Turning trash into treasure: an approach to the environmental assessment of waste prevention and its application to clothing and furniture in Switzerland

by Maja Wiprächtiger, Martina Rapp, Stefanie Hellweg, Rhythima Shinde, and Melanie Haupt

Summary of the journal article published on the Journal of Industrial Ecology in May 2022 (vol 26, 1389-1405, DOI: 10.1111/jiec.13275) (external page link to the article)

Waste prevention is assumed to be the environmentally most beneficial strategy for handling products at their end of use, hence the motto: reduce, reuse, recycle. In a study published in the Journal of Industrial Ecology (https://bit.ly/JIE-WP), Maja Wiprächtiger and colleagues from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH Zurich) developed an environmental assessment framework to evaluate waste prevention strategies. Using that framework, they assessed various waste prevention strategies for clothing and furniture in Switzerland.

There are several factors that can limit or offset the environmental benefits of waste prevention. Much of the potential environmental benefit arises from reduction of the production of new products. That is, sharing, repairing, or reusing products can reduce the demand for new products—and all the environmental impacts that the production causes. However, if products are shared, repaired, or reused and people still purchase new products, much of the environmental benefits may disappear. Also, if the money saved through prolonging the life span of products is used by consumers to purchase other goods, here too the environmental benefits can be reduced.

In the study, a model was developed which predicts how many garments and how much furniture is purchased and discarded in the future. This baseline scenario (business as usual, BAU) is then compared to various waste prevention scenarios. For clothing, options such as shared use via fashion libraries (SHARE), increased reuse in Switzerland (currently, many clothes are exported for reuse) (REUSE), repairing clothes (REPAIR), and using less clothing were analyzed (REDUCE and SUFFICIENCY). For furniture, scenarios included using furniture longer (REFUSE), returning furniture to retailers or manufacturers for overhaul and resale (REFURBISH), increased purchasing of secondhand furniture (REUSE), and recycling of wooden furniture parts (RECYCLING).

For clothes, the highest potential for reducing environmental impacts was seen for repair (see figure below). However, the potential of this scenario is limited as most clothes are thrown out because they are not wanted anymore and not because they are damaged. While export of used clothing for reuse showed modest environmental benefit, reusing clothes in Switzerland instead of abroad did not have an environmental benefit. An essential factor in these findings is the substitutability—whether the repair or reuse of clothing meant that new clothing will not be purchased. For repair, substitutability was determined to be 80%, meaning 8 out of 10 repaired clothing pieces replace a new piece. For reuse, the rate is only 1 out of 3 secondhand pieces replaces a new piece. In addition, spending the money that is saved on other goods and services—what is called the rebound effect—can almost offset all environmental benefits of reduced consumption.

For furniture, the return, refurbish, and resale scheme (see the figure below) showed the most considerable reduction potential, primarily due to the assumption that furniture could be overhauled and resold twice, thereby replacing two new furniture pieces. In addition, increased reuse of furniture proved environmentally beneficial compared to the baseline scenario.