Reducing the Environmental Impact of Clothing: An Exploration of the Potential of Alternative Business Models

Abstract

Business models providing used clothing to consumers have the potential to increase the use of each garment and thereby reduce pressure on raw materials and primary production. This research used in-depth interviews complemented by a literature review to improve the understanding of the business models and the ways in which they can impact the environment. In total, the interviews were carried out with seven business owners and six experts in clothing sustainability, product lifespan extension, and circular business models. Examples of business models of interest include businesses selling secondhand clothes and businesses renting clothes to customers. A typology of business models is used to understand how each model impacts the environment and to highlight the factors that contribute most to the impacts that need to be managed. Business models vary in how they impact the environment, through differences in the way they manage transport, storage, and cleaning. Business models also vary in how successfully they reduce the environmental impacts from the production of new garments by increasing the number of times different wearers wear a garment and reducing the need to buy new garments. This effect is referred to as displacement, and the displacement rate provides an indication of the efficiency of reuse models in reducing total volumes of throughput. Indeed, some new business models may not have reduced throughput as a goal at all, and appraisal of this is crucial to understanding the environmental impacts of the various models.

1. Introduction

Garment manufacture and use result in heavy environmental and social impacts [1,2,3], with apparel and footwear having been estimated to account for between 5% and 10% of global greenhouse gas emissions [4,5]. High throughput, driven by low prices and business models favouring the rapid turnover of new styles, has called into question the sustainability of the industry [6]. Clothing is acquired, worn, and discarded in larger volumes than ever before [7]. The rate of extraction of the raw materials and the burdens imposed on the natural world, as well as the impacts caused by the subsequent stages in the product life cycle, are unsustainable [8,9]. In contrast to the expected continued growth in volumes of throughput, “sustainable consumption will require consumers to buy less, use products longer and produce less waste” [10]. Hence, new business models are needed that innovate, providing new ways for their customers to access their wardrobes. Improving the potential of the industry to become sustainable means reducing the volumes of consumption. There are numerous ways that offer the potential to reduce the high levels of throughput. Some alternative business models providing secondhand garments and offering hire and repair services have been available for a long time, but the internet, coupled with the enthusiasm for sharing facilitated by social media, means that new variations of established business models regularly appear.

For both the new and more established alternative business models to be more sustainable than the traditional ‘make, use, dispose’ linear model, they must reduce the environmental impacts of clothing overall, while also avoiding negative impacts on the health and wellbeing of the workers along the supply chain. Analysis of the environmental impacts of the full life cycle of textiles shows that there are many hotspots, and a range of policy measures and changes to business practices is called for [4,5,11,12]. There is therefore scope for a variety of alternative business models to contribute by changing the mode of consumption.

Among the options available to the clothing industry to make the transition to lower environmental impacts, most of the practical examples that have so far been implemented at scale focus on reducing the production impacts. Initiatives to improve production practices and the materials and methods used can help to reduce the risk of harm to the environment and to human health [5]. However, the reality of the rapidly increasing global textiles consumption is that production can easily move elsewhere to meet demand, shifting the burdens to somewhere with less regulation and lower environmental standards. Incremental improvements to one production process or one material input are unable to keep pace with the rapid rise of consumption volumes [7,13].

An alternative approach to reducing the environmental impacts of production is to reduce the overall throughput of products. Research has shown that by reusing garments, and keeping them in use for longer, the total reduction in environmental impact is likely to be greater than if we rely on improved fibres and production techniques [12,14]. The environmental gains of reuse models rely to a great extent on the reuse purchase displacing the purchases of new garments, at least some of the time [15]. It can be defined as “the quantity of secondhand purchases that have replaced what would otherwise have been a purchase of a new item” [15]. For reuse to result in reduced environmental impact, when a garment is acquired secondhand and its use is increased, the purchase of a brand new garment, with the environmental impacts which would have occurred due to its production, needs to be prevented. If displacement is not included in an assessment of the environmental impacts of clothing and reuse, then the potential reduction in environmental impacts due to reuse must either be assumed to be zero, or the displacement must be assumed to occur all the time so that a used garment always displaces production of a new one (see, for example [16,17]). Neither of these assumptions is likely to be realistic.

Business models offering alternative ways to keep items of clothing in use for longer use innovation in retail, including collaborative modes of consumption that bring buyers and sellers closer to one another [18]. A great variety of new business models are available and some of these are likely to be better than others at reducing harmful impacts [19]. There has been a wealth of research published in recent years about sustainable fashion consumption and this growing body of literature has tackled the issues and the potential of the different approaches to improving the sustainability of clothing from both the consumer and the business perspectives [20,21,22]. Some research has looked in-depth at the different new business models [23,24], including research that has sought to provide a systemic view and that has even suggested policies to encourage the uptake of the new business models [2,8,11,12,25]. Recent papers have also provided classification of the business models and thrown light on how consumers and businesses interact [26,27].

There has, however, been little research about the way that customers’ choices impact the environment when they adopt new business models [19,28]. This is important as research shows a significant contribution of the use phase to the overall life cycle impacts of clothing, and reuse business models cause changes in the use phase which, hence, need to be understood [3,12]. Hence, it is important to be able to reflect on the impacts due to washing and wearing and also the opportunity to better care for garments and extend the use phase [29,30]. If customer journeys are included, the environmental impacts of these can also be significant, to the extent that they may outweigh improvements due to reuse [14,19]. As such, the configuration of the reuse business model, such as who is responsible for shipping and cleaning the products, can add to or reduce its environmental impacts. Research is essential as it supports decision making by providing new information about how business models operate and how people interact with them.

The aim of this paper is to explore how various business models are put into practice and the ways in which this can impact the environment; in so doing, it begins to address a number of gaps in knowledge about the different ways that new business models are able to be implemented and their expected environmental impacts. A range of business models were identified and defined for this research through a literature review and then further explored using in-depth interviews. The business models considered are all intended to reduce the environmental impacts of wardrobes.

