One of the “re-” words that has been surfacing a lot in the past few years is “recommerce”. Known as a means of reversing commerce, recommerce is the process of selling pre-owned products. Usually through an online channel. Recommerce follows an easy model: consumers exchange their used clothing for store credit, the partnering recommerce service repairs the product, the products are then re-sold.
This is a strikingly different approach to clothing commerce than what is usually seen. Fast fashion is a term coined for large-scale corporations that release new styles of clothing several times in a season in order to encourage passion purchases. These pieces are usually made fast and cheap and sold at a reasonable price - meaning they are easy to buy and quick to wear out (again encouraging more purchases). The thought of fast fashion doesn’t sound so bad until you look at the data…
The leading corporation in the fast fashion industry, Inditex (which owns Zara, Mango, etc.) sold 2.9 billion units in 2018 and contributes 508k tonnes of CO2e each year. H&M, a clothing company that recently claimed that it attempts to close the loop in fashion and focus on sustainability efforts was shortly after revealed to burn 12 tonnes of unused, unsold clothing each year.
Additionally, in 2015, the Environmental Protection Agency released data that showed that over the course of 1 year, the United States produced 11.9 million tons of textile waste - that’s 75 lbs. per person. Which is more than a 750% increase since 1960. 1960! That was only 60 years ago… basically, it’s gotten out of hand.
Sure, we don’t hear about clothing choking the sea turtles or discarded clothing littering the sides of the road… so it does not seem as important as the plastic that is plaguing the natural world. While it may not be AS critical as cleaning up our plastic, it is still pretty damn important, and here’s why: the clothing that we wear requires resources that are not infinite. Resources that damage the environment and require ample amounts of water and energy to manufacture (but more on this topic in a later post).
There are two obvious solutions to reducing our impact and discouraging the fast fashion industry, too.
- Keep our items longer, for as long as we can. Repair, and keep using.
- Recommerce
#1 is easy enough to explain, simply keep items longer. Purchase items that offer more durability and a longer life, requiring less attention. Holes, stains, tears are all part of the garment’s character… and they are a storybook, sharing the history that we have lived in that garment. Recommerce, however, has a few more moving parts involved, but luckily there are already several companies that have it nailed down. Here are two sites that work with companies to offer repaired, previously-owned products:
The Renewal Workshop
(partnered with brands like Eileen Fisher, REI, & Patagonia)
Trove
(partnered with brands like The North Face, Prana, & Icebreaker)
These companies work to ensure that the product is thoroughly cleaned and mended before placing them back on the market. The Renewal Workshop even offers failure data to brands in order to encourage increased durability in future products (further supporting a circular economy). They also offer an “environmental impact score” for each garment listed on their site. This score represents the positive effect of buying renewed instead of new.
Benefits of buying renewed:
- Reduction of items to landfill
- The renewal price for the item gets recirculated into a circular economy
- Renewal products add to creating remanufacturing jobs (most of which are in the U.S.)
By extending the life of a garment, we use less water, less land, less carbon, and less waste.
For example, Toad & Co, a sustainable lifestyle clothing company states,
“Choosing sustainability isn’t the easy route, it’s the only route”.
Toad & Co began working with The Renewal Workshop in 2017, and since have renewed 270 garments, keeping them from the landfill! Not only does this approach support a circular economy, but, if executed appropriately, it can increase business. This approach to business - this reverse commerce - exposes brands to a group of consumers that may not have been shopping for them before, consumers that are savvy and sustainable. And thanks to the third-party businesses on the front lines of recommerce (such as The Renewal Workshop) brands such as Toad & Co and The North Face are able to develop an online marketplace under their own names without the need to invest in web design, employees, or warehouses.
After all, business for good is good for business.
Sustainability has so many factors to consider, what we choose to wear every day is one small, but impactful part of the big picture.
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