the good market effect
Together, our community has kept 30,000+ lbs of clothing out of landfill, avoided 340,000 kg of new carbon emissions, and saved over 130 million litres of water - simply by choosing clothes that already exist.
When clothing ends up in landfill, it doesn’t disappear. It can sit for decades - releasing methane, shedding microplastics, and leaching dyes and chemicals into soil and groundwater.
By keeping 30,000+ lbs of clothing in circulation, our community has helped prevent that waste while reducing the need for new production.
water saved
Producing clothing is extremely water-intensive.
One pair of jeans: ~3,781 litres of water
Reusing clothing uses only ~0.01% of the water required for new production
136 million litres of water is roughly:
54 Olympic swimming pools
Enough drinking water for ~186,000 people for a year
what happens when clothing sits in landfill
Toxic chemicals leach into soil and groundwater.
Clothing is full of dyes, finishes, and chemical treatments, including: azo dyes, formaldehyde resins, flame retardants, PFAS stain treatments, heavy metals from pigments
When textiles break down in landfill, rainwater moving through waste creates leachate - a contaminated liquid that can carry these chemicals into soil and groundwater.
Synthetic garments are especially problematic because they release microplastics and chemical additives as they slowly degrade. And micrplastics like polyester can take 200+ years to degrade.
methane emissions from natural fibres
Natural fibres like cotton, wool, rayon and linen break down anaerobically (without oxygen) in landfill.
This produces methane (CH₄), a greenhouse gas that is about 28–36× more potent than CO₂ at trapping heat in the atmosphere.
Natural textiles aren't the enemy here though, and can break down in as little as a few months to a few years. It'a also why we try and save as much of this type of clothing as we can (plus it's better for our health) - with a truckful of clothing being dumped and burned every second there's so much more perfectly good clothing we can save from becoming unncessary waste.