Buying and selling unwanted clothes on secondhand markets is widely hailed as a sustainable way to reduce the consumption of new clothes and alleviate the environmental damage caused by the fashion industry, one of the world's most carbon-intensive sectors.
But a recent study coauthored by Yale's Meital Peleg Mizrachi shows that people who frequently purchase clothes secondhand also tend to buy a lot of new clothing, negating resale's environmental benefits and enabling continued overconsumption.
The study, published in the journal Scientific Reports, is based on a nationally representative survey of 1,009 individuals from every U.S. state. The analysis revealed a positive correlation between spending in the secondhand and primary clothing markets, particularly among younger consumers and frequent shoppers, suggesting that secondhand purchasing supplements primary market consumption rather than replacing it.
"Our study provides strong evidence that secondhand clothing markets contribute to a self-reinforcing cycle of overconsumption," said Peleg Mizrachi, a postdoctoral fellow in Yale's Department of Economics who coauthored the study with Ori Sharon of Bar Ilan University in Israel. "The sustainable clothing community has placed a lot of faith in the secondhand markets as a sustainable solution to overconsumption. Unfortunately, our findings suggest that rather than solving the problem, secondary markets may inadvertently encourage unsustainable purchasing patterns."
