“It’s the industry’s dirty secret”: Why the fashion industry’s oversupply problem is an environmental disaster

No one knows exactly how many coats, jeans, T-shirts and sneakers are produced each year, which means no one knows how many clothes sit unsold in warehouses, destined for disposal. landfilled or destroyed. Without this information, trying to reduce the fashion industry's carbon footprint is a bit like trying to solve a puzzle in the dark.

Statistics available suggest that between 80 and 150 billion items of clothing are manufactured. manufactured each year and that between 10% and 40% of them are not sold. So there could be 8 billion or 60 billion pieces of surplus clothing per year – an alarming disparity.

“Production volumes represent a really important opportunity to bring honesty back conversation,” says Liz Ricketts. , co-founder and executive director of the Gold Foundation, an environmental justice charity based in Ghana. “It’s a data point that everyone has access to. It's just a matter of companies being willing to share it. »

Convinced that transparency on production volumes is essential to assess and resolve the scale of fashion's environmental problems, the Gold Foundation launched the Speak project. Volume campaign in November, which invites brands to disclose the number of units they have manufactured in 2022.

So far, 32 small and medium-sized businesses have participated. The biggest revelation came from British brand Lucy & Yak, which produced 760,951 pieces; the smallest was from Scottish brand Mlambo, with just 100 items. We are a long way from the billions of garments supposedly made by the biggest players in fashion, but none of them participated.