The paper first describes the methodology used to gather data in Section 2. The findings from the literature review are further developed in Section 3, in which a typology of business models is developed and their role in the global economy is considered. Section 3 goes on to present results from a series of in-depth interviews with sustainable fashion experts and business owners, from whom information was sought about how the business models work. The discussion of the findings in Section 4 highlights ways in which business models that impact the environment are managed and how these are further impacted by the ways in which consumers access and make use of those business models. The conclusion in Section 5 reflects on the industry’s challenges if the linear fast fashion model is going to change sufficiently for the clothing industry to become more sustainable.

2. Materials and Methods

A rapid evidence assessment approach was used to search for, review, and analyse the existing literature about the clothing and business models that could improve the sustainability of clothing throughout its life cycle, focusing on reducing the environmental impact of clothing by keeping it in use for longer. This method of searching for and reviewing literature uses a systematic approach, reducing the likelihood that the review would unknowingly leave gaps [31]. The literature was used to identify the types of business model to include in the research and to provide definitions. Descriptive information was used to understand how each business model operates and how it might reduce the environmental impact of clothing compared to the conventional mode of production and acquisition. A framework for understanding the business models from different perspectives was used to group them into meaningful categories by type. Further information is available in Appendix A.

In-depth interviews with experts and business owners were conducted. The interviews were each around an hour long and were conducted online between December 2020 and May 2021. They were used to gather insights into how the different types of business model work in practice. Experts were chosen from academia and the garment industry. They were identified from the literature and websites and by following up recommendations and were selected to offer knowledge of the range of business models and to gather data from different perspectives. The experts were asked to share insights about the business models and which of them were more likely to succeed in the market. Business owners were asked about how their own businesses were organised. A topic guide was prepared ahead of the interviews to provide a guide that prompted cross-sectional questions addressing various issues related to the impacts of the business models. The topic guides are provided in Appendix B and Appendix C. Contextual questions also helped to explore how the business models fit into the market and what data were likely to be available. Snowball sampling was used, following up recommendations based on the literature review and the interviews already carried out [32]. In total, interviews were carried out with seven business owners and six experts in clothing sustainability, lifespan extension, and circular models (thirteen interviews in total).

Qualitative analysis of the interview transcripts was carried out using an initial set of codes that was derived from the literature. The codes covered the position in the market of the types of models discussed and defined and added to the list of alternative business models and identified information about factors that would impact the environment. New codes were also recognised during the analysis, using a thematic exploration of the transcribed text.

The findings from the research were examined to identify how each of the enterprise models operates and in what ways it is designed to reduce environmental impact compared to the ‘conventional’ linear model of clothing retail; also considered were activities that risk increasing impact. The analysis sought themes about the way businesses are organised and about customer preferences in relation to the types of business. Thematic analysis was then used to inform discussion about potential opportunities for new business models to organise in order to minimise risk to the environment.

3. Results

The findings from the literature were used to define the different types of business model. The framework which started to emerge captured information about how each type of business model operates and how new types of business model differ from the more conventional styles of clothing retail.

3.1. Typology of Business Models

With a variety of models offering to replace goods with services to varying extents, a typology of business models was developed from the literature, defining key concepts and relating the different types of business model to these concepts. Particular attention was given to the ways in which the businesses are managed, to the activities kept within the sphere of control of the business, and to how these were carried out. Information was further gathered about the practices associated with the consumers’ experiences, including how this might vary from one business model design to another.

The relationships created between the business, the customer, and the product are determined by the type of business model used. Frameworks that define types of business model describe modes of consumption and differentiate according to the economic relationships between the producers and the consumers and the value created by the interaction. Laukkanen and Tura [27] describe the potential of sharing economy business models to create sustainable value, based on foundations of access-based, community-based, or platform-based consumption or combinations of each [27,33]. The scope for this paper is more extensive than that of Laukkanen and Tura [27] as it is concerned not only with product sharing but also with product life extension by the original consumer, as this also has the potential to displace the purchases of new products by increasing the wearing of garments [26]. The classification of business models, therefore, is broader than either the concepts of the sharing economy or product life extension in order to reflect the array of choices available to consumers thinking about ways to reduce the environmental impacts of the clothing in their wardrobes.

The concept of product-service systems (PSSs) consists of “a mix of tangible products and intangible services designed and combined so that they jointly are capable of fulfilling final customer needs” ([34], p.1552). PSSs increase the use of products by replacing them with services, such as by using rental or repair services to provide for clothing needs. Collaborative consumption (CC) changes how people relate to each other through products by providing ways for consumers to get more out of their clothes by sharing with others, usually for a fee [18]. CC fits closely with the concept of a sharing economy but emphasizes the role of the consumer, intentionally keeping their garments in use for longer by, for example, lending, swapping, and repairing them [20]. From the business perspective, these different types of business model fit with the broad concept of a circular economy (CE), which keeps resources in use for as long as possible, extracting the maximum value from them and recovering and regenerating products and materials to bring them back into service again after the end of life [35]. The concept of a CE is contested as it appears to achieve the impossible, keeping material in use for infinity, but it may provide a helpful framework for encouraging businesses to engage with reuse models and the sharing economy. While reuse is included within the concept of the CE, so too is recycling, which is out of the scope for this paper. By increasing product use over time, the strategies of PSSs, CC, and CE offer the potential to reduce the environmental impacts of goods and services to a greater extent than is likely from the smaller, incremental changes due to improved production efficiency [2,36].

Focusing on how each category of business model might be operationalised,

Table 1. Types of business model, how they operate and examples.

