A new report from WRAP shows a positive trend towards circular business models for clothes. The insights are outlined in the report Displacement Rates Untangled.

Clothing has a significant impact on the environment from growing raw materials such as cotton to textile waste, pollution, water and land use. In fact, 70 per cent of the industry’s GHG emissions are in upstream activities linked to raw materials and production of new clothing. As an industry, the UN Environment Programme estimates that clothing is the second-biggest consumer of water and produces around 10 per cent of global carbon emissions – more than all international flights and maritime shipping combined.

A huge factor is rising production and overconsumption as between 2000 and 2015 worldwide clothing production doubled, and the UK, which in 2024 was the fourth highest consumer of clothing of any nation, after the US, China and India, therefore has a considerable impact.

Working with leaders in the preloved and repair marketplace Depop, eBay, Vestiaire Collective, The Seam, SOJO and brand Finisterre, WRAP calculated the extent to which the rise of repair and resale can displace new sales, and how much they help offset the environmental cost of clothing.

WRAP found that for every five times people repair existing items of clothing, four new items of clothing are ‘displaced’ by people no longer buying them. And for every five items bought second-hand online, three new items are subsequently not bought on average, as a result. Respectively, the average displacement rate for repair is high at 82.2 per cent and 64.6 per cent for resale.

WRAP is now calling on companies to adopt its new standardised way to measure resale and repair, based on this nationwide research. While the focus of Displacement Rates Untangled is repair and resale circular business models, the methodology could be applied to other models including redistribution and rental and applied outside the UK.

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