleaning, the storage, a resale item carries a carbon footprint that’s about five to 15 percent the size of making a new thing,\u201d said Nellie Cohen, who built and directed Patagonia\u2019s recommerce program until 2018.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Resale has exploded in the last decade, thanks to startups like Poshmark, Depop, and ThredUP, which are fashion-focused online marketplaces for secondhand clothes. The resale market is expected to triple<\/a> in size from 2021 to 2025, to $47 billion. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Until recently, only veteran climate do-gooders like Eileen Fisher and Patagonia were selling used clothes themselves. But in the last two years, resale has broken into the mainstream: Levi\u2019s, Madewell, and lululemon all have online secondhand shops.. Timberland will start selling used, refurbished boots online this spring. Now that customers can buy clean, vetted, and curated secondhand items directly from their favorite brands, there is a chance that buying used clothes could become as natural as buying new. But whether resale benefits the planet will depend on if it actually offsets consumption, or promotes it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Eileen Fisher was the first major retailer to start a resale program in 2009. It began as a grassroots effort to collect employees\u2019 used garments, resell them to customers, and donate the proceeds to Eileen Fisher\u2019s charity foundation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Resale fit naturally into the company\u2019s well-known design ethos, which is built around a wardrobe of timeless, monochrome pieces that can easily be mixed and matched and last for many years. \u201cOur whole business is targeted to durable, simple dressing,\u201d said Carmen Gama, director of circular design. \u201cWe\u2019ve had returns of garments that are 30 years old and they\u2019re still completely wearable.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n The \u201cRenew\u201d program was so popular that the company quickly expanded it. There are two Renew stores in New York and Seattle, and the company sells used clothes at some of its main locations as well. They launched a Renew online store in 2017. The program even includes a line called \u201cNot Quite Perfect,\u201d which contains pieces with slight blemishes, like pilling or a small pull, which are sold at a larger discount. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Most resale programs work similarly to Renew: If you have a garment you no longer want that\u2019s still in good condition, you can turn it in for store credit, and the brand will turn it around and sell it to someone else at a discounted price. Eileen Fisher estimates that Renew has taken in more than 1.5 million garments since it started, and by replacing new purchases, saved more than 499,000 pounds of CO2.<\/p>\n\n\n\n By selling their own secondhand clothes, brands are confronting retail\u2019s biggest environmental challenge: how to keep making money without extracting new resources. But what\u2019s likely propelling the trend now is that it just makes good business sense. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Andy Ruben is the CEO of Trove, a backend service that operates Eileen Fisher\u2019s resale program, along with those of Patagonia, Arc\u2019teryx, and others. Trove processes trade-in items at their facility in Brisbane, California. It\u2019s their software and algorithms categorizing and pricing the items, and their platform powering the online secondhand stores. Services like Trove are accelerating the growth of resale because without them, the logistics would be too heavy a lift for most companies. In 2020, Trove processed 1 million secondhand items.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Ruben figures that for every piece of clothing that a premium brand has for sale in one of its stores, it probably has 10 times as many viable pieces sitting unworn in someone\u2019s closet. Some of those items will be \u201cdonated,\u201d which often actually means winding up in a landfill, and some will be sold on a third-party site. But if a brand can get those items back into their own retail stream, they can sell them a second time, or perhaps many times over. <\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThat is the future,\u201d Ruben said. \u201cBecause Patagonia would love to sell a jacket five times, not once. Right? Who wouldn’t?\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n For customers, resale lets them afford aspirational brands, shop conscientiously, and \u2013 just like traditional thrifting \u2013 find unique items. When I visited the Arc\u2019teryx store in New York City, a glistening blue men\u2019s coat sat on the front rack. It was a discontinued Firebee AR parka, with a GORE-TEX shell and down insulation. \u201cThis is one of our most iconic pieces of the last 10 years,\u201d Grossman said. The zipper had been replaced with one that was a lighter shade of blue than the original, making the coat one of a kind. Many of the jackets had mismatched patches and zippers. \u201cThese are flying off the shelves first,\u201d Grossman said.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n Ruben believes that resale\u2019s most powerful environmental lever lies in \u201cdiverting dollars from brands with less environmental ethos.\u201d If people are able to afford a used, durable, premium item from a brand with a responsible environmental ethos, they won\u2019t buy new, low-quality items that were harmfully produced and won\u2019t last. <\/p>\n\n\n\n If some companies can\u2019t cash in on the resale trend because their products don\u2019t last long enough for a second life, they might start making more durable, repairable goods. \u201cI think it’s going to enable brands to create higher quality items because they’re not just going to look at selling that item once,\u201d said Amelia Eleiter, CEO of Debrand, a textile recycling logistics company. \u201cThey’re going to invest in building something in a way that can be refurbished.