Alternative Business Model	Mode of Operation	Business Model Type	Examples	Literature
Design for extended garment lifespan	Clothing items are designed and made to last in use for longer, using improved physical durability and emotional durability.	Slow fashion	Garment design and testing protocols are used by retailers to sell items that stand up to wear and tear; and classic styles that the wearer will want to keep wearing.	[37,38,39]
Digital style consultancies and applications	Raw material demand and production impacts are reduced by increasing use over time of the same garment, by the same person through advice and help on styling, garment care and, reaching repair services.	Slow fashion	Digital applications and platforms such as ‘Save Your Wardrobe’ help the wearer to track their wardrobes or to choose garments that they are more likely to wear and keep for longer.	[40]
Repair cafes	Businesses and social enterprises provide space, either online or physical, for clothes mending and making activities.	Reuse and repair	Repair cafes provide community spaces to encourage repair through events, with a focus on skill sharing and keeping clothes from going to waste.	[41,42]
Sharing platforms	Online platforms provided for consumers to swap and share clothes. These provide a way for people to exchange clothes, creating new opportunities for clothing to be worn again, as well as for social interaction.	Reuse and repair	Online platform for clothes swapping for credits or directly swapping one item for another. May also store clothes between wearers and provide merchandising, e.g., Swap Society in the US.	[43]
Repair services	Repair services help keep garments in use for longer. Often included within other models, e.g., resale and rental businesses will repair the garments they provide if needed but may also operate as a standalone business model.	Product Service Systems	Traditional repair services replace broken zips, mend seams, etc., often included in an alteration and/or dry-cleaning business.	[42]
Redesign	Used garments and textile products are redesigned, upcycled and sold again, often transformed to a new type of product but reusing or repurposing the materials.	Product Service Systems	Examples often use materials from outside clothing/home textiles to ensure supply of material with a consistent look and feel. Manshoven et al. provide the example of hotel towels being redesigned to give a consistent source of soft material to produce baby clothes.	[9,44]
Online resale businesses	Resale of secondhand clothing online so that it can be worn again, as it is. Items are received or bought by the business and sold again with minimum refurbishment.	Reuse and repair	Resale online makes it possible to sell secondhand items covering specialist markets, styles, and specialist sizing, with the digital presence achieving a wide reach. Examples include Rerun Clothing in the UK.	[45,46]
Online resale platforms	Platforms for resale provide a model for people to sell their own garments on.	Product Service Systems	Well-known models such as eBay have seen competition from newer businesses such as Vinted which have shown strong growth in recent years.	[20]
Take-back	Retailers use existing provision such as charity donation and resale to handle collected, used garments. Take-back models often export a large proportion of items received.	Product Service Systems	Marks and Spencer’s ‘Shwopping’ uses existing retail infrastructure to collect clothing in stores that can then be sold on by the charity Oxfam.	[47]
In-store resale	Vintage stores, market stalls and secondhand boutiques buy used garments and sell them to new consumers so that they gain a ‘second life’.	Reuse and repair	There are very many vintage stores, market stalls selling secondhand clothes, and secondhand boutiques. Most are small businesses.	[42]
Charity resale	Charity retailers receive donations and sell on to consumers, largely via high street shops (although some also have an online presence).	Circular Economy	Charity retailers are numerous in the UK and elsewhere, e.g., Oxfam, Humana.	[47]
Rental	Rental increases the number of times an item is used by providing it to more than one customer during its lifespan. Rental shortens each customers’ period of use to a specified time (typically between a few days up to a month). Items are circulated repeatedly until deemed no longer suitable (out of fashion/beyond repair).	Product Service Systems	With a rental model, for example Hire Street, one garment can be worn many times by different, people and typically, the business retains ownership.	[19,48]
Subscription rental	With subscription packages, customers rent garments and periodically change the garments in the package they are renting. Several items are rented at once for a month to three months and returned at the end of that period so they can go out to another customer.	Product Service Systems	The Devout provides an example of a subscription rental business. Others include Upchoose for baby clothes in the US and the Little Loop for kids clothes in the UK, indicating that this model works for items with enduring appeal and also for people whose needs are changing over time.	[20]
Leasing	Leasing is similar to rental models in that the business provides garments to more than one owner during its lifespan, although usually the lease period is longer than with a rental model. Design for durability and repair is an enabler for leasing-type models.	Product Service Systems	Mud Jeans provide an example of a clothing leasing model.	[20]
Clothing libraries	Similar to rental models, clothing libraries work by providing physical premises and organized/facilitated clothes sharing; much like a municipal library for books, but for clothing.	Collaborative Consumption	Examples include LENA, a clothing library in the Netherlands. Clothing libraries operate in a way that is similar to rental and leasing, but likely to be not-for-profit.	[24,43]
Swapping events	Clothes swapping events show the sharing economy in action and allow people to renew their wardrobes without increasing the number of items in them. They usually take place in person, in or near to city centres. People attending events pay a fee for entry and are often asked to bring clothes with them to donate to the event. They can then choose clothes to take home.	Collaborative Consumption	Swap shops and swap events are often community-organised and may be one-offs or organised as fundraisers for other types of organisation. Henninger et al. (2019) provide examples in the UK, Germany, and Finland.	[49]

provides a list of sixteen business model types derived from the literature. The list is not exhaustive as variations on each theme are possible. What this level of detail does provide for is a description of how each type of business operates. For example, repair offered collaboratively via repair cafes is distinguished from repair offered by a commercial enterprise. In-store resale by charities is distinguished from resale between consumers online and charity resale. The key characteristics of each are drawn out further and explored in Section 3.2 and Section 3.3, adding the user’s perspective to the findings from the interviews.

This paper focuses on business models, but informal exchanges can also prolong the life of garments and increase the number of times they are worn. Informal exchange between family and friends plays an important role in this respect and saves money through avoided purchases [50]. These kinds of exchange can also be facilitated by business models which provide just the venue (e.g., at swapping events), charging a fee for entry, or just the platform (e.g., online resale platforms). Such businesses do not need to handle the garments themselves, but they allow users to sell to each other and also to give away items if they wish.

3.2. Management and User Perspectives

Using the literature, the business models were grouped according to management perspectives and user perspectives, with reference to [51], which explored sufficiency measures to reduce the impacts of consumption. Both perspectives were important to the adoption of business models as well as to how they were put into practice [51].

