Have you heard the one about throwing your clothes away being better for the planet than renting them?

In this Episode, we talk to the author of the recent study out of Finland that spawned so many clickbait headlines, then ask a British retail legend about what's driving the fashion rental boom. We hear from a purpose-driven millennial founder about what her company is doing to ensure rental really is a greener fashion option than buying new clothes; and learn the secrets of eco-friendly dry cleaning (which... is actually wet - who knew?).

Featuring interviews with: Professor Jarkko Levänen of Lahti University of Technology; Jane Shepherdson, chair of My Wardrobe HQ; Victoria Prew, co-founder of HURR, and Dr Kyle Grant, founder of Oxwash.

NOTES

THE STUDY

“Innovative recycling or extended use? Comparing the global warming potential of different ownership and end-of-life scenarios for textiles,” by Jarkko Levänen, Ville Uusitalo, Anna Härri, Elisa Kareinen and Lassi Linnanen Department of Sustainability Science, LUT, was published in May 2021 in the academic journal Environmental Research Letters.

Here’s the intro summary:

“The implementation of circular economy (CE) thinking to reduce environmental impacts and resource use has led to the development of innovative recycling technologies and business models. The implications of these technologies and models, however, remain largely unclear. In many CE strategies, there is a high risk of rebound, meaning a situation in which activities aimed at environmental benefits are not realized because of external reasons. A similar risk relates to limited understanding about the behavioral changes required by extensive implementation of circular practices. Using life cycle assessment, we compare the global warming potential (GWP) of five ownership and end-of-life scenarios for creating and using a pair of jeans. The scenarios are as follows: (a) BASE, i.e. basic use with waste disposal; (b) REDUCE, i.e. extended use; (c) REUSE, i.e. re-selling; (d) RECYCLE, i.e. industrial processing into new raw materials; and (e) SHARE, i.e. a rental service. Our results show that the lowest global warming impacts are achieved in the REDUCE scenario, and the second lowest are achieved in the REUSE scenario. The RECYCLE scenario leads to relatively high overall emissions because the replaced emissions from cotton production are relatively low. The use of rental services is likely to increase customers’ mobility, and if that happens in a large scale, then the SHARE scenario has the highest GWP. It was found that many new CE innovations come with a high rebound risk, and existing practices carry similar, yet smaller risks.”

“OUR GOAL IS TO COMPARE THE GWP IMPACTS OF FIVE DIFFERENT OWNERSHIP AND END-OF-LIFE SCENARIOS FOR JEANS THAT RELATE TO TYPICAL CE PRINCIPLES IN THE TEXTILE SECTOR.”

So, how did these scenarios compare?

1. The best way to limit the climate impact of your wardrobe is to reduce your consumption.

2. The second best way is to reuse clothing.

Rental - “share” - came out last (5th), mostly because it can involve increased transport, especially when done at scale. Recycling didn’t do so well either - because of the energy used.

You can read the survey in full here.

HEADLINES

Find links to the media coverage referenced in this Episode, below:

This Dazed story oversimplified things.

This Glamour UK article responded to: “Renting your clothes has just been called out as the least environmentally-friendly fashion option,” with more nuance:

According to the Guardian in this piece: “Renting clothes has been thought of the sustainable and frugal alternative to fast fashion, popularised by companies such as Rent the Runway and public figures like Carrie Symonds, who rented her wedding dress and her outfits for the G7 conference. Gwyneth Paltrow is on the Rent the Runway board and Ralph Lauren has announced a rental range. The growing sector, which according to GlobalData it is going to be worth £2.3bn by 2029, has been touted as a possible solution to fashion’s environmental crisis …However instead of solving fashion’s environmental crisis, renting should be recategorised…”

HOW GREEN IS FASHION RENTAL , REALLY?

Short answer: it depends.

As WWD pointed out, the study assumes that these imaginary jeans are worn up to 200 times, but there’s loads of other data that suggests that real average wear per garment is way lower, maybe more like 10 wears. In that scenario, renting a garment 20, 30, 40 times, makes a major saving.

Just how sustainable one model is vs. another also depends on what company you look at, what their processes are, and in the case of rental - how they organise packaging, transport and cleaning.

DRYCLEANING “Traditionally dry cleaning has been done without the use of water. Contrary to popular belief, dry cleaning is by no means dry; clothes are immersed and cleaned using a liquid solvent. Different dry cleaning technologies use different liquid chemical solvents. These chemicals may impact worker health, consumer health and the health of the environment. Since the health risks due to exposure to these solvents vary from carcinogenic (causes cancer) to mostly harmless, it is important to be aware of the various cleaning options when selecting a cleaner to care for your clothes.”

Perchloroethylene (“perc”) is the nasty - and is still commonly used. “Perc has been shown to contaminate soil, water and air. It is quite volatile and so pollutes indoor and outdoor air. Perc spills are considered severe environmental accidents as perc can seep down into the soil and reach drinking water aquifers.”

via SFEnironment.org

ABOUT THE GUESTS

Jane Shepherdson CBE is a British retail expert. A former brand director of Topshop and CEO of Whistles, she joined My Wardrobe HQ as chair in 2020. My Wardrobe was cofounded in London in 2018 by Sacha Newall and Tina Lake as a resale and rental marketplace. They’ve since done collabs with Liberty and Harrod’s, and offer womenswear and accessories from brands including Chanel, Gucci, Stella McCartney, Ganni, Rixo, Saint Laurent, Self Portrait, Prada and more.

They say: “We believe fashion rental is the solution to consuming fashion in a sustainable way.”

Victoria Prew is co-founder & CEO of HURR - a retail tech start-up working with Seldfridges and Depop. This fashion rental platform is peer to peer, and puts sustainability at its core.

Prew says: “As a millennial, I’m of a generation that don’t question shared ownership. First-hand, I’ve witnessed the rise of disruptive tech-first businesses such as Uber and Airbnb – we rent cars and houses, so why not our wardrobes? As an undergraduate, I founded a tech-led startup and after training in a more traditional corporate environment, I founded HURR to disrupt the way we consume fashion.”

HURR works with Ecologi to map and offset their emissions, and RePack on reusable packaging.

Dr Kyle Grant is an ex-NASA scientist who founded Oxwash in the UK 2018, and works with fashion rental companies HURR, My Wardrobe HQ, Something Borrowed and By Rotation.

They say: “Oxwash was born out of a purposeful desire to purge and decarbonise the unsustainable laundry industry…We are re-engineering the laundry process from the ground up; from recycling the water we use between washes, to capturing and preventing over 95% of plastic microfibres from entering our oceans. We believe in achieving a higher quality clean than ever before, responsibly…Oxwash uses an innovative technique called WET cleaning - an innovative, sustainable, alternative to dry cleaning. It also uses water-saving ozone technology to sterilize fabrics at lower temperatures, thermal and biodegradable chemical processes to achieve higher than medical-grade disinfection, dissolvable laundry bags, along with electric cargo bikes for hyper local pickups and deliveries.”

Thank you for listening to Wardrobe Crisis. Don’t forget to hit subscribe and please do leave a rating and review in your favourite podcast app - it helps new listeners find us.

Love, Clare & the team.