How to solve fashion’s waste problem
Business Daily
BBC
4.4 • 816 Ratings
🗓️ 4 December 2023
⏱️ 18 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
More than a quarter of all clothes made are never actually sold - where do they go?
We look into new legislation being finalised by the EU, to try and make fashion more sustainable.
There will be a ban on the incineration of unsold goods and each product will need a digital passport so it can be tracked and its lifetime monitored.
Hannah Mullane speaks to businesses across Europe about whether they think the industry is ready for these kind of changes.
We also head to Ghana, to the Kantamanto market - the biggest second-hand market in the world, to understand the impact the fashion worlds unsold garments can have.
Presented and produced by Hannah Mullane
(Picture credit: A pair of shoes hang over power lines at the Kantamanto market in Accra, November 2022. REUTERS/Francis Kokoroko)
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | The Global Story is the podcast helping you make sense of the news. |
| 0:06.7 | Join me, Katya Adler, every weekday as I take a closer look at the stories making the headlines, |
| 0:12.1 | with insights from the BBC's Global Network of Experts. |
| 0:16.0 | Search for The Global Story, wherever you get your BBC podcasts. |
| 0:27.7 | Music The Global Story, wherever you get your BBC podcasts. Shopping. We all do it. Some of us love it and others like me will run as fast as they can |
| 0:33.3 | away from busy shopping centres like the one I'm in today. I'm Hannah Malane and I'm here because in this episode of Business Daily, |
| 0:40.8 | we're taking a look at how the world of fashion is going to have to change |
| 0:44.5 | as the EU brings in new rules in an effort to make it more sustainable. |
| 0:52.5 | It's widely known that the fashion sector is a big polluter. |
| 0:55.7 | The World Bank reports that the industry is responsible for 10% of the world's annual carbon emissions. |
| 1:01.0 | And it's why governments in Europe are looking to make changes. |
| 1:04.5 | Fashion is a business of risk. |
| 1:07.0 | Basically, when you put out a collection, you take a risk in terms of colours, in terms of styles, |
| 1:13.6 | in terms of maybe new markets that brands are approaching. |
| 1:18.6 | So it is hard to limit overproduction. |
| 1:21.6 | The fashion industry makes more than what it needs. |
| 1:24.6 | In fact, according to the public interest research group, |
| 1:28.4 | 30% of all clothes made are never actually sold. |
| 1:32.0 | And it was actually easier to build in the margins to manage the waste of unsold inventory |
| 1:37.6 | than to actually deal with new systems that need to reduce this amount of unsold inventory. |
| 1:44.2 | The new legislation, among other things, |
| 1:46.0 | will ban retailers and fashion houses from destroying any of the stock they don't sell |
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