In this section, we will look at waste from apparel companies.
One of the triggers for the growing interest in clothing loss was the financial report of the British luxury brand Burberry, released in July 2018.
There, it was revealed that Burberry had burned $3,700 worth of unsold merchandise to protect its brand.
This was strongly condemned by environmental groups and the Western media, including the BBC.
Two months later, Burberry announced that it would stop the incineration process.
While society as a whole is promoting ecology and recycling, why is it that a large amount of clothing is discarded in the apparel industry?
One of the reasons for this is the problem of manufacturers having excess inventory.
Clothing goes through the process of "fiber → dyeing → weaving → sewing.
For each of these processes, a minimum unit of purchase or production is set, but that minimum unit is not necessarily the unit that consumers or retailers want, but is larger than the unit that retailers want.
Clothing loss is created from a variety of reasons, such as stores making too much to sell more clothes,
which then become inventory, or no longer needed in the process of trading with vendors.
Selling such inventory at a reduced price will lead to a reduction in brand value.
In addition, leaving unsold clothes in the warehouse as inventory will cost a lot of money to maintain.
For these reasons, they are often disposed of by incineration or landfill instead of being unavoidably placed in stores.
Another reason is that the standards for quality inspections that clothing undergoes before it is put on store shelves are getting stricter every year.
This quality standard is so strict that many of the returned garments have no known cause. This overly strict quality standard is also contributing to the increasing number of garments that are discarded without ever reaching the market.
In addition, waste from apparel companies is not limited to products such as clothing.
For example, sample fabric swatches, called "swatches," are always needed when designing.
It is about the size of a postcard to B5, with a fabric sample attached to the fourth.
Once the season is over, a large number of swatches are discarded.
Even a small to medium-sized design studio can generate 30 to 50 70L garbage bags of waste in a season.
These problems are really serious.
To make effective use of limited natural resources
To extend the life of disposal facilities and final disposal sites and to reduce maintenance costs
To reduce the amount of incinerated waste and to reduce emissions of carbon dioxide and other substances that cause global warming
It is necessary to solve the problem in the following way.
You can read more about what companies are doing to solve these problems on other pages. Please check it out!
