Every year, the fashion industry produces around 100 billion garments globally, with a staggering 92 million tons of clothing waste ending up in landfills. In the face of such waste, many believe the only sustainable path forward is to embrace degrowth in fashion - a planned reduction in production and consumption that promotes fair, equitable living.
Degrowth challenges the industry’s reliance on maximization, commodification, and efficiency. Instead, it focuses on sufficiency, cooperation, and care—values that are difficult for an industry driven by mass production and fast fashion. While governments and corporations encourage responsible shopping, real change demands collective responsibility and a shift in how designers, brands, and manufacturers approach waste. Circular practices like upcycling help build a more just and equitable fashion system.
Upcycling offers a bold, creative rethink of waste. Unlike recycling - which breaks down textiles into raw materials and reuses only about 1 per cent of clothing - upcycling transforms discarded or waste garments into higher-value pieces. Recent studies on upcycling in Turkey, a major textile producer, show how this practice can align with degrowth principles. Designers, brands, and NGOs there creatively repurpose materials - like turning food waste into natural dyes or sailcloth into handbags—adding value through skill sharing, community care, and craftsmanship.
Upcycling shifts the view of clothing from disposable to valuable, building connections between people, materials, and ecosystems. Local designers are preserving cultural heritage by partnering with rural women to weave discarded fabrics into garments. Brands are collaborating with cafés to collect food waste for dyes. During the COVID-19 crisis, solidarity networks turned textile scraps into upcycled uniforms for healthcare workers.
These efforts go beyond profit - they build alternative systems rooted in care, shared knowledge, and sustainability. However, upcycling remains niche, with challenges like limited access to waste resources, lack of public funding, and gaps in circular literacy. Still, when tied to local communities and narratives of care, upcycling holds real potential to support a degrowth transition and help fashion rethink its relationship with waste.
