HOW IS LENDING SUSTAINABLE?
Though it may seem obvious, let’s dig deeper to look at the facts of just how many resources we’re saving by circulating our fashion.
The bottom line is: the more times an item gets worn before it ends up in landfill, the less its environmental impact.
To figure out the environmental impact of one garment, you take the number of resources used to create it, and divide them by the number of times an item is worn.
A t-shirt, for example, takes 2700 liters of water to make, plus a half a pound of cotton and 33 pounds of carbon dioxide. Yes, per shirt! It also takes time and labour (money) to grow the cotton, mill it, sew it into a garment, ship it and sell it. Luckily, t-shirts are one of the most used items in our wardrobe.
Say we wear our t-shirt 100 times. What took 2700 liters of water to make it, now comes down to taking 27 liters per wear.
What about a dress? The average number of times a dress is worn is only about 6-8. Sometimes, it’s even 1 or 2. In our opinion, that’s A LOT of resources just for six or seven wears. And that’s a huge environmental impact. In fact, the fashion industry alone is responsible for about 8-10% of global emissions, 20% of industrial water pollution, contributes 190,000 tonnes of oceanic micro-plastic pollution, and 92 million tons of textile waste per year!
Lending our clothing out increases the number of times an item gets used, which, as we’ve just learned, decreases its environmental impact. It also decreases the need to purchase new items, and can be a good method to use in conjunction with second-hand shopping.