Retailers and brads have been ramping up repair and resale services in recent periods and it seems to be having an impact with a new report from environmental charity WRAP claiming that “repair is ‘displacing’ new clothing items”.
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In collaboration with repair and resale businesses and brands, its Displacement Rates Untangled report has found that “for every five times people repair items of clothing, four new items are displaced”.
Having worked closely with Depop, eBay, Finisterre and more, it calculated that the average displacement rate for repair is high at 82.2% and 64.6% for resale. Despite this, the UK was found to be the fourth-highest consumer of clothing after the US, China and India.
But it’s not just about repairing what we’ve got as resale is also a key part of the displacement process. Any secondhand purchases that are made instead of buying a new item are considered displacement.
The report calculates the environmental benefits of choosing to repair or buy secondhand and, for example, says that buying used jeans instead of new ones cutes carbon dioxide emissions by 30kg+ (CO2e). For a single cotton T-shirt, the saving is around 7.5 CO2e.
It has case studies to back this up with one covering Vestiare Collective, eBay, and Depop looking at peer-to-peer internet resale. Based on 7,000+ survey responses in the last four months of 2024 to validate the aforementioned 64.6% displacement rate.
Another case study using info from Sojo, the Seam, and Finisterre looked at 700+ survey responses to validate 82.2% repair displacement rate.
WRAP CEO Harriet Lamb said: “Our research shows that buying preloved both satisfies our desire for clothes, for something new-to-us, and means we don’t buy so many brand-new items. What’s more, we can now clearly and consistently measure the environmental case for a range of circular business models including repair – for the first time. I encourage companies to adopt this new technique – customers are looking to them for new services like repair and renting.”
So it’s calling on companies to adopt the new standardised way to measure resale and repair, suggesting that the same method used in the report could be applied to redistribution and rental, both in and outside of the UK.