Figure 1 uses a network diagram to position business models according to both the user and the management perspectives, in an adapted version of the conceptualisation of business models developed by Freudenreich and Schaltegger [51]. For the user, design for longevity will help keep a garment in use for longer (extended lifespan), and from a management perspective, the mode of production fits with slow fashion, referred to as ‘decelerating’ in [43], page 6. Swap events are an example of collaborative consumption for users and are managed as a reuse and repair model.

Efficiency measures reduce emissions through cleaner and more efficient delivery of goods and services, whereas sufficiency measures reduce emissions via changes in how much people consume [52]. Rapidly increasing rates of the consumption of goods have increased emissions faster than efficiency measures can reduce them, making clear the need to reduce overall consumption [13]. Business models that fulfil a sufficiency of products rather than appealing to excess are more likely to succeed in producing real emissions reductions. Removing material excess and replacing it with a slower rate of consumption, and with services, supports a ‘slow fashion’ mindset that is aligned with achieving a real reduction in environmental impacts [53]. Slow fashion does not offer a revolution but encourages businesses and consumers to think differently and to prioritise a different set of values that is concerned with human wellbeing rather than promoting over-consumption [54].

Business models offering reuse and repair reduce the impact on the environment by keeping products in use for longer. However, not all of them reduce throughput and, in contrast with slow fashion, business models such as garment rental may be characterized as high-throughput models, defined by a high flow of material and energy through the economy [55]. Garments that are otherwise worn only a few times, such as smart attire designed for special occasions, may get greater use in this way. Rental models also risk reinforcing the desire for newness, which, it can be argued, is a craving that certain segments of the population find hard to resist [56]. The question of whether this craving is better satisfied by providing short-term access to fashionable clothes through business models such as rental, sharing, swapping, which also increase the number of times each garment is used, or whether it is better to encourage a slower pace of conscious consumption and appeal to a different set of values, remains contested.

3.3. Results from the Interviews

Insights provided during the interviews cover aspects that business owners and experts revealed could help or hinder businesses trying to reduce the environmental impacts due to providing consumers with clothing.

Table 2. Participants identified as experts or businesses with the models that were discussed.

Participant Unique ID	Business/Expert	Approach Discussed #1	Approach Discussed #2	Approach Discussed #3
Exp_1	Expert	Sharing platforms
Exp_2	Expert	Resale websites	Take-back	Rental
Exp_3	Expert	Sharing platforms	Rental
Exp_4	Expert	Leasing	Resale	Repair
Exp_5	Expert	Rental and leasing	Resale
Exp_6	Expert	Extended lifespan	Repair
Exp_7	Expert	Extended lifespan
Biz_1	Business	Online resale business
Biz_2	Business	Rental
Biz_3	Business	Subscription rental
Biz_4	Business	Digital application promoting extended lifespan
Biz_5	Business	Online resale platform
Biz_6	Business	Sharing platform

summarises the interviews held and the types of business models that were discussed in each. The interview topic guides for experts and business owners are available as supporting material. Insights from the interviews are discussed below.

Whether the business operates primarily online and whether an exchange takes place are distinguishing features. Whether the exchange is between consumers (C2C) or between a business and a consumer (B2C or C2B) is also noted.

Table 3. Exchange between consumers and businesses: further business model dimensions.

Business Model	Exchange?	Between?	Primarily Online?	Condition/Cleanliness *	Mode of Transport
Design for extended garment lifespan	-	-	-	User	No transport
Digital style consultancies and apps	-	-	Online	User	No transport
Repair cafes	-	-	-	User	Personal
Sharing platforms	Exchange	C2C	Online	Users	Courier/mail
Repair services	-	-	-	User	Personal
Redesign	Exchange	B2C	-	Shared	Courier/mail
Online resale businesses	Exchange	B2C	Online	Shared	Courier/mail
Online resale platforms	Exchange	C2C	Online	Users	Courier/mail
Take-back	Exchange	C2B	-	Shared	Personal
In-store resale	Exchange	B2C	-	Business	Personal
Charity resale	Exchange	B2C	-	Shared	Personal
Rental	Exchange	B2C	Online	Business	Courier/mail
Subscription rental	Exchange	B2C	Online	Shared	Courier/mail
Leasing	Exchange	B2C	Online	Shared	Courier/mail
Clothing libraries	Exchange	B2C	-	Shared	Personal
Swapping events	Exchange	C2C	-	Users	Personal

Condition/Cleanliness *: The details for each type of business model about who is likely to be responsible for the condition and cleanliness of the product if an exchange takes place.

makes these features clear for each model. Whether an exchange takes place, whether there is an intermediary (when a business handles the garments rather than providing only a platform or retail premises, for example), and whether the business operates mainly online, are may indeed be relevant to the potential environmental impact of each business model type. Online businesses do not require customer journeys to collect items and instead tend to use mailing services. Business intermediaries can also control the quality and condition of the garments sent out, which helps to increase the number of times the products can be worn. The details for each type of business model about who is likely to be responsible for the condition and cleanliness of the product if an exchange takes place and the main mode of transport likely to be used for that business model are also included in Table 3.

The rows highlighted in bold in Table 3 show the business models included in the qualitative interviews and the range of conditions covered. Most of the business models involved an exchange taking place between the business and the consumer, but one example focused only on product life extension, and another example was a sharing platform with a community ethos. Both of these are C2C models. The responsibility for cleaning varied. Most of the businesses interviewed were online, and the mode of transport consequently tended to involve the use of couriers or mail services. This is largely because the interviews took place during a time when many were in lockdown and travel was restricted.

Each of the broad types of business model is considered in turn in

Table 4. Factors identified in interviews promoting and risking success in reducing environmental impact.

