Day 34: Discarded textiles could fill Brighton beach 131 times every day, says Vestiaire Collective’s shock new campaign

7/28/2024

Day 34: Discarded textiles could fill Brighton beach 131 times every day, says Vestiaire Collective’s shock new campaign

Luxury second-hand fashion platform Vestiaire Collective is making a powerful statement this winter. Following its decision to eliminate fast fashion from its offering, the company has unveiled a thought-provoking campaign for Winter 2023/2024, drawing attention to the alarming textile waste problem that plagues our world.

Once associated with landfills in major Western cities, discarded clothing is now turning up on Western beaches. The campaign spotlights this crisis with a stark message: “Every day, the amount of textiles thrown away is staggering.” The numbers are jaw-dropping—enough to cover some of the world’s most famous beaches multiple times over.

For instance, the campaign illustrates how the volume of daily discarded textiles could cover Cannes’ Croisette beach 197 times, Brighton beach 131 times, Santa Monica beach 75 times, and St Tropez’s Pampelonne beach 360 times. These visuals make it impossible to ignore the scale of the waste we are producing.

This campaign comes on the heels of Vestiaire Collective’s major decision last November to remove fast fashion from its platform altogether. As part of a three-year sustainability initiative, the company banned 30 fashion brands notorious for their wastefulness, with the goal of completely cutting ties with fast fashion by 2025.

Vestiaire’s co-founders shared their motivation in a letter posted on the company’s website, explaining that their decision to start phasing out fast fashion brands on Black Friday 2022 was intentional. “Black Friday is when consumption skyrockets, especially fast fashion,” they noted.

The numbers are alarming. “Every year, the fashion industry produces 100 billion garments,” they explained. “As we consume more and wear less, 92 million tons of textile waste is discarded annually—most of it coming from fast fashion brands. This is enough to fill the Empire State Building every single day and has a major environmental and social impact.”

In a call to action, they encouraged shoppers to participate in their “Think First, Buy Second” initiative, urging consumers to ban fast fashion from their wardrobes, or at least refrain from purchasing any new fast fashion items for the rest of the year.

Vestiaire Collective defines fast fashion as an industry characterized by very low prices, constantly updated collections, extensive product ranges, heavy promotional cycles, and ultra-fast production timelines. With their new campaign, they hope to remind consumers of the true cost of this unsustainable system—one that goes far beyond the price tag.

Everything I wore on Day 34 of the 90 days of Shein challenge: