From Preloved Garments to Preowned Gadgets: The World’s Alarmingly Growing Textile and E-Waste Crisis

Introduction

Where do our garments and gadgets go when we are done with them? Do they become “out of sight, out of mind” or do they turn out to be our “out of responsibility”? When does “just one more” for us become “too much” for our planet?

Globally, textile and electronics represent two of the largest industries at present. Both these industries benefit from a lucrative market with an enormous consumer demand for their products. Such as, the sale statistics of electronics and fashion products (with respect to e-commerce) shows that they together constituted over 44% of the global purchase in the year 2023. Today, along with the conventional market spaces, the rise of e-commerce is a major global phenomenon with massive consumer-bases all over the world. This holds particularly true for emerging economies like India and China. Currently, China is the world’s largest e-commerce market and India is the world’s fastest growing bazaar for the same. In India, e-commerce has successfully started penetrating to the remote corners of the country where the residents today can order major types of consumer products online for a doorstep delivery. An attractive market is available literally at our fingertips via numerous apps in our smartphones.

The rise of e-commerce in conjunction with the local markets result in a structure where consumer goods are discarded very much within their functional lifespan. Textile (including apparel and footwear) and electronic products are at the epicenter of such structures. The problem of textile and electronic waste (E-waste) is aggravated manifolds by these rewarding market systems and planned/premature obsolescence. Further, the advent and rise of artificial intelligence (AI) in the recent years plays a key role too. AI-powered devices are driving a new upgrade cycle for electronic equipment. Modern smartphones, home devices, and laptops now include AI features (like automation, translation, and on-device assistants), which is encouraging users to replace older devices. This is creating a major replacement wave – rather than first-time procurements – in 2026. However, the concerns associated with electronics (and textile) production remains the same – especially the socio-economic issues including poor working conditions of the workers, long working hours, and low daily wages, impacting among others, women and marginalized groups. According to the United Nations, 62 billion kg of E-waste is generated worldwide in 2022 and it will reach at least 82 billion kg by 2030. This is the latest available statistics that we have at the moment. These statistics do not necessarily reflect the E-waste generation post the Covid-19 pandemic. During the pandemic, our dependence on electronic gadgets skyrocketed in an unprecedented way. People were forced to invest in new electronic products for smooth functioning of their educational, business, and several other essential every-day activities. We can expect to see the actual amount of E-waste resulting from our purchases during the pandemic era from 2026 onward. Unfortunately, only 22.3% of the E-waste produced in 2022 was essentially collected and recycled, while over 77% remains entirely undocumented. This undocumented volume was possibly landfilled, incinerated, or even traded across countries. Nobody knows in certainty what actually happened to that massive waste volume. Likewise, 92 billion kg of textile waste is generated at present every year. This volume will reach an overwhelming 148 billion kg per year by 2030. Similar to E-waste, 87% of this textile waste currently ends up in landfills annually. This shows the environmental cost of our never-ending purchase and disposal behaviour.

Both electronic and textile are not only toxic but also resource-intensive streams of waste. A simple example of it is the material composition of our smartphones. Our smartphones contain valuable metals such as gold, silver, and palladium. According to a recent estimate, 7% of all the world’s gold is currently sitting inside our broken or unwanted electronic devices. However, have we ever wondered from where do these precious metals come from? They are routinely mined and sourced from the countries in the Global South (in Asia, Africa, and Latin America) with immense environmental burden. For instance, Africa’s critical minerals are central to global electronics and semiconductor supply chains. Countries like South Africa, Democratic Republic of Congo, Namibia, Zimbabwe, and Zambia are emerging as key sources of critical minerals and rare earth elements – all instrumental in the production of semiconductors, batteries, and energy storage systems. Today, precious metals mining in the Global South is facing both intensified geopolitical and industrial attention. But for how long do we typically use our smartphones at present? Several recent research establish that their replacement cycle has come down to an average of two years or even less. Considering the amount of resources and energy needed to make just one smartphone, this trend is disturbing.