Business Model Type	Included in Interview	Factors Promoting Success	Risk Factors
Extended lifespan	Exp_1 Exp_6 Exp_7 Biz_4	Extended lifespan likely to appeal to people; consumers are invited to appreciate the clothes they already have. Only a small change in habits required.	Garments are not durable enough and improved designs might not be recognised by consumers accustomed to shorter-lifespan garments. High consumption levels risk wiping out the benefits of keeping items in use if new items are bought anyway.
Resale	Exp_3 Biz_5 Biz_1	Scalable in the short term, judging by consumer appetite. Existing platforms are growing fast in the current market. Goods are received in good condition. Presenting items so that they look good helps strengthen appeal.	Secondhand garments are not recognised as high value and displacement of new purchases can sometimes be low. Consumers use resale to give themselves permission to continue with high levels of consumption.
Repair services	Exp_4 Biz_1 Biz_2 Biz_3 Biz_6	Repair services, provide PSSs that are about items lasting for as much use as possible. Repairs increase the number of items that are able to be reused. Being able to carry out simple repairs helps the businesses to operate, e.g., seam repair. Relatively skillful work can add value to garments.	Repair may be an essential part of a number of other business models, but some garments are difficult to repair. Design for repair could improve this, but it can be difficult to address all the different possible fail points. Access to replacement parts that match, including fabric and fixings, can be challenging. There may be a shortage of skills. Material degrades over time, and at some point, even repair is no longer possible.
Swapping and sharing	Biz_6	Acting as an intermediary in this CC model, a swapping website provides added value by offering merchandising, cleaning, and repair to members, for a fee.	Consumers use swapping and sharing to give themselves permission to keep consuming, and high throughput remains an issue.
Rental and leasing	Biz_2 Biz_3	Potential to increase the number of times items that are worn. May have great potential to reduce environmental impact as a service for special-occasion products. Purchases that are only worn once or twice each can be avoided. Opportunity to encourage customers to care for items well and be mindful of what they buy.	Items get damaged in rental and leasing models, and this can increase the costs of running the business, including environmental costs. Design for durability is needed to overcome this, as well as access to replacement parts and fabric and skilled sewists. High throughput rental models see multiple exchanges for only a few wears of the garment each time. They can add environmental impact if the logistics are not carefully controlled, especially the transport methods.

, and further discussion of the findings from the interviews follows. Insights provided by the experts and business owners yielded information about how the different types of business model are intended to reduce the environmental impact of clothing. Factors promoting success and potential risk factors that might increase environmental impact were provided through discussion of how each type of business model is operationalised.

Experts Exp_6 and Exp_7 commented that extending garment lifespan (without the garments changing hands) could be preferable as a strategy for reducing environmental impact: “if we’re thinking about the most important impact it’ll be keeping the clothes longer if it’s the first user because then it wouldn’t need to find a platform to change them. So then it would be important that the first user is acquiring clothes that they really need and that really fits them” (Exp_6).

On a similar note, Biz_1 commented: “So although it’s great for people to be buying secondhand clothes we’d rather people weren’t buying secondhand clothes and they were just using their clothes for their proper lifespan” (Biz_1). Encouraging careful choices when shopping and asking people to enjoy wearing what they already have in their wardrobes could be more effective than relying on the potential of new business models to replace linear models.

It makes a difference whether garments are ‘workhorse’ type items, such as jeans and t-shirts, which are worn frequently, or clothes that are likely to be worn only every so often, Exp_7 argued, whereas price is not necessarily that important when it comes to how long a garment will last. The emotional durability of garments, as well as the physical durability, will make a difference to how garments are perceived and also how quickly they wear out: “For some garments, with some people, the longer they have that garments, the more they fall in love with that garment and the more that they would wear it and keep it and then the technical durability becomes much more important. So, you can see that there’s a route there to make things last for longer and stay with that first purchaser” (Exp_7).

Resale business models were identified along with rental models by Exp_3 as more likely to grow to scale in the short term than peer-to-peer platforms or upcycling and redesign businesses. Two businesses that operated predominantly online provided information about resale: one (Biz_5) was a fast-growing platform for peer-to-peer exchange; the other (Biz_1) was a community-interest company receiving donations and selling to a specific market. Biz_1 reflected that the high quality and the good condition of the items received were sometimes surprising and indicated the use of resale to continue with high levels of consumption even though the items were used rather than new. Biz_1 has considered various methods to discourage this, such as capping the number of donations a customer can make in a year and clearly positioning themselves as encouraging consumers to wear the clothes they already have, in an effort to influence the customer’s decision making to be less impactful.

Practical aspects that can help to reduce impact include items sold online being sent using standard mail services to avoid adding unnecessarily to the transport impacts due to shopping. This practice was used by Biz_1, whereas Biz_5 does not arrange mail, leaving that to the platform’s users. Biz_1 noted that keeping business local could reduce transport.

Biz_5 described ways that resale models could help keep clothing in use for longer by ensuring that the items they sold were of good quality and clearly described as being in a good state of repair. Users selling on the platform may also exert some influence by making sure that items look good on the platform so that customers are encouraged to value the items they receive.

Repair is an essential aspect of reuse business models. Exp_4, for example, noted that reuse business models are about getting the maximum amount of use out of the clothes possible. Creating as circular an economy as possible means there has to come a point where repair is necessary to maximise the amount of reuse possible (Exp_4).

Biz_1, Biz_2, Biz_3, and Biz_6 all report repairing garments when necessary. The majority of customers take good care of the garments and only send items in good condition. Most often, they are clean when returned or donated, but occasionally, stain removal is required. Cleaning, where specified, tended to be wet cleaning rather than dry cleaning (Biz_2, Biz_3).

Repairs are handled by resale and also by rental firms, where they can include sewing, patching holes, mending ripped seams, replacing zips, and stain removal, everything “other than redesign and upcycle” (Biz_3). Biz_2 found that stains were more often an issue than other types of damage. Biz_1 was happy to carry out simple repairs as a way of increasing the number of products that could be reused, but also reported that 97–98% of the garments were in good condition already because donations tend to be in a good state when received.

