Thrift Shopping for the Environment

Photo courtesy: Photo by  Artem Beliaikin  from  Pexels

The word thrift is defined as “the quality of using money and other resources carefully and not wastefully.” With that being said, a thrift store is a retail store that sells secondhand goods at low prices—enabling consumers to thrift. Nowadays, when you say thrift shopping, this could apply to furniture, books, appliances and other goods but the first thing that comes to mind is... clothes. 

 

In the olden days, thift shopping had a bad reputation due to the notion that people who buy it cannot afford name brands or and that a person is using the old owner's belongings. However, times have changed. Thrift shopping has now become a hobby, a lifestyle, and especially one way to practice a sustainable lifestyle. 

Accordig to Planet Aid, the growth of the resale industry has increased significantly over recent years. Forty percent of 18 to 24-year-olds shopped resale in 2017. Experts are saying that this is because of the shift of attitude towards thrift shopping. After the 2008 Recession, people opted to practice frugality measures thinking of it as a sensible way to live rather than desperation. 

 

Millenials have also now preffered thrift shop items as it is one way to practice recycling and reducing waste. According to Thred UP, the largest online thrift store, 77 percent of millennials prefer to buy from environmentally-conscious brands. Since eco-fashion is often out of millennial's budgets, the next best thing is to use thrift-shop clothes.

 

The rise of "fast fashion" which is the inexpensive clothing produced rapidly by mass-market retailers in response to the latest trends, has severe environmental impacts. In fact, According to World Resources Institue, Cotton is also a very thirsty crop, requiring 2,700 liters of water to make one cotton shirt. Because the quality of the clothing isn't the best, and consumers are purchasing clothes at a faster rate, an expanded amount of textiles end up in the landfill each year. 

 

Rather than crowding our landfills, and increasing our carbon footprints just because of the latest fads, why not opt for fashionable gems hidden in the piles in thirft shops. Millenials have also considered making DIY or Do-it-yourself projects such as improving or styling thrift shop clothes based on their creativity.

 

Now is the time to start caring about the environment because too much resources are exploited because of mass production. If this means recycling decent and beautiful clothes, then why not?