You’ve had a spring clean and decluttered your wardrobe, and now you’re wondering what to do with the pile of unwanted clothes in the corner.
With the growth of online secondhand sales channels such as eBay and Vinted, the alternatives to putting old clothes in the bin have grown. But are these a green option?
Globally, most discarded clothing is landfilled or incinerated. But most unwanted clothing in Europe is suitable for reuse – many people get rid of clothing because it’s gone out of fashion or it doesn’t fit, not because it’s worn out.
Is reselling a sustainable choice?
So what about selling on your unwanted clothes on Vinted or eBay? Extending the useful life of clothing reduces its environmental impact, such as water and chemical usage, carbon emissions and textile waste, as well as the resource consumption and waste involved in producing new goods.
But don’t forget online selling requires shipping individual items to individual households, which entails carbon emissions from the delivery process. Companies use a mix of on-foot deliveries, e-bikes and a range of vehicles.
Some parcel operators are innovating to reduce emissions. For instance, Royal Mail has 7,000 electric vans and a fleet of e-bikes, while DPD has also invested heavily in electric vehicles. In 2025, Royal Mail claimed to have the lowest average CO₂ emissions per parcel in the UK market (165g).
It is also worth using cardboard or paper wrapping for your Vinted parcel, as plastic packaging isn’t easily recyclable. Even if it can be reused a few times, it ends up being incinerated, landfilled or littering. Incineration generates carbon emissions while landfill and littering lead to microplastic pollution.
Secondhand sales represent a small share of the overall global clothing market (10% in 2025), but this is predicted to grow twice as fast as the broader clothes market up to 2030.
Increasing secondhand shopping could reduce the need to produce new garments, counteracting the environmental impacts of production and end-of-life textile waste. But reselling or donating unwanted clothing doesn’t address the root cause of fashion’s environmental impact, which is overproduction and overconsumption.
Indeed, some evidence from the US suggests that using secondhand sales platforms may inadvertently drive, rather than mitigate, increased consumption and shorter garment retention, especially in younger consumers.
How does it compare to charity donations?
Donating to a charity shop could be an environmental bonus, as you probably won’t need to use packaging to get your item there. Lower levels of transport are also likely to be needed (possibly you will walk to your local shop).
However, some charities struggle to sell high volumes of fast fashion and low-resale-value textiles. The remainder are passed on to textile recyclers, who may send items for sale into global second-hand markets or recycling.
So what about just putting your unwanted gear in a recycling bank? The UK textile sorting sector manages approximately 469,000 tonnes of textile waste annually, with the majority (421,000 tonnes) exported for reuse or recycling, while 34,000 tonnes is kept in the UK for recycling. On top of that, around 727,000 tonnes of used textiles are incinerated or put in landfill.
This scale of reuse is still more efficient than individual online sales, as items are packed into bales weighing between 55kg and 200kg, which may contain up to 600 garments. These are shipped in containers to international markets.
But the mounting avalanche of unwanted clothing exceeds the capacity of the many originating countries to sort and process. This means collected items are frequently exported for sorting, processing, and resale – sometimes taking long and circuitous routes, only to be resold in the country they were originally collected from.
There’s a lot to think about, but there are steps you can take even before you make the initial purchase to make your clothes shopping more sustainable.
It’s worth considering that most modern clothing is made from material blends such as polyester/cotton or cotton/elastane, which are difficult to recycle. Recent research confirms the increase in blended fabrics is likely to increase the costs and complexity of recycling. Therefore, it’s unlikely that your unwanted clothes made from those fabrics will be recycled into new clothing.
Additionally, the proportion of these textiles (predominantly fast fashion) going into UK household residual waste is increasing. They produce high levels of greenhouse gases during incineration.
Here are some easy steps you can take to be a more sustainable clothes shopper.
Five ways to go greener
1) Items for resale should be in good, clean condition – a good test is whether you would be happy to buy it yourself.
2) If donating to charity, try to share items between different charities if possible.
3) Keep it local – organise a clothes swap or pass items on to neighbours, friends, family or local community groups.
4) Keep clothes in a good state of repair to support longer product lifetimes. If you cannot do the repair yourself, ask a friend or family member, or use a repair cafe.
5) Reuse packaging to reduce plastic. Include clear photos, measurements and descriptions with your advert to ensure the buyer can make an informed decision about whether or not to purchase, and avoid returns.
