Is Thrifting Sustainable?

“Sustainable fashion” has to be one of the biggest buzzwords in the fashion industry (and beyond) as we head into a new decade. Given that any discussion of the topic inevitably touches on things like environmental pollution and climate change, workers’ rights, industry regulation, and other socio-economic issues (including, once you start to dig down, classism and racism), it can feel overwhelming to try to figure out a nuanced and informed position that somehow reconciles all of one’s personal values. At times, it can seem as though clothes are simultaneously too cheap and yet not cheap enough; there are too many being produced, and yet some people still struggle to afford the basics. Something’s rotten in the state of Denmark, as they say, but I don’t know how one might go about fixing it. There are lots of fingers pointed at consumers – those gluttons of consumption – but that perspective is rooted in the classic capitalism notion that consumers are what shape and drive the market which, to me, is deeply suspect. Under late stage capitalism, what comes first: a desire to buy, or the desire to create a desire to buy?

As someone who writes about clothes as a hobby, I have no real business wading into waters as deep as these. I encourage everyone to read up on the subject (and do so from a variety of voices and points of view), but I don’t feel I have anything worthwhile to add to it. In general, I favour a “stay on the sidelines, listen, process, evaluate, recalibrate as needed, repeat” approach, and that sort of approach doesn’t lend itself to public pronouncements.

And yet.

Today I have, well, not exactly a pronouncement but some thoughts to share on a tangential topic. To wit: is thrifting sustainable?

As a dedicated thrifter, you can imagine that my knee-jerk reaction when I first heard the suggestion that thrifting isn’t sustainable. “It SO is, too! It’s the definition of sustainable.” The second R is “reuse”, after all. Thrifting takes already-produced goods that have been discarded by their original owners and re-purposes/redistributes them, keeping them in use and out of landfills. This is a Good Thing in my books, and I will never feel guilty about buying thrifted (or secondhand) goods – or buying lots of them. As far as I am concerned, the potential negative impacts of high consumption of secondhand goods is that there is less for others to buy, and prices are being driven up. The first may be a legitimate issue in some areas, where the secondhand market is small and under-supplied. In my city, that is very much not the case; there is a plethora of stores, and they are filled to the rafters with stuff.

The price thing is an issue here, however. Prices are, unarguably, higher than they used to be even 4-5 years ago (even accounting for inflation in the costs of operations), and I think we are reaching a tipping point where it’s becoming cheaper to buy new fast fashion. For people who shop secondhand out of necessity rather than conviction, this is an important consideration and I think thrift stores (especially for-profit ones who are the most at fault when it comes to over-pricing) will eventually start to see a share of their consumer base move away. I know people love to blame resellers for higher thrift prices, but I think they are a very small segment of the market. As thrifting has surged in popularity, more folks are going to thrift stores, period; stores are seeing increased demand and responding accordingly. Personally, I don’t mind “paying up” for items that are truly worth it, but thrift stores are not generally equipped to reliably identify those items and price them in a reasonable manner. That’s how you end up with H&M stuff that’s more expensive than retail, and designer items under $10. However, as long as fast fashion exists, there will be something of a check on thrift prices.

Which brings me back to the sustainability piece. Thrifting does not contribute to the fashion industry’s environmental issues. It simply doesn’t. The relationship between supply and demand is not direct. Demand does not necessarily create supply. Thrift stores aren’t filled to the brim because they have a lot of customers to serve; they’re filled to the brim because people discard a lot of stuff, constantly. In that sense, supply does have a relationship to the fashion industry. It is not a coincidence that, while thrift stores have been around for a long time, their inventory has skyrocketed in the last decade. It’s not a coincidence that I can regularly thrift items that were in retail stores within the previous 6 months – or, sometimes, that are still being sold in retail stores. The fashion industry has created a mindset wherein clothing is disposable, and that feeds the supply that has made thrifting such an attractive option. So, in that narrow sense, one could argue that thrifting in its current incarnation is not truly sustainable because its supply depends to a (large?) extent on unsustainable practices.

I don’t see this as an indictment of thrifting. Thrifting is not a solution to the world’s clothing oversupply problem, and people do it a disservice when they try to frame it as such. It’s a way to mitigate (to a small extent) the impacts of that problem. Call it a bandaid. As a consumer, sometimes that’s the best available option.

I don’t know what the future of thrifting looks like, much as I don’t know what the future of the fashion industry will look like. It is encouraging to see that more and more people are becoming interested in finding new ways to create a circular economy – clothing swaps, for example, have exploded in popularity in my area. I have written before that I use thrift stores as a kind of “lending library” of clothes (and other items, for that matter) – I take things that spark my interest, and re-donate them when I no longer wish to use them. I am still waiting for someone to take this paradigm and create an (easily accessible) app or service around it, and it’s only a matter of time before it happens.

As always, would love to hear your thoughts on these issues, especially in regards to future trends. Where do you think we are heading in this next decade in terms of sustainable fashion practices?