Eco-Friendly and Fair

13Product service systems

A viable business model for fashion brands?

Naomi Braithwaite and Annika Schlemann

1. Introduction

Fashion is one of the world’s most polluting industries (Greenpeace, 2016). In the UK, 350,000 tonnes of clothing are estimated to end up in landfill annually (WRAP, 2016). This is a global problem, evidenced further by the average American throwing away 80 pounds of used clothing every year, even though most of it is recyclable (LeBlanc, 2017). The materialistic values of contemporary society driven by the desire to have something new (Campbell, 1992), combined with the growth of fast fashion, where garments have become easily disposable (Birtwistle & Moore, 2007), creates the pressing need for a more sustainable approach ...