Social media fuels fast fashion throwaway culture - survey

By

Sandra Halliday

Published
Oct 9, 2018

Social media is fuelling a throwaway culture that's creating a large amount of fast fashion waste product, a new report shows.

A survey of 2,000 consumers by Censuswide (for eco-friendly cleaning brand Method) has found that around 10% of people would throw away an item after they had been photographed in it online three times. And when we say throw away, we mean exactly that as around 20% of consumers say they throw waste in the bin rather than doing something more useful with it such as  giving it to charity.

The survey, reported in The Standard, comes at a time when the fast fashion sector is under increasing scrutiny and Britain’s Environmental Audit Committee has recently written to the country's 10 biggest fashion retailers to get environmental information as part of a probe into fashion-related pollution.

It seems that the average consumer is buying twice as many clothes as just a decade ago, and that means that if plenty of consumers are throwing things away after only wearing them a few times, the potential environmental impact is huge.

Method spokeswoman Victoria Hunt-Taylor said: "MPs are now citing the fashion industry as one of the major causes of greenhouse gases and this should be a catalyst for companies plus consumers to act now to protect the planet.”

She added that 0.3 million items of clothing go to UK landfill sites annually and this means that brands, consumers and regulators all need to get involved in changing consumer habits.

To draw attention to the problem, Method has opened a Slow Fashion Store in Shoreditch this week (Tuesday and Wednesday) with celebrities having donated clothing they no longer wear and all proceeds from the sale going to charity.