Swapping and sharing websites and events represent another option. Variations on the theme include swapping events and websites that consumers can use to exchange clothes with each other. The business may still act as an intermediary between consumers but provides quality control in return for a membership fee; for example, Biz_6 runs a swapping website. Providing additional services, such as merchandising, cleaning, and repairs, to swapping customers lets the business add value and encourages loyalty from customers finding that they gain greater certainty about the condition of the products acquired. This loyalty results in repeat sales and garments that circulate and are worn again by different users.

Rental and leasing models also have much in common. Subscription packages provide a selection of garments at regular intervals and aim to meet the requirements of customers as they change over time. Both Biz_2 and Biz_3 offer different types of subscription package. Subscriptions keep garments circulating and aim to increase the number of times garments are worn. By circulating among many customers, purchases that are only worn once or twice each can be avoided (Biz_2, Biz_3). Careful messaging to customers is used to encourage them to be mindful of how they look after the items and their other purchasing decisions (Biz_2). “The major strength is reducing the ‘wear it once culture’” (Biz_3).

3.4. Likely Benefit to the Environment

Businesses were asked whether their business model is likely to benefit the environment. Most interviewees indicated that they had given careful consideration to how they impacted the environment and what they could do to reduce their own direct impacts. Actions taken included choosing more durable garments to provide their customers (Biz_2); trying to use low impact methods for washing and cleaning (Biz_1 and Biz_2); repairing clothes to keep them in circulation for longer (Biz_1 and Biz_2); and minimizing or reusing packaging (Biz_1 and Biz_2). There was little information, however, about the relative importance of the different actions taken for reducing environmental impact. Only one of the businesses could provide information from a life cycle assessment they had carried out; this interviewee showed awareness of the environmental impact of the entire fashion supply chain and reflected on the challenges of measuring the impacts of their own business and the amount of difference it could make overall (Biz_5).

Also reflecting on their environmental impact, another response was to consider the target audience and to try to reach frequent shoppers so that reuse and rental sales replaced items that would otherwise be little used. For example, “If this were to replace fast fashion, absolutely. However, for consumers that do not regularly buy clothes and choose timeless wardrobes over cyclical fashion wardrobes, no. It’s important that rental fashion targets people that buy clothes regularly.” (Biz_3). There was great awareness among these small businesses trying to increase clothing reuse and lifespans of the context within which they operate and a desire to have a wider impact than just their own business practices. Reuse businesses can only do so much to change the industry as a whole. They provide one way to help reduce impact but cannot change the rest of the industry.

Frequent use of the selling platform was an issue for another of the businesses interviewed, who reported the good quality and condition of the majority of garments donated to them and reflected that there were both positive and negative aspects to this. On one hand, with repeat customers the items that were returned may have gained not just one life, but one life after another. On the other hand, donations of used clothing would have been better just being kept in use for longer. “We are essentially a, we call ourselves an environmental campaigning company and the reason we sell, not reason, but we sell secondhand... clothes and equipment because that enables us to have campaigns and to get to people and to spread awareness but we’re also aware that selling secondhand clothes and collecting donations of secondhand clothes is a tiny bit against what we stand for because our big thing is about trying to stop mass consumption and overproduction and the fact that we collect people’s old clothes that are still okay it means that I think we’re a tiny little bit of a cog in that wheel because we’re allowing people to give clothes to us that are fine, because then they’re going out usually and buying new clothes. They go and consume again.” (Biz_1).

The way that customers are likely to integrate new business models into their wardrobes could vary for different markets and types of customer segment, as well as for the clothing categories that they might choose to replace with secondhand or rented garments. Frequent and fashion-oriented shoppers may reduce the impact of their shopping more by using rental services for some types of garments to fulfil the desire for newness and trying to avoid car journeys or relying on donating used items to reduce their feelings of guilt. Low-frequency shoppers may be better to buy carefully and access repair services so that the items they buy last well. These decisions about how to integrate new business propositions into the process of acquiring clothes could make all the difference between whether the businesses are able to impact on the environmental burden due to the clothing industry.

4. Discussion

In this section, insights from both the literature review and the interviews are considered together, thematically. The different types of business model are differentiated in terms of how impacting activities such as washing and transport are; this is carried out in Section 4.1. This is followed, in Section 4.2, by a discussion of the ways that the business models operate, and in Section 4.3, there is a reflection on the potential of reuse business models to reduce the environmental impacts of the clothing industry at scale.

Business models can focus on extending garment lifespan using a number of strategies. These include information provided to customers about how to care for the products and the reinforcing of perceptions about the quality and value that should be attached to the items. Further methods that can be employed include designing and sourcing durable products and styles that are likely to appeal over time. Garments that are designed to last may need to be heavier, using more effort and material to construct, than their lightweight fast fashion counterparts, although on balance, a durable garment can still outperform conventional clothing in life cycle assessment over time [57]. Businesses can get involved with cleaning items appropriately and repairing used items when necessary, and four of the six businesses interviewed do this. Businesses such as Biz_1 also encourage their customers to take care of their clothing and provide information and materials to make it easier to do that.

A recurring theme in the interviews was that a lower environmental impact, and a potentially more desirable way to clothe a person, is for them to continue wearing the clothing they already own (Exp_6 and Exp_7, Biz_1 and Biz_4). Business models supporting the acquisition of secondhand garments can reduce the need for primary production to put new garments on the market, but there is still an impact associated with keeping items in circulation.

Rental and leasing models such as Biz_2 and Biz_3 maintain higher throughput and may increase environmental impact if the chosen mode of transport outweighs the savings achieved, although the use of multi-drop courier or mail services is likely to substantially reduce this risk by carrying many parcels at once. It is worth noting that alternative business models such as rental can also, and have traditionally, provided for special occasions that seldom occur, such as those requiring formal attire or specialist sporting clothes. In this way, business models do increase the number of times a garment is worn and can avoid some purchases of new garments. There is thus a place for business models that circulate certain types of garments around multiple times to help reduce environmental impact, if they are well organized.