Similar is the case of textile production, consumption, and discard. As per an Oxfam (a global organization engaged in fighting inequality, poverty, and injustice) estimate, at least 20,000 litres of water is needed to produce just one cotton t-shirt and a pair of jeans. However, in the midst of multiple ‘sale seasons’ around the year, targeted social media advertisements, and well-curated commercials, overconsumption is a reality of our time. In a recent survey by Statista Consumer Insights, conducted with respondents between the age of 18-64, 25% of Indian women and 18% of Indian men said that they often end up buying clothes that they never wear. In a yet another survey by the same global data company, only 18% of the surveyed individuals in the same age category in India said that they do not engage in fast fashion practices.

Fast fashion, a much-discussed topic in the current global environmental discourse, refers to a business model of speedily producing trendy clothing in response to the latest fashion and subsequently, to meet the growing consumer demands. It involves rapid design and production of inexpensive, fashionable clothing that mimics current runway or celebrity styles with an intention to get them into stores or online as quickly as possible. Instead of ethical and environmental concerns, the objective of production and consumption is directed towards constant newness, speed, and affordability. It is often criticized for encouraging overconsumption where people buy more clothes than they actually need and discard them rapidly. This creates stress on the environment and raises ethical concerns about how garments are manufactured and marketed. Fast fashion is considered a major culprit for the rapid generation of textile waste in the world. Other environmental impacts of fast fashion are equally profound. It is responsible for 8-10% of global CO2 emission, uses 79 trillion litres of water annually, contributes to 20% of the industrial waste water pollution, and 35% of microplastics in the form of synthetic material in the ocean.

Can we turn the tide on the textile and E-waste crisis? Is there a real way out of the textile and E-waste trap that we have created in the recent decades? Can responsible innovation rescue us from these two massive crises and help us before it is too late to react? India’s rich history and innovative ways of reusing/upcycling/downcycling used products could provide essential clues in this direction. For instance, repairing or mending textile products through stitching, sewing, darning, or patching has always been widely practiced in the country. Unfortunately, it seems that these old-style practices are gradually diminishing. In our cities and towns, people are increasingly adopting a trend where they prefer to purchase new clothing and footwear items instead of repairing or fixing them. This is particularly true for the middle-class millennials and the Gen Z individuals, who more often than not also lack the skills towards mending their textile items. It is time to reconsider these traditional practices in order to safeguard our environment and escape from the textile crisis. Further, there is a positive increase worldwide, including in India, with regard to the purchase of secondhand clothes. According to the most recent Statista’s Consumer Insights survey, 24% of the respondents in India said that they bought second-hand clothing in the past twelve months. Secondhand clothing essentially skips the production phase with no requirements for water, energy, and raw materials. It contributes to a circular economy, where products are reused and recycled instead of thrown away after one lifecycle.

Likewise, E-waste should be treated as urban mines. In the context of electronics, an urban mine is a stockpile of valuable materials embedded in products already in use or discarded as E-waste. Instead of excavating new resources from the earth, serious efforts should be initiated to ‘mine’ the old devices to recover precious and valued materials. Many economists today, in fact, point out that as the generation of E-waste increases to several million tonnes, there is a possibility to industrialize the whole informal E-waste recycling sector with urban mining at its core. The informal E-waste sector, operated in the Global South, act as a major hub for E-waste management. It is often unregulated, engaged in small-scale activities where individuals or groups collect, dismantle, and recover materials from discarded electronics. In this sector, every possible value from the discarded E-waste is extracted. It has been estimated that 300g of gold per tonne of mobile phone could be extracted from the urban mines, whereas only 1-2g of gold per tonne could be extracted in the ores. Gold doesn’t loss its property, and it is a good conductor of electricity. Thus, it finds a place in majority of electronic products. It is evident that if we treat E-waste as urban mines, it will contribute to a circular economy with considerably reduced waste generation and environmental impacts.