When you sort out your wardrobe at the change of seasons, idle clothes usually have a few paths: those in good condition go up on secondhand trading platforms, branded or rare pieces flow into vintage shops and flea markets, and those truly hard to move go into neighborhood clothing recycling bins. But clothes don't disappear just because you can't see them.

From collection to cross-border circulation, the used-clothing trade is big business. After sorting, garments that still have commercial value either return to the domestic secondhand market or are baled for export. Asia and Africa have long had large-scale secondhand clothing markets, and the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) is studying the economic value and environmental burden of this trade in places like Ghana. Cross-border used clothing itself is not frightening; the real problem lies in quantity and quality—when the inflow exceeds local capacity for reuse, or when large volumes of garments lose their shape after only a few wears, recipient countries can end up as the final dumping ground.

After Clothes Became Too Cheap

The rise of fast fashion and the SPA model has sharply lowered clothing prices. Fashion is no longer a luxury for the few, but what has been dragged down along with it is people's psychological valuation of a single garment. A coat costing over a hundred thousand won is too precious to toss casually, while a T-shirt costing just over ten thousand won gets shoved to the bottom of the drawer after a few wears if you stop liking it; repairing it once costs nearly as much as buying new, so you simply don't repair it. The result is that clothes are sentenced to "death" psychologically before they are even worn out. So it is not accurate to reduce the fast fashion problem simply to "cheapness." The key is the combination of low prices, fast trend cycles, and overproduction, which makes "buying too much, wearing too little" an everyday norm.

Materials Have No Standard Answer Either

Today's clothing makes heavy use of synthetic fibers such as polyester, nylon, and acrylic—lightweight, durable, and price-competitive, but mostly derived from fossil fuels. The European Environment Agency (EEA) points out that unless incinerated, these fibers do not biodegrade in the natural environment and persist long-term as large plastics and even microplastics and nanoplastics. The common claim that "cotton rots in a few months while polyester takes hundreds of years" is not rigorous; degradation speed is heavily influenced by temperature, humidity, soil, landfill conditions, dye coatings, and blend ratios. A more accurate understanding is: cellulose-based natural fibers can biodegrade under certain conditions, while ordinary synthetic fibers are difficult to degrade in the natural environment.

This does not mean cotton is necessarily eco-friendly and polyester necessarily harmful. The EEA's life cycle analysis shows that per kilogram of fabric, polyester carries a heavier burden in terms of climate change and fossil fuel use, while cotton places greater pressure on land and water use and water eutrophication. Textile Exchange's 2026 cotton life cycle assessment likewise emphasizes that cotton's environmental impact varies enormously by growing region and farming method. The formula "natural equals eco-friendly" does not hold: growing cotton requires land, water, and chemical fertilizers and pesticides, and dyeing and finishing also require energy and chemicals. A fully sustainable material does not yet exist.

The Key Is How Many Times You Wear It

Does the problem only begin the moment clothes enter the trash? No. Fiber shedding occurs during wearing and washing, and microplastics from synthetic fibers are of particular concern. The EEA estimates that synthetic fiber microplastics are released throughout the entire process of manufacturing, wearing, washing, and disposal, with unintentional releases in Europe alone ranging from about 1,600 tons to 61,100 tons per year. Notably, new clothes may release more microfibers in the first few washes—the EEA believes that the fast fashion structure of short wear-and-replace raises the share of first-wash releases, directly linking consumption pace to the microfiber problem. Therefore the core indicator is not the material label, but "how many times it has been worn."

What Brands Can Do

On Black Friday 2011, Patagonia ran a photo of its own jacket in The New York Times with the line "Don't Buy This Jacket." A company that sells clothes telling consumers not to buy its own products—the contrast itself generated marketing effect, but what made this campaign repeatedly cited is the question it raised: Do you really need this garment? If you already have one, wear it longer. Patagonia still offers repair, resale, and secondhand trading through Worn Wear. Switzerland's Freitag started with discarded truck tarps, turning waste into bags, and still researches repairable, recyclable materials and structures; Sweden's Nudie Jeans runs repair shops, mending old jeans before reselling or recycling them as raw material; Eileen Fisher collects its own products for resale or reuse, while France's Veja treats raw material and supply chain transparency as the core of its brand. What these brands share is that they do not believe responsibility ends when a product is sold.

There is similar thinking in South Korea. Brepeace, a yoga wear brand the author helps run, does not call itself a large eco-friendly brand, but focuses on cotton, durability, and clothes that make people want to wear them again and again: using cotton does not equal being eco-friendly; the key still lies in how often and how long customers wear them.

For each of us, what we can do is not complicated: pass on what's too small, resell what's in good condition, repair before replacing, and before buying something new, ask yourself, "How long can I wear this?" The most eco-friendly garment may already be in your wardrobe.

Source: Buy One, Wear It Longer… For Sustainable Fashion · Originally published 2026-09-21