Whether any of these business models can reduce environmental impact depends on their operation and use having a lower impact compared to the activities that otherwise take place. Slow fashion theory argues that production needs to be slowed down and that garments designed that way will stay in use for longer. Even this theory will only succeed if the garments designed with durability in mind are actually kept in use and worn more times than the less durable garments would have been, and purchases that then languish unused in wardrobes are avoided. The chances of a business succeeding in providing a lower-impact model compared to traditional retail are greatly affected by the way consumers respond to the business proposition, by whether they choose to buy less, and whether they replace garments they would only have worn once with something secondhand or rented or instead use the new business model to simply buy even more. Indeed, improving the garments’ durability is not only about physical strength, but also other significant aspects, such as a good and flexible fit.

Decisions by the user and circumstances such as how a garment was acquired and where or for what purpose was it worn can greatly affect the likelihood that it will have emotional durability for that wearer. These are factors which change how much consumers are likely to ‘love’ their clothes, but they are often beyond the control of the designer, the manufacturer, or the retailer.

4.1. Differentiating Business Models in Terms of How They Impact

The interviews with business owners asked them about how they manage key operations which can impact the environment. The questions included in the topic guide (see Appendix B and Appendix C) covered:

• who transports items to the customer, and how;
• who is responsible for cleaning the garments, and what methods are used;
• how they manage returns;
• how often repairs are needed;
• whether and to what extent they believe that their business increases the number of times a garment is worn compared to the conventional model;
• any other aspects they believe will impact the environmental performance of their business model.

Figure 2 qualitatively plots each business for each of these aspects. As a full life cycle assessment is beyond the scope of this study, the information provided during the interviews was used to indicate whether the way each business model was being operationalized would support a reduction in environmental impacts or potentially increase them. The figure extends the user/management perspective developed in Section 3, by identifying who, the user or the business, is responsible for each of a set of aspects, including retail, transport of garments, repair, cleaning, how long they last (lifespan), and how many times they are worn. In addition, some businesses are able to influence their users by providing targeted advice and guidance, such as recommendations about how or when to clean the garments, and advice to keep wearing them. In these examples, the business is able to exert some influence with customers and encourage them to make environmentally preferable choices with instructions about washing no more than necessary and at low temperatures. Some businesses (Biz_4) provide materials to carry out repairs or training and guidance about how to repair items and keep them in use for longer.

Aspects rated ‘above the line’ indicate the potential for the business model to be environmentally beneficial in how this aspect is applied; aspects which are ‘on the line’ are unlikely to change compared to the linear model; and those which are ‘below the line’ have the potential to be environmentally detrimental. For example, some business models incur an additional use of transport compared to conventional retail or increase the amount of cleaning required and/or use chemical dry cleaning. While these aspects have been treated as out of the scope in numerous studies, for new business models they have the potential to impact the results, and they should therefore be included when life cycle assessments are carried out.

4.2. Differentiating Business Models in Terms of How They Operate

Three ways that business models offer to change the way the clothing industry operates include: changing the type of retail premises and the interaction between business and customer; the number of owners a product will have; and who takes responsibility for the product. Retail organisations are less often associated with innovation than manufacturers [50]. The delivery of the product to the consumer presents another opportunity for business models to be organized so as to minimize the environmental impact, and retail, rental, and service businesses can use innovation to help them deliver reduced impacts.

Retail premises can provide either a physical or an online shopping environment (or both). Common across different types of business models is the increasing use of online retail and platforms providing customers with easy access to items, which has accelerated in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic [51]. Some still prefer to visit a shop to be able to see and try on garments before they buy them, and secondhand shops and charity retail, as well as swapping events, provide popular routes for those who like to browse through the rails in person. Environmentally, there may be an added transport impact from customer journeys to the shops compared to the use of multi-drop courier services or standard mail services. While physical retail premises need heating, lighting, and a greater amount of space than online, web traffic carries its own impact. Retail has not been found to significantly impact in the context of the full life cycle of clothing [12,16]. However, fast fashion retailers have conditioned customers’ online expectations and include a fast turnaround on orders and a wider selection to choose from. Together, these expectations are prone to drive up throughput and could result in choices being taken with a higher impact, such as resorting to less fuel-efficient modes of transport. To counteract this, an online business with a clearly communicated ethic of sustainable fashion could encourage shoppers to make conscious choices, such as buying less often, accepting reasonable lead-times on items being sent to them, and choosing items designed to last.

The number of owners a garment will have can be implied by the business model which supplies it. Rental models see the same garments distributed many times to different users by the same business or by the original owner. With resale garments, each new user involves a change of ownership. By changing hands more often, rented garments carry a greater risk of damage and higher environmental impact due to transport, but the business can consciously try to provide better quality garments, make sure damage is repaired, and choose to minimise transport impacts. A garment being exchanged many times may provide a benefit to the environment, if each owner would otherwise have bought a new garment instead. High rates of consumption simply continue in a new form, but this may be preferable to the consumption of garments as though they are single-use products.

Who takes responsibility for maintaining the condition of the garments that are exchanged helps differentiate between business models. Some businesses accept full responsibility for cleaning and repairing the garments they provide, which enables them to exercise quality control over what their customers receive and to ensure that cleaning methods are ecologically sound and that repairs are as effective as possible. Most of the businesses interviewed for this research opted to take on this responsibility. Some businesses act in an enabling capacity and provide a platform for consignments. In such cases, the responsibility for the condition of the garments is left to the users. Whether there is a difference in environmental impacts between business models that manage garment care and maintenance and business models where the users keep responsibility remains a knowledge gap.

4.3. Reducing Environmental Impact and Scaling up Reuse

Reducing environmental impact may be more likely to occur if a business model succeeds in reaching its target market or consumer segment (e.g., frequent shoppers) and if consumers integrate new business models into their wardrobes in ways that increase the use of garments rather than simply increasing consumption (e.g., replacing items they would have only worn once or twice by renting garments). Both experts and business owners offered reflections on the importance of finding the “right” consumer segment with the “right” product. Research that considers the type of customer likely to use one business model or another and what types of garment should be replaced with one type of mode of acquisition or another to most effectively reduce environmental impacts, could therefore help to provide useful new insights.

