Fast fashion could be left on the peg as preloved and repair displace new sales

A new report from WRAP, working with leading resale and repair businesses and brands, shows the positive impacts that a range of circular business models are having in stopping the purchase of new clothes. The insights are outlined in the report Displacement Rates Untangled and make essential reading for the UK, which in 2024 was the fourth highest consumer of clothing of any nation, after the USA, China and India.

Harriet Lamb, WRAP CEO, said “Our research shows that buying preloved both satisfies our desire for clothes, for something new-to-us, and means we don’t buy so many brand-new items. What’s more, we can now clearly and consistently measure the environmental case for a range of circular business models including repair – for the first time. I encourage companies to adopt this new technique – customers are looking to them for new services like repair and renting.”

Clothing has a huge impact on the environment from growing raw materials such as cotton to textile waste, pollution, water and land use – 70% of the industry’s GHG emissions are in upstream activities linked to raw materials and production of new clothing. As an industry, the UN Environment Programme estimates that clothing is the second-biggest consumer of water and produces around 10% of global carbon emissions – more than all international flights and maritime shipping combined.

A huge factor is rising production and overconsumption – between 2000 and 2015, worldwide clothing production doubled. The textiles sector needs to radically rethink how it does business. One way is by implementing and scaling-up circular business models.

Until now, one factor hampering progress has been a failure to agree a consistent methodology for assessing the benefits of new ways of selling. Working with leaders in the preloved and repair marketplace Depop, eBay, Vestiaire Collective, The Seam, SOJO and brand Finisterre, WRAP calculated the extent to which the rise of repair and resale can displace new sales, and how much they help offset the environmental cost of clothing.

The global environmental action NGO found that for every five times people repair existing items of clothing, four new items of clothing are ‘displaced’ by people no longer buying them. And for every five items bought second-hand online, three new items are subsequently not bought on average, as a result. Respectively, the average displacement rate for repair is high at 82.2% and 64.6% for resale. Harriet Lamb, “There’s nothing better than finding a bargain online, or in your local charity shop. Our data now quantifies the big environmental savings from preloved and repair. This is great news for shoppers as it shows that introducing a little circular living into your life reduces the price and the environmental price tag too.”

WRAP’s insights have established clear benchmarks for repair and resale using data from the six companies and helped to develop a single methodology that can be applied by businesses of all shapes and sizes, to give robust and comparable data. Quantifying the impacts of circular business models is vital for organisations looking to demonstrate the benefits to customers, and who wish to make statements around avoided emissions.

How the sums add up

Buying a second-hand pair of jeans online instead of buying a brand-new pair could save over 30kg CO2e, equivalent to making 600 cups of tea.
Buying a second-hand pair of trainers online instead of buying a brand-new pair could save over 12kg CO2e, equivalent to streaming on-demand TV for almost 10 days.
Repairing one cotton t-shirt instead of buying a brand new one could save over 7.5kg CO2e, equivalent to ironing for 25 hours.
Repairing a hole in your favourite wool jumper instead of buying a new one could save over 16kg CO2e, equivalent to leaving a standard (60W) lightbulb on for over 50 days.
Repairing a rip in your waterproof jacket instead of buying a new one could save over 45kg CO2e, equivalent to running almost 300 washing cycles.
WRAP is now calling on companies to adopt the new standardised way to measure resale and repair, based on this nationwide research. While the focus of Displacement Rates Untangled is repair and resale circular business models, the methodology could be applied to other models including redistribution and rental and applied outside the UK.

The report was unveiled at WRAP’s Textiles 2030 annual Circular Summit for signatories to the UK’s only industry-wide voluntary agreement tackling waste, water stress and emissions in the UK’s textile sector, which took place this month. The global environmental action NGO will also publish the first in a new set of Circular Living Standards later this year – for Preloved clothing.