A new study finds that frequent shoppers of secondhand clothing tend to buy more new clothes as well, undermining environmental benefits and reinforcing a cycle of overconsumption.
Buying and selling unwanted clothes on secondhand markets is widely hailed as a sustainable way to reduce the consumption of new clothes and alleviate the environmental damage caused by the fashion industry, one of the world’s most carbon-intensive sectors.
The new study in the journal Scientific Reports is based on a nationally representative survey of 1,009 individuals from every US state.
The analysis revealed a positive correlation between spending in the secondhand and primary clothing markets, particularly among younger consumers and frequent shoppers, suggesting that secondhand purchasing supplements primary market consumption rather than replacing it.
“Our study provides strong evidence that secondhand clothing markets contribute to a self-reinforcing cycle of overconsumption,” says Meital Peleg Mizrachi, a postdoctoral fellow in Yale’s economics department who coauthored the study with Ori Sharon of Bar Ilan University in Israel.
“The sustainable clothing community has placed a lot of faith in the secondhand markets as a sustainable solution to overconsumption. Unfortunately, our findings suggest that rather than solving the problem, secondary markets may inadvertently encourage unsustainable purchasing patterns.”
Prior studies have shown that the fashion industry contributes an estimated 2% to 8% of greenhouse gas emissions, which is a greater share than the combined emissions of international air travel and maritime shipping, the researchers says.
The rapid production cycles of so-called “fast fashion“—a business model adopted by H&M and Zara and other popular brands that replicates and mass produces high-fashion designs at low cost—has expanded the industry’s environmental footprint, according to past research. Over the past 20 years, fast fashion has nearly doubled global garment production and driven an estimated 400% increase in clothing consumption, generating massive amounts of waste, the researchers says. In 2023, the industry produced an estimated 2.5 to 5 billion surplus garments, the researchers say.
Donating unwanted clothes, they add, does not address the challenge of overconsumption: Charitable systems are overwhelmed by donations of surplus clothing, which saturate markets in the Global South and much of the global clothing surplus ends up in landfills and incinerators.
Reselling unwanted clothes in the secondhand market has been widely seen as a sustainable way to mitigate overconsumption. In fact, fast fashion brands promote resale platforms as a way to reduce waste.
And the secondhand market has enjoyed significant growth in recent years, with resales projected to reach $350 billion annually by 2027, according to the study.
In the study, more than 69% of people surveyed reported having purchased secondhand clothes at least once. A cluster of 59% of respondents reported high consumption levels in both new and secondhand clothes. Members of this group frequently returned items they had purchased, retained garments for short periods, and had increased their purchasing of secondhand clothing since 2020.
“People who buy a lot of secondhand clothes also tend to get rid clothes more quickly than other people, discarding them when they’re still in good condition or even brand new,” Peleg Mizrachi says.
“They appear to be driven by a desire for novelty and stay aligned with new fashion trends. Ultimately, those most engaged in the secondhand market are generating more textile waste than other consumers.”
Younger respondents reported higher engagement in the primary and resale markets than older consumers. The popularity of the secondhand market was especially pronounced among young people, with 79% of respondents aged 18 to 24 purchasing secondhand clothing, as compared to 57% of those aged 65 and older. Students were the most frequent consumers of secondhand clothes, with 84% reporting such purchases. And women reported greater engagement in both markets than men.
The study showed that demonstrating knowledge of the fashion industry’s environmental and social costs did not reliably predict that people were purchasing clothes in a sustainable manner, Peleg Mizrachi says.
The researchers draw on two behavioral theories—which are known as “the rebound effect” and “moral licensing”—to explain why buying used clothes may psychologically and economically justify continued overconsumption.
The rebound effect occurs when improvements in efficiency reduce the environmental or financial cost of a good or service, which in turn, increases demand for it, offsetting any beneficial effects. Driving more often after buying a fuel-efficient car is an example for the rebound effect. Moral licensing occurs when people use their prior virtuous acts to justify indulging in bad behavior. In this case, buying clothes secondhand may give people moral license to purchase more new clothing, Peleg Mizrachi says.
The researchers say the new findings support the importance of policies that would help align the resale practices with sustainability goals, including requiring resale platforms to disclose metrics relating to sustainability (such as unsold inventory disposal rates and shipping-related emissions from transporting garments).
“There are no policies in the United States or Europe regulating the resale of secondhand clothes,” she says.
“We should start treating the secondhand chain as part of the primary fashion system. We could start with requirements for full disclosure of resale platform’s environmental impact. That’s problematic.”
Source: Yale
