Fast Fashion – The Invisible Threat to Consumers, Business, and the Environment

Recent findings have highlighted the environmental cost of online shopping returns. Analysis by TMX Transform revealed a staggering statistic: more than 55 million pieces of new clothing purchased online in Australia every year end up in landfill. 

The convenience of the ‘remote fitting room’ – where consumers order multiple sizes of garments online and return the ill-fitting ones is backfiring in a colossal way. Up to two-thirds of these online returns end up in the landfill. Why? For many retailers, it's simply too expensive to repackage and reintegrate these returned items back into the supply chain.  

Considering Australians purchase on average 56 items of clothing each per year, amounting to around 1.1 billion in total and with about 350 million of these purchased online, the scale of this problem is substantial. To illustrate this further, out of the 31% of online clothing purchases, 25% are returned, and a whopping 65% of those returns are discarded.  

TMX Transform’s Director of Supply Chain, Jamie Dixon, said the most likely group of consumers to engage in fast fashion were younger Australians, who ironically were the generation most critical of environmental waste.  

“Landfill is being loaded with brand new pieces of clothing bought online today,” he said. “Up to 70% of online clothing returns are due to improper fit, known as the remote fitting room dilemma.”  

Compounding the issue, the carbon footprint associated with these online transactions—amplified by the significant return rate—is potentially vastly greater than if the same items had been acquired from a physical store. To put this into perspective, in 2022, Australians spent an astounding $13 billion on apparel.  

Fast fashion has now surpassed the challenges posed by the COVID-19 pandemic and the disruptions from the Russian-Ukraine conflict, becoming the primary concern for TMX's global retail clients. “25% of all emissions stem from the retail sector. We are intensifying the climate crisis merely for the sake of trying on clothes in the comfort of our homes,” Dixon added.  

But it's not all doom and gloom – solutions exist. If consumers had more trust in the sizing and fit of online products, they'd order fewer items, reducing both waste and emissions. For TMX’s retail clients, the focus is on refining 'reverse logistics': ensuring efficient processing of returned garments and using return data to prevent unnecessary overproduction.  

TMX emphasises the optimisation of delivery management, minimising multiple deliveries to the same customer from identical warehouses. Dixon concludes, “All of this must be done in a way that maintains or even enhances the customer experience. It is a tightrope, but one that all customers’ hip pockets, and the planet will benefit from the industry globally getting right.”