How Thrifting Is Good for the Planet ?

There’s something wonderful about heading to a thrift store and finding a unique piece of clothing that fits your style perfectly. The “one man’s trash is another man’s treasure” saying is quite truthful.

Now more than ever, people are donating clothing, home goods, electronics, and other objects that are in terrific condition.

Whether they’re clearing out clutter or making room for more stuff, this propensity to buy and buy has made thrifting an even more rewarding habit for your wallet.

But apart from the personal advantages of shopping secondhand, thrifting is a great benefit for the environment. Put the “reduce, reuse, recycle” slogan into even better practice—donate more and thrift often! Learn more about how thrifting is good for the planet below.

Keeps Clothes Out of Landfills

Think back to that reduce, reuse, recycle slogan they have all been taught since elementary school. When they were first taught this, it typically had to deal with plastics and paper. Many people don’t realize that recycling incorporates more than the typical plastics and includes textile recycling as well.

Just because you’re not putting your clothes in the blue bin and leaving them at the edge of the road doesn’t mean thrifting is not an important form of recycling. One of thrifting’s biggest advantages for the planet is that it keeps clothes out of landfills.

Contributes to Charities

Shopping secondhand also plays a role in boosting community development. Your money is typically used to help local charities and businesses, rather than multinational corporations that take advantage of the planet. Better yet, these charities that the stores benefit will often help out community members in need or strive to help the planet.

Think about it this way—when you shop secondhand, you’re supporting a business that strives to help others. When they are helping others, they are helping the environment in some way as well.

This contribution to charities can take the form of assisting those in need in the community and can help an organization that’s planting more trees or supporting third-world countries and their water sources.

Lowers Your Carbon Footprint

Another significant way thrifting is good for the planet is that it lowers your carbon footprint. This is another one of those phrases they were taught young—carbon footprint. They often think that the only way they can do this is by biking to work instead of driving or by reducing shower time.

Though these are wonderful ways, thrifting is one of those steps to reducing carbon footprint that doesn’t take much effort. All it asks is that you head to a thrift stores in Panama City Beach, FL rather than engage in online or fast-fashion shopping!

The fashion industry is moving faster than ever, creating millions of clothing items every day to fill up the stores every week. When you buy secondhand, you’re preventing that massive waste of energy and resources on the production of new clothes.

Helps Preserve Water

In a similar sense, thrifting helps preserve water. Like they have mentioned, clothing production is a process that takes up a lot of time and energy; it also uses a lot of water—water that they need dearly and are slowly running low on.

Water consumption is extremely high in every single stage of clothing production. Take a cotton T-shirt, for example. When made unsustainably, even simply growing one kilogram of cotton requires at least 10,000 liters of water. That’s just the beginning of the production process.

There’s wet processing and printing, packaging and transportation processes—all these steps add to the overall water consumption. When you shop secondhand, you’re playing a part in preserving water. green, and shutting off the faucet while you brush your teeth.

Reduces Chemical Pollution

Another great way that thrifting helps the planet is that it reduces the chemical pollution induced by creating and buying new clothes. Let’s think back to cotton—the production of cotton not only uses tons of water, but it’s also highly pesticide intensive.

This means that when cotton is produced and manufactured, it causes soil acidification and water contamination. And this is from material that many people consider sustainable. In general, textile-manufacturing processes involve the use of harmful dyes and crude oil by-products.

The process of creating and shipping new clothes contaminates surface and groundwater, pollutes the air, and so much more. Shopping secondhand begins to eliminate the constant chemical pollution that results from clothing production.