64% of Clothes People Let Go of Are Discarded | Where Japan’s Clothing Goes

Where do clothes go when we no longer wear them? The material flow for clothing presented by Japan’s Ministry of the Environment shows the breakdown.

The amount coming in and the amount going out

According to 2022 data, the volume of new domestic clothing supply was 798,000 tons. By contrast, the amount released after use from businesses and households was 731,000 tons. This is about 90% of the supplied volume.

Breakdown after being released

• Disposal --470,000 tons (64.3%)
• Reuse --133,000 tons (18.1%)
• Recycling --127,000 tons (17.4%)

About two-thirds are disposed of without being used again or returned to material form. The amount disposed of through incineration, landfill, and other methods without being reused or recycled is estimated at about 460,000 tons per year.

How to read the numbers

Even reuse and recycling together account for 35.5%. Still, it may be too soon to react with joy or disappointment based only on the combined figure for these 2 categories. What works best is reducing the 731,000 tons being discarded in the first place--in other words, wearing each garment longer. Structurally, narrowing the entry point is stronger than improving the breakdown of processing.

It may look like a question of how to throw things away, but it is also a question of how we buy and how we wear. The figure of 64.3% begins before the closet.

On the global resale market this article.

Reference: Ministry of the Environment, “Sustainable Fashion”

—The Value Village Editorial Team