Clothing consumption has been on the rise for a long time.
53
items per person per year
+161%
source: Federal Reserve
Fashion consumption has grown – and so has its unsustainable impact.
The quiz you just took sorted you into one of three shopper personas: timeless, trendy or thrifty. Each reflects the values that shape not just your wardrobe, but the fashion industry itself — an industry now defined by rapid trend cycles that prompt ever-increasing consumption.
Although consumers say they care about sustainability, which means reducing consumption, research suggests it doesn’t appear to drive their purchasing decisions.
Maybe that happened to you when you took the quiz. Maybe you chose to purchase what caught your eye, not what you thought would be most environmentally friendly.
That’s the point.
There is a gap between how we say we want to shop and how we actually shop — and closing that gap is key to reducing the apparel industry’s negative environmental impact.
Price, brand name and garment quality all drive decision-making more than sustainability does, according to Amanda Pushkas, a consumer research expert.
Still, some clothing items “continue to resurface as classic,” Pushkas said, meaning that certain styles are better long-term investments than others.
These are the pieces that people keep in their closets for years, or even decades, thereby reducing the need to throw away the items or replace them with a new purchase. Hanging onto garments longer is one facet of sustainability.
But there are several other factors to consider.
“Some consumers care about emissions, right? Some consumers care about water consumption. Some consumers care about pesticide use,” said Annie Williams, clinical assistant professor of marketing at the UNC Kenan-Flagler Business School. “A lot of consumers are interested in knowing [a garment] was made with paying people fair wages” and in factories with safe conditions for employees.
Ultimately, consumers want to know the direct environmental impact they make by shopping sustainably, Williams explained.
She acknowledged, however, that even for consumers who claim to care deeply about sustainability, price is key when making purchasing decisions.
How can shopping hurt the planet?
Fast fashion often contains toxic and harmful chemicals. For example, 15% of Shein items studied by Greenpeace Germany contained hazardous chemicals such as PFAS, phthalates and formaldehyde in excess of EU regulatory limits.
In another study of American school uniforms, 100% of samples tested contained PFAS, which are man-made chemicals found in industrial and consumer products.
The health impacts of these substances can be devastating. PFAS exposure, for example, has been linked to testicular and kidney cancers, decreased immune response to vaccines and liver disease, explained Jamie DeWitt, professor of environmental and molecular toxicology at Oregon State University.
There is also limited evidence that certain types of PFAS can be absorbed through the skin, DeWitt added.
“What’s probably more likely to happen,” DeWitt said, “and again, I don't think these studies have been done, is that PFAS may be emitted from or be shed from the materials, and then that increases the risk of those PFAS, for example, in house dust, which could then be absorbed.”
The risks don’t end when an item is thrown away. Contaminants like PFAS and microplastics from textiles can also seep out of landfills and into nearby soil and waterways. This compromises environmental health and safety, according to the U.S. Government Accountability Office, which released its first-ever report on textile waste in December 2024.
Despite these health risks, toxic chemicals in apparel are legal in the United States due to the patchwork of regulations.
The Toxic Substances Control Act, Consumer Product Safety Act and Federal Hazardous Substances Act are supposed to regulate toxic chemicals in consumer products, Elizabeth Durosko, who published a law review article on the topic, said in an interview.
However, Durosko found that all three of these acts fall short of protecting consumers due to narrow definitions, weak enforcement mechanisms and other regulatory issues.
For example, under the Toxic Substances Control Act, “A T-shirt would be defined as an ‘article.’ Articles are explicitly excluded from the Act’s definition of chemical substance,” Durosko said.
This means that even if a T-shirt contains toxic chemicals that the act regulates, the shirt itself is not regulated.
Furthermore, textile waste and the harmful substances it contains are increasing rapidly. The Environmental Protection Agency estimates “an over 50 percent increase between 2000 and 2018,” according to the GAO Textile Waste Report.
Why are people buying more clothes?
American apparel consumption is off the charts — per capita spending increased 68% from 1997 to 2023, according to the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis.
Additionally, the consulting firm McKinsey found that the average number of garments purchased per capita rose 60% between 2000 and 2014.
The apparel industry has grown significantly, both by volume and by value. It’s worth asking: Why are we buying so much?
Oftentimes, it’s because people are trying to keep up with trends, which seem to be changing faster with the proliferation of social media, fast fashion and online shopping.
“Everything is popular, and so people are buying kind of everything,” said Molly Rooyakkers, the fashion trend forecaster behind the blog Style Analytics “Of course that's going to cause them to buy a higher volume of clothes every year.”
That doesn’t mean people don’t care about sustainability. Google search term trends suggest interest in “slow fashion” or “sustainable fashion” may be growing – these search terms were 32% and 49% more popular over the past year than over the same period a decade earlier.
But maybe interest isn’t enough.
Rooyakkers noted that “trends are not a limiting factor anymore,” which speaks to the heart of the issue: people want to shop more sustainably but are buying more than ever.
Aligning sustainable intent with impact
Let’s be honest with ourselves.
We cannot be perfect shoppers. There are tradeoffs with any purchase – one sweater might be made of synthetic materials but have compostable packaging, whereas another might be made of organic materials but require carbon-intensive shipping.
But we can be better shoppers. We can try to bridge the gap between our sustainable values and our less sustainable shopping habits.
How might we do that?
Skip the new summer wardrobe. Wear what you already have. Make a commitment not to buy fast fashion.
Take a few hours between when you put something in your online shopping cart and when you decide to purchase it. You may find that you don’t want it after all.
Oftentimes, the most sustainable purchase is no purchase at all.