The extent to which any changes to the way we do business will impact the sector as a whole may depend on the scalability of the business models. Big brands currently dominate fashion retail and most of the businesses interviewed for this research were small or micro-sized businesses. To effectively reduce the impact on the environment of the clothing industry, the number of such businesses will need to increase, or each business will need to grow; while the conventional retail of new products that it is so damaging must be phased out. There is clearly a risk of rebound effects outweighing environmental gains, as reuse business models and extending product lifespan are often used and even marketed as ways to save money. Research has shown consumers use resale platforms so that they can continue to buy large amounts of clothes at low prices, searching out items that are ‘like new’, yet nevertheless believing that by buying from a resale platform they are avoiding negative environmental impacts [23]. If the savings are spent on activities with a higher environmental impact, then the resulting rebound could mean that the use of resale platforms, for example, indirectly increases the impact on the environment [52].

Scalability requires widespread take-up by consumers and overcoming the barriers to acquiring clothing that has previously been worn. For example, many would expect to receive clothing that they rent to be in an ‘as new’ condition, and to maintain appeal, business owners must balance managing expectations with maintaining standards of cleanliness and repair [58]. High expectations may make it difficult to rent out for multiple cycles, but the main barriers reported from consumer surveys in the US, UK, India, and Europe include perceptions about whether the clothes that they can try on will fit and the range of clothes available, concerns that might just as well apply to buying new [45]. The same survey also found a larger market for resale at present than for rental, despite participants finding potential wear and tear as the main barrier to buying secondhand [45]. Thrift stores, charity shops, and retro boutiques, however, do not always appeal to a mainstream market. Younger audiences seem more open to purchasing secondhand, and certain garment types may also be better suited to extended lifespan. For example, jeans become more attractive with a ‘worn-in’ look (Exp_7).

Achieving the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), including SDG12, ‘responsible consumption and production’, could be helped by scaling up reuse business models. This will mean finding ways they can be operationalised that will effectively reduce the environmental impact of clothing. There is room for some growth of various kinds of business and enterprise models if they replace the existing, damaging way of doing business. This might mean large clothing retailers switching some of their businesses to providing rental or secondhand garments to their customers. It might also mean more people acquiring clothes from small secondhand retailers or, for example, renting from niche online platforms for specific types of garments.

5. Conclusions

This paper has considered how the operationalisation of new business models can contribute to higher or lower environmental impacts due to the provision of clothing. Findings from in-depth interviews reflect on existing management practices of business models, such as clothing resale businesses, clothing rental, and swapping and sharing platforms. Factors likely to impact the environment were discussed and ways to improve the management of businesses and encourage more sustainable use practices were discovered. The paper has argued that business models exist that can change the relationship between wearer and clothing. However, replacing mass consumption of fast fashion altogether with new business models seems a long way off.

In this study, business models have been defined and a typology developed that would support understanding about how they impact the environment. Business models of each type were placed within a framework that connected existing concepts about ways in which reuse and increasing the use of products could reduce the environmental impacts attributed to unsustainable consumption and production. The practices of both users and of business owners were found to contribute to environmental impacts, and so, both management and user perspectives informed the typology of the business models.

Business owners can design their businesses in ways that will reduce their environmental impacts and encourage users to be mindful of the impacts of their own practices. It is important that clothing lasts in use for longer, in place of purchases of new garments, rather than in addition to it. For example, secondhand sales should not simply increase the overall number of garments owned, but instead replace some of the purchases of new items. Further improvements can be made if damaged clothing is repaired so that it can be kept in use for longer. Businesses that choose to act responsibly can increase the likelihood that repairs will be carried out before a garment becomes unwearable by providing repair services or helping the wearer find out how to do the repairs themselves.

Reflecting on the findings, it was possible to establish ways in which different business models can reduce the throughput of new garments by encouraging customers to keep the clothing they already have, to look after garments carefully, and to choose new business models that are appropriate for the type of garment they are looking for. Leasing and subscription models may be suitable for items that they would be unlikely to use many times, such as, for example, clothes for rapidly growing young children. Most small businesses, whether providing resale or rental, will try to repair damaged garments if they can. Secondhand and resale platforms are among the business models that use repair as an integral part of their business to maximise the potential of garments to be reused. Swapping platforms offer a wide selection for customers who want something that is new to them, without having to buy something that has never been worn before. Rental businesses are especially well suited to clothes for special occasions and may have a stronger appeal among fashion-forward shoppers.

A variety of business models are available and there are alternative options in terms of how they are implemented. These options include the type of ownership model used, and who is responsible for aspects from transport to garment care and washing during the lifespan of the clothing product. This variety means that there is no one answer to whether reuse business models will reduce environmental impacts or by how much. The research found that business owners can organise themselves to minimise the additional impacts that arise from their operations. The practices they choose and communicate to their customers can make a difference to the outcomes for their business. In that way, garments can be designed and made to last as long as possible and made as sustainably as possible to meet the needs of their customers who do not over-consume but instead consciously choose clothing that will last and that they will want to look after, clean carefully, and be encouraged to keep for as long as possible. Further opportunities exist for businesses to provide options for clothes that are no longer wanted that help them to go on and find another life through redesign and repair. To be effective, this needs to consider the complete journey that the products go on during their full life cycle: the business models must be designed with the whole system in mind.

This paper has shown that, in theory at least, it is possible to reduce the high burden on the natural and human environment due to clothing consumption, and the implementation of different business models can help to achieve this. SDG12, responsible consumption and production, strongly implies a new approach to providing for people’s clothing needs. This is not about just one multi-national corporation changing what it does, but instead, it is about many businesses, including small enterprises and micro-businesses, stepping up to meet the needs of concerned citizens who no longer want to pay for disposable fashion and helping them to find lasting value instead.