New but not new?
Where do you draw the line with preloved clothes? For me it’s at sportswear. I can’t really argue for the logic of it. After all, wearing a spa robe that someone else has lain about in is considered the height of luxury. But I just can’t get excited about wearing training tights that someone else might have sweated in!
Luckily, there are some options on the spectrum between second hand and brand new. You can often find second hand clothes that are still new with tags or in their original packaging. Sometimes people just never got around to wearing that thing they thought they would love. And sometimes (unbelievably) returns from online shopping end up in second hand channels. This often happens because it is too expensive for the original retailers to open the returned packets and check the condition of the clothing in order to resell it. Or sometimes an online retailer’s supply chain does not function well enough to get the returned items to new customers in a cost effective way. So it becomes waste.
It’s terrible from an environmental perspective that things are produced, stored, shipped and returned only to end up as waste. Even more so when you consider that sometimes that “waste” is slashed and sent to landfill or even burned rather than resold so that the brands can keep charging premium prices for their products. This is something that ought to be legislated against. But, until that happens, we can rejoice in the fact that some retailers send their ecommerce returns to second hand retailers instead of destroying them. And we can actively seek out these “new but not new” clothes. If you draw the line at wearing preloved underwear or tights or sportswear, look out for shops or websites that sell returns.
I got the Björn Borg leggings in the photo from second hand website Sellpy, which lets you search and filter for new items among their stock. Returhuset is another company that resells online shopping returns. Maybe you know some others? Share in the comments if you do. I’d love to hear about them.
