One of our primary missions at Scout Dry Goods & Trade is to extend the life cycle of clothing and accessories, thereby keeping them OUT of the landfills.

Returning one clothing item back into the circular economy extends its life by an average of 2.2 years and reduces its carbon, waste and water footprints by 82%.

FAST FASHION'S EFFECT ON THE ENVIRONMENT:

• "Approximately 7,000 liters of water are needed to produce one pair of jeans (the amount of water one individual drinks in 5-6 years).” – Sustainable Fashion Matterz
• "A single t-shirt takes 2,700 liters of water to make. The same amount of water an average person drinks over the course of 900 days.” – Better Cotton Initiative
• "Only 10% of the clothes people donate to thrift stores or charities get sold, the rest goes to landfill.” – 1 Million Women
• "85% of the plastic pollution in the ocean is due to microfibers from synthetic clothing.” – Dr. Mark Browne 
• “Clothing made from polyester can take up to 200 years to break down.”- ABC
• “The average woman has $550 of unworn clothing in her closet having never worn at least 20 percent of the items in their wardrobes.” – Huffington Post Survey
• "Fast fashion brands like Fashion Nova, Boohoo*, Revolve, Pretty Little Thing and Forever 21 all score less than 10% on the Fashion Transparency Index.” (Fashion Transparency Index, 2020)
• "Sustainable fashion cannot exist without transparency. Transparency is a key precondition for industry action to eliminate human rights violations, treat workers and communities with respect and eliminate or reduce pollution and unsustainable resource use. You should be suspicious of any brand that is not prepared to fully account for where and how it makes the clothes it wants you to buy. Of course transparency by itself is not enough – we need brands to commit to high standards and effective assurance systems to know if brands and their suppliers are actually delivering on their commitments.The fashion industry is responsible for 8% of carbon emissions” (UN Environment, 2019)
• "Some of the main sources of carbon emissions along fashion supply chains are things like pumping water to irrigate crops (like cotton), the harvesting machinery, general transport, and those pesky oil-based pesticides—all of which are inevitably increased in the notoriously overproducing world of fast fashion. By that score, we know that purchasing fast fashion items directly contributes to the global polluting machine that is to blame for 8% of the world’s carbon emissions. The average American throws away around 81 pounds of clothing yearly” (Saturday Evening Post, 2018)
• "Clothing has become more readily available than ever, triggering our consumer behaviors to change for the worse. By thinking of the garments we wear as short term tools rather than long term investments, we contribute to wasteful consumption patterns that inevitably lead us towards drastic climate change. Fast fashion brands use open-loop production cycles that pollute water and land.” (The New York Times, 2019)
• "Speaking of the sustainability aspect, it’s also essential to know how brands avoid or dispose of waste products in the production process. As sad as it is, a vast majority of fashion retailers do not clean and reuse water from production facilities, using a so-called 'open-loop cycle' method. It means that all of the waste goes straight outside to pollute waters and lands." So, the exact opposite of what we want! "68% of fast fashion brands don’t maintain gender equality at production facilities.” (Ethical Fashion Guide, 2019)
• "As we’ve seen, most* fast fashion corporations locate their production facilities in emerging countries. The 80 million workers in the fashion supply chain are overwhelmingly women, but the majority of retailers show no little concern with maintaining gender equality in the workplace. Fast fashion is not just a sustainability problem, but a key feminist issue."

Yours in sustainable living, 

xo, The Scout Team

*Boohoo is a possible dishonorable exception – their final production is in Leicester UK to reduce time to market, but they have still been accused of labour rights abuses.