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Environmental initiatives that make a company money, rather than costing them money, will ultimately have more staying power. \u201cResale is the only sustainability program where you can go into the C-suite and be like, \u2018We’re going to make money,\u2019\u201d said Cohen, who now runs her own sustainability consulting firm. \u201cWe need more sustainability programs like that, because then when there’s an economic downturn or a brand has a bad year, the program doesn\u2019t get cut.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Like every sustainability program, however, whether a resale program actually helps the environment or is simply greenwashing depends on the details.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The reality is that much of what customers try to trade in simply isn\u2019t in good enough shape to resell. This presents a great opportunity to repair or recycle clothes, but only if companies make the investment. \u201cThis whole takeback thing that’s going on, you’ve got to be really thoughtful in how you do it,\u201d said Eleiter. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Her company Debrand sorts Arc\u2019teryx\u2019s end-of-life products through 17 different channels, a combination of recycling, targeted donation, and responsible disposal. The system is not perfect \u2013 some of the recycling methods are so sensitive that a single piece of down on an otherwise recyclable polyester shell can render it too contaminated to process. Still, textile recycling has come a long way. \u201cYou could probably recycle almost anything at a cost,\u201d Eleiter said. \u201cBut the cost is a part of it that has to be included.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n If a brand doesn\u2019t properly invest in recycling, or doesn\u2019t take back items that can\u2019t be resold, the most likely destination for those items is an overseas landfill. Americans give away clothes at such a rapid pace that there are more \u201cdonations\u201d than can be recirculated in the U.S. This contributes to the mass exportation of the world\u2019s discarded clothes to the Global South. In Ghana, where dealers buy clothes by the bale to sell in markets, fifteen million garments arrive each week. The items that don\u2019t sell in those markets wind up in landfills.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Then there is the question of whether selling used clothes actually reduces a company\u2019s footprint. \u201cA truly sustainable resale program enables the brand to make fewer units of new things because they’re selling more units of used,\u201d said Cohen. No clothing company has publicly committed to doing that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Finally, store credits can be problematic if they only encourage customers to buy more new<\/em> stuff. Store credits incentivize customers to bring in their clothes, which is crucial to maintaining a steady supply of used items to sell. But not every program allows the customer to turn around and use that store credit on another used item. Patagonia, Arc’teryx, and Eileen Fisher offer options to spend the credit on both new or used clothing. But other brands offer no such option. Madewell, for example, will give you a $20 credit for turning in used jeans of any brand, but it can only be spent on their secondhand site. Store credits can\u2019t be used on lululemon’s secondhand site, which the company said was because the program is still in a pilot phase. RaaS, a white label resale service run by thredUP, has big clients like Abercrombie & Fitch, adidas, and Gap, but doesn\u2019t offer an option to spend credits on secondhand items. <\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThe whole point of recommerce is to prevent people from buying new clothes,\u201d said Marilyn Martinez, a circular economy expert at the Ellen MacArthur Foundation, \u201cbut if you’re giving people a discount to buy more new stuff, it defeats the purpose.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n So, to thwart the fashion industry\u2019s environmental recklessness, do we all need to be like the man from the Berkshires, and not buy a single new item ever again? Maybe \u2013 but that\u2019s not necessarily realistic. A significant chunk of the global economy is built on manufacturing and selling new clothes, the infrastructure required for a more circular production model is very far from where it needs to be, and the simple premise of wearing someone else\u2019s old clothes is still an uncomfortable concept for many people. But as that paradigm begins to shift, what we can<\/em> do is get in the habit of trying used first. When you need a new pair of jeans \u2014 peruse Levi\u2019s secondhand shop before clicking over to the new selection. Maybe you\u2019ll always prefer to buy your pants new, but are open to donning a used parka. Look for the places where used works for you, and over time, you might find more of them. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Resale can\u2019t solve fashion\u2019s environmental problem on its own. It will have to be paired with other means of recirculating clothes, including repair, rental, and recycling. New clothes will need to be made from recycled and regenerative materials, manufactured and transported with renewable energy. The amount that Americans buy won\u2019t change soon, but what we buy might. \u201cI don’t see a world where people don’t want to wear new stuff,\u201d Martinez said, \u201cbut I see a world where the \u2018new stuff\u2019 feels new for you, but doesn’t have to be from new resources.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n <\/em>Editor\u2019s note: Patagonia is a donor and advertiser with Grist. Financial sponsors have no role in Grist\u2019s editorial decisions.<\/em><\/p>\n This story was originally published by Grist<\/a> with the headline Big retailers are getting into the secondhand market. Will that change how we shop?<\/a> on Mar 2, 2022.<\/p>\n![\"Left:](\"https:\/\/grist.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/02\/arcteryx-2.jpg\")
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