Fast fashion trend in Singapore
According to a survey by Channel NewsAsia (Chia, 2016), every 1000 Singaporeans purchase an average of 34 pieces of new clothing and discard 27 pieces of previously-owned clothing each year.
Fast Fashion trends in Singapore have increased the convenience for consumers to purchase and wear clothes. However, such Fast Fashion clothing tend to be devalued for its quick wear-and-tear and low adaptability to new fashion trends, thereby increasing the rates of disposal (Morgan & Birtwistle, 2009). The average consumer is now purchasing 60 percent more items of clothing compared to 2000, but each garment is kept half as long.
#mass materialism and consumerism
Singaporeans’ low environmental commitment
Throwaway nation
The dumpster at condominiums are common wardrobes for clothes and shoes that are stowed away hardly worn. Cherryann-Lynn Santos, 36, is a domestic helped who started working for a family in Singapore nine years ago. “We find clothes and shoes that are still brand-new because they still have price tags,” the Filipino maid says.
Fast consumption is not only a problem around clothes, but also other things like toys, bags, household appliances and furniture which are made of lots of textiles as well. In 2015, Singapore generated 7.67 million tonnes of waste – enough to fill 3,000 Olympic-sized swimming pools. This figure is just a little under the record 7.85 million tonnes discarded in 2013. Today, something does not have to be broken for it to be deemed unusable. Old couches, for example, are more often replaced than reupholstered. When something is genuinely damaged or broken, our first instinct is to replace it. Cast-off clothes tend to form the bulk of the unwanted. The Salvation Army, for instance, receives an average of about 10 tonnes of donated items a day, three in five of which are clothing.
According to the NEA, the increase in total waste produced is “in tandem” with the growing population and its affluence. Victor Chang, deputy director of the Residues and Resource Reclamation Centre at the Nanyang Technological University, says that in general, the richer countries or cities will “generate more municipal waste per capita”. Singapore is not the only country with a low recycling rate for textiles but experts say Singaporeans have some of the highest disposable incomes in South-east Asia and this greater spending power naturally fuels the consumption rate of goods, leading to consumers buying more than they need.
What is the use of a house if you haven’t got a tolerable planet to put it on? (Henry David Thoreau, 1982)
The number of things chucked out increases dramatically during festive seasons as people spruce up their homes to welcome the festivals. It is a demonstration of the ritual of throwing out what does not work or is no longer needed. The amount of “donated” stuff left at The Salvation Army goes up three times during peak periods like the month leading up to Christmas or Chinese New Year.
Recycling old clothes is more common now
Swedish fast-fashion chain H&M collected 64 tonnes of unwanted garments in 2016 – about three- fifths the weight of a blue whale. This is almost triple the amount collected in 2015 (22.71 tonnes) and more than five times that collected in 2014 (12.09 tonnes). This year, in 2017, H&M Singapore hopes to bag a record 88 tonnes, adding to the more than 40,000 tonnes of unwanted clothing it has amassed globally so far.
It seems that more people are donating their used clothes and more retailers are accepting them. But recycling is more than just about reducing the amount of clothes headed for the dumpster.