User:WikiEditor1121/Throw-away society

Overconsumption in the Fashion Industry
Since the early 2000s, clothing sales have doubled from 100 to 200 billion units per year showing the increase in demand for textiles. In correlation to this increase, an estimated 92 million tons of clothing related waste is discarded every year.

An increase in demand for textiles can be explained by many factors, but more recently there has been an increase in clothing consumption due to fashion influencers. In 2021, the global fashion influencer market was valued at 7.36 billion dollars and is expected to steadily grow at a CAGR of 32.5% from 2022 to 2029. Since their content is mainly centered around fashion, they are constantly cycling through and showing new garments to create updated "looks" for their followers. In a survey done by Marketing Dive, it states that 86% of the people surveyed have bought apparel or accessories because they saw it on an influencer that they followed. This correlation between influencer marketing and the increase in consumption has led to the newly fast-paced life cycle of clothing otherwise refered to as 'style obsolescence'. In this cycle people are constantly throwing-away clothing that is no longer "on trend" in order to make space for new and more popular styles. Through this cycle of staying on top of the trends, shoppers satisfy their want for instant gratification and begin to disregard the effects that throwing away clothing can have on our environment.

Over the past few years, throw-away culture has worsened as the average amount of time a person wears a garment is 7 to 10 times before discarding it. That amount of time has decreased by 36% in the last 15 years. Additinally, in the United States alone, the average consumer throws away an average of 81.5 pounds of clothing every year. That equates to an estimate of 11.3 million tons of garments being thrown away into U.S. landfills yearly.