The fashion industry has a surplus problem.
Not a shortage of clothes, but a surplus of them.
Every year, more garments are produced than the world can wear, and most of what goes unsold or unused does not get repurposed, it gets discarded. Understanding the actual scale of this problem is worth doing, because the numbers are significantly larger than most people realize.
How Much Waste the Industry Produces
Global textile waste reached 120 million metric tons in 2024, up from earlier estimates of around 92 million, and is projected to exceed 150 million tons annually by 2030. To put that in context, the equivalent of a rubbish truck full of clothes ends up in landfill sites every second.
Of all textile waste generated, 80% is landfilled or incinerated, 12% is reused in some form, and less than 1% is recycled into new textiles. The recycling infrastructure has not kept pace with the volume of waste being produced.
How Garments Are Being Used
The waste problem is not only about what is thrown away at end of life. It starts much earlier, with how clothes are worn in the first place.
Clothing is now worn only 7 to 10 times before being thrown away, a decline of more than 35% in just 15 years. Production doubled from 2000 to 2015, while the duration of garment use decreased by 36%. More clothes are being made, and each one is being worn less.
This is not a coincidence, it is the result of a business model built around volume and turnover rather than longevity. We explored what this means for individual buying decisions in an earlier blog on how to tell if sustainable clothing is actually good quality, specifically what to look for in a garment that is built to be worn repeatedly rather than discarded after a season.
85% of clothing is discarded annually, often ending up in landfills or incinerated, which means the majority of what gets produced is not functioning as a wardrobe investment. It is functioning as short term inventory.
Where the Waste Actually Goes
The common assumption is that donated or secondhand clothes find new homes while the reality is more complicated.
Investigations in 2025 revealed ongoing dumping of unsellable secondhand clothes in Africa. In Ghana, garments from major Western brands were found in protected wetlands, while Kenya receives approximately 500 containers of clothing monthly, with around 40% consisting of unsellable waste ending up in dumps.
The global secondhand and donation system cannot absorb the volume of discarded clothes being generated. Much of what gets sent overseas simply relocates the waste rather than resolves it.
The Environmental Cost Beyond Landfill
Textile waste is not only a volume problem. The environmental impact runs deeper.
The fashion industry is responsible for 10% of the total annual carbon footprint, surpassing the emissions from all international flights and maritime shipping combined.
Washing clothes alone releases 500,000 tons of microfibers into the ocean every year. Synthetic fabrics, which now make up around 60% of all clothing materials, can take up to 200 years to decompose in landfill.
It takes about 2,700 litres of water to produce one cotton shirt, which is equivalent to 2.5 years of drinking water for one person. That resource cost exists before a garment reaches a wardrobe, let alone a landfill.
Material choice matters here too. Fabrics like Bemberg, which is produced from upcycled cotton linter waste, are fully biodegradable and designed to return to the earth rather than persist in it. You can explore Shinaraa pieces made from Bemberg to see what this looks like in practice.
What Is Changing at a Policy Level
In September 2025, the European Parliament adopted mandatory Extended Producer Responsibility for textiles, requiring all producers placing textiles on the EU market to cover the costs of collection, sorting, and recycling. This marks a significant shift from voluntary industry commitments toward legally binding accountability.
The regulation does not solve the waste problem on its own, but it begins to move financial responsibility toward the entities creating the surplus, rather than leaving governments and consumers to manage the consequences.
Why This Matters for How We Build Shinaraa
The numbers above describe a system built around volume. More production, faster turnover, cheaper materials, shorter use cycles. The incentive structure of the industry has historically rewarded exactly the behaviours that produce this waste.
The question we keep returning to at Shinaraa is a practical one: if a garment is going to exist in the world, what would need to be true about it to justify that existence?
For us, the answers have pointed consistently toward the same principles. Natural materials that biodegrade rather than persist. Production processes that are traceable and certified. Designs built for repeated wear rather than a single season.
This is part of why every Shinaraa piece comes with a Track Your Wear label, a grid sewn into the garment where you mark each time you wear it. Not as a gimmick, but as a reminder that the value of a garment is measured in wears, not in price. You can read more about our approach to conscious craftsmanship on our sustainability page.
None of this resolves the industry's surplus crisis on its own. But it is the direction we have committed to, and the numbers are part of why.