Have you ever tried thrifting? Do you ever walk into the thrift store hoping to find some authentic designer pieces? It is a thrifter’s dream to find a designer piece at a thrift shop, especially since high-end brands are often so pricey that they are impossible for the average person to own.
Top companies in the fashion industry have a strategy to prevent their products from being worn by the “wrong shoppers.” These luxury brands burn billions of dollars’ worth of clothes instead of letting their products go down the chain of discounted prices and second-hand stores. This strategy is supposed to keep the price of the brand’s products high since the only way to buy the item is from that specific store. Instead is negatively impacting the environment by causing air pollution and wastefulness.
By burning so many clothes, companies like Burberry and Louis Vuitton are polluting the earth. The British company Burberry burned over 116 million dollars’ worth of clothes in just the past five years. Jewelry and watch brands such as Cartier, Piaget, Baume and Mercier destroyed over 563 million dollars’ worth of watches in 2018. Other non-luxury brands that burn clothes are Urban Outfitters, Victoria Secret, Eddie Bauer and J.C. Penny.
These are just some of the many statistics that have come up in the past few years about these fashion brands destroying their products. This is something that has been kept secret from shoppers by these powerful brands for many years. Now that the secret is out, environmentalists are enraged.
The fashion industry is already named “the world’s worst polluter” and these luxury brands burning clothes only makes their case worse. Not only are they not sending the right message to the public that only certain people should wear their clothes or own their products, they are also wasting millions of dollars to keep their status instead of donating or selling clothes at a discounted rate.
Since the secret has come out, Burberry has already announced that they will stop burning their unsold products. This proves that just by so many people standing up for the environment, it can make a difference. Every little bit counts to help stop this problem including boycotting companies that use this strategy of burning clothes.
