Does Secondhand Really Mean Sustainable?

By Maya Zealey

Most readers of this blog probably love a secondhand steal from a charity shop or diving through Depop, all while thinking we’re making a sustainable choice. After all, by giving a garment that already exists a home, we're avoiding the pesticide pollution, excessive water use, and horrific labour conditions that usually loom behind a garment's creation. We all know that the quick-trend cycles and cheap production of fast fashion has created a culture of ultra-consumerism on a scale completely unprecedented in the industry until just the past few decades. Thus, the increased popularity of secondhand shopping should be a positive move towards a more circular economy. But the spike we have witnessed in its trendiness has only polluted the industry with a different kind of consumerism and throwaway culture.

What drives the waste of the fashion industry is the incomprehensible scale on which it operates. As with all consumption, scale so often creates unsustainability. Throughout the pandemic, I have seen numerous trend cycles and watched in awe the widespread participation they garner and their then ultimately incredibly short lifespans. The rise of TikTok, an app notorious for very small bursts of content gaining global traction at an unprecedented pace, has created a culture where extremely specific trends become the ‘it’ thing: cottagecore, dark academia, a revival of Y2K, and even Twilight-core . . . Ultra-fast-fashion brands like Boohoo and Shein capitalise on these micro-trends and churn corresponding pieces out at a ridiculous pace. They know that trendy clothes don’t need to be durable as they're unlikely to be worn more than a few times, and thus produce massive amounts of poorly-made garments while also making a staggering profit, despite the clothing's cheapness, which only encourages mass buy-ins of trends. Social media and fast fashion rise together, reinforcing one another. The result is a hyper-consumeristic fashion industry, with production at a scale we have never seen before.

For many who want to engage in these trend cycles, donating their clothes to a charity shop or selling them on Depop is a way to ‘offset’ the environmental impacts of buying clothes that they were never going to treasure forever. The effect is that thrift shops, charity shops, and secondhand shopping apps are completely overrun with cheap, poor-quality, 'trendy' pieces from the month before. These clothes are not designed to last, so even if they do find second homes they will likely wear out and soon end up in a landfill anyway. Many of the clothes will not sell again at all, and as such will end up dumped in the Global South where many charity shops and other secondhand stores outsource their unwanted stock.

What is of high quality will now sell secondhand for more to differentiate them from the bombardment of cheap clothing also on offer. They'll also be more expensive due to the increasing popularity of thrifting amongst the middle classes; the market for secondhand shopping now caters to the socially-conscious with cash. Therefore, the options for those who do rely on secondhand to buy clothes affordably will become increasingly limited. What’s occurring is a kind of gentrification of the secondhand industry, pushing out those who have long been the most sustainable in their shopping habits. Additionally, higher quality and branded secondhand clothing can now be sold at a premium through ASOS marketplace or Depop, causing many good finds in charity shops to be bought and sold for profit on another site. This type of sustainable economy circulates quality and money amongst the already wealthy, forcing those with lower incomes to rely on whatever’s left over.

The root of the problem here is overconsumption, underpinned by trends on social media. Societal overconsumption of fast fashion cannot be donated or Depop’d away, which only entrenches its existence into our society. The trendiness of thrifting has led to the snatching and reselling of high-quality clothes by the already wealthy, leaving historically lower-income users of secondhand with cheap rubbish – literally! It'll all only end up in landfill once it starts to fall apart.

The future of secondhand shopping and the circular economy needs to be one in where we all shop less, where we mend what’s broken, and only donate or sell high-quality clothes. This future is one that prioritises lasting personal style over fickle social trends and ultimately makes secondhand shopping afforable, accessible, and dignified for all.