The resale revolution is having a tangible impact on the volume of apparel waste lining landfills, according to ThredUp ’s recent impact report.
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“By making it easy to buy and sell secondhand, we’ve extended the life cycle of millions of garments—200 million to be exact,” according to CEO James Reinhart .
The sale of apparel and accessories throughout the re-commerce marketplace’s 15-year history has also helped slash 791.1 million pounds of Carbon Dioxide Equivalents (CO2e), 8.4 billion gallons of water and 1.6 billion kilowatt hours (kWh) of energy from the fashion supply chain as of December 2023, the reporting showed.
“ThredUp is on a sustainability journey to make fashion circular, but our impact extends beyond our core mission to our people and our communities as well as how we operate our business,” Reinhart added. “Our third annual Impact Report highlights our dedication to continuous improvement and how we’re expanding our positive impact as we continue to reshape the fashion landscape.”
Over the course of 2023, the group wrote that it recirculated 2.2 million secondhand items through its Resale-as-a-Service (RaaS) platform, closing the year with 47 brand clients ranging from J. Crew to Tommy Hilfiger, Kate Spade, Farfetch, Gap, Vera Bradley, Madewell, Reformation , Christy Dawn and Athleta.
RaaS, which has become a fast-growing and important vertical for the company, gives companies ownership of their resale channels. The turnkey service provides consumers with closet Clean Out Kits, allowing them to trade in pre-owned apparel from participating brands in exchange for store credit. Branded Online Resale integrates into a company’s existing e-commerce experience so shoppers can browse and buy used items alongside new ones.
According to ThredUp’s data, 680,000 Clean Out Kits were received through the RaaS program in 2023, up 42 percent from the year prior. A whopping 10 million items were listed for sale through RaaS, up 28 percent from 2022, and 2.2 million were reported to have been recirculated through the program between January and December of 2023.
ThredUp also said it diverted 100 percent of the items it didn’t sell last year to its Rescues Program and aftermarket programs. “Our goal is to extend the life cycle of clothing and keep garments in use and out of landfill by putting as many items as possible back into American closets,” the group wrote. “We are also focused on refining our approach to managing items we can’t resell in our core marketplace.”
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While 51 percent of items are sold on ThredUp’s core marketplace, 44 percent of items are sold through its aftermarket program. Of that product volume, domestic thrift stores account for 43 percent of the uptake, while international brokers account for 40 percent and 17 percent are sold to domestic graders or sorters.
“In 2023, we decreased our number of aftermarket partners to focus on gathering greater transparency and started contributing to a fiber-to-fiber recycling ecosystem, where product was shipped to Europe through Bank and Vogue, an international broker based in Canada,” ThredUp wrote. Sixty-percent of aftermarket products are sold to domestic service providers.
Meanwhile, 5 percent of all products listed on ThredUp end up in its Rescues Program, where shoppers can purchase heavily discounted bundles of secondhand stock—a means of saving items that don’t qualify for marketplace listing but “still have a lot of life left in them.” Throughout 2023, 1.1 million items were “rescued” from a landfill fate, contributing to the 5.5 million total items sold to date—an equivalent of 2.8 million pounds of apparel.
Like most businesses in the fashion sector, Scope 3 emissions make up 91 percent of ThredUp’s overall impact. The biggest contributing factors are purchased goods and services (30 percent), upstream transport (25 percent) and capital goods (21 percent). “We know that this is our biggest area of carbon impact and are eager to find more ways to make our Scope 3 activities more efficient in order to reduce our emissions,” the group wrote.
One area where ThredUp did see marked progress last year was in its owned operations. 2023 marked the first full year that its recently established distribution center in Lancaster, Tex. was operational, employing some of the firm’s most advanced technological advancements and building upon years of learnings about how to create a “best-in-class infrastructure for single-SKU apparel,” the group wrote. A multi-level garment storage system provides 25 percent higher storage density at the facility, while consuming 40 percent less energy.
The group also touted its movement into an advocacy role for the textile and apparel sector. ThredUp last year became a founding member of American Circular Textiles (ACT), a coalition led by the Circular Services Group and made up of brands, innovators, recyclers and marketplaces pushing for circular policy. The group published a white paper, The United States’ Opportunity for Circular Fashion, which spoke to opportunities to scale reuse and recycling.
ThredUp took part in a Congressional briefing on textile circularity with the Senate Recycling Caucus, while ACT as a whole provided public commentary for the Federal Trade Commission Green Guides, California State Bill 707, EPA Plastics Pollution, and Biden’s Sustainable Procurement Rule.
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