Curbing Fashion Waste and Overproduction: A Supply Chain Perspective

Overproduction is one of the most pressing issues in the fashion industry. It leads to not only a tremendous amount of unsold products that end up incinerated or landfilled, but also excessive pollution and depletion of resources along the supply chain. In this chapter, we posit that examining this issue warrants a holistic supply chain perspective that goes beyond downstream operations related to finished goods. Through an analysis of fashion brands’ production and fabric acquisition practices, we show that tracing the impact of fashion into the upstream can generate fundamental insights into the causes and cures of fashion waste and overproduction. In particular, our results indicate that widely-adopted waste reduction approaches such as quick response and upcycling may worsen fabric overproduction and in turn exacerbate the overall environmental footprint of the fashion supply chain. Textile recycling, in contrast, may effectively alleviate fabric overproduction, but suffers from immature technologies and infrastructure which limit its waste reduction capabilities.