Are there too many clothes in the world?

Every second, 2,150 pieces of clothing and footwear get thrown away in the US, which makes about 11.3 million tons at the end of the year.

Yet, do we ever think about where our discarded clothes end up?

Sadly, over 70% of the time, our clothing ends up in landfills and very far from us, in Ghana and Chile.

(Credits- AFP Photo)

In Chile, most of the landfills are located in the Atacama Desert, the driest place on earth.

There, the clothes, once made to be sold, are burnt. Think about what burning does in the driest place on earth.

After the flames, nothing is left of it, but the effects one piece of clothing had on the people and the planet is immense.

It affected the garment workers and their meager wages, us and the chemicals we wore without noticing it, and the planet for the production of the fabric and its burning in a natural area.

Who gained from that piece of clothing at the end of the day?

Us? Do we feel good about that once-new trendy jacket? What is left of it?

Overproduction is one of the biggest problems in the textile industry.

Shein puts on average 1,000 new styles a day, Zara sells 450 million products a year, and H&M unsold inventory accounts for about $4B.

With such numbers, no question that landfills are exploding, but we, the consumers are also to blame.

Studies have shown that we throw out clothes after wearing them, on average seven to ten times.

The throwaway culture has worsened progressively over the years and is not on its way to stop.

Under-wearing and the failure to recycle generate a loss of $500 billion each year, mostly because the clothing we wear is made of materials that can not be recycled, such as polyester and plastic.

What can we do to save our clothing, the planet, and the people?

To lengthen the life of our clothing could be a good way to start. We can try altering it, fixing a zipper, or sewing back a button, instead of throwing it away.

If the life of our clothing would jump from being worn seven times to twenty-one, it would already be the start of an improvement!