Diego Dultzin Lacoste, founder of OnTheList, on how businesses and consumers can minimise waste and maximise positive impact
Compared to the rest of the world, consumer demand for sustainable fashion in Asia has been slow but is now gaining traction thanks to initiatives by governments, NGOs, designers and changing customer perceptions.
The ongoing pandemic too, has accelerated awareness of how our lifestyles and buying decisions impact the environment. Younger consumers, particularly Gen Zs and millennials, consistently show that they are becoming more selective in how and where they spend their money, supporting companies with a strong social purpose and appreciating quality over quantity.
What all consumers can agree on, however, is that modern retail is unsustainable and generates tremendous waste.
During our previous careers in the luxury fashion industry, Delphine Lefay—who would eventually be my co-founder—and I were privy to the large amount of waste in retail which can end up in incinerators and landfills. In Hong Kong, this waste can also be perpetuated by consumers, with an estimated third of all clothing in wardrobes having never been worn. It is for these reasons we work very closely together with our brand partners to make positive steps towards a circular economy, where resources are reused for as long as possible.
We set up OnTheList with two aims: to reduce waste by minimising brands’ unsold inventory and to create new business opportunities via the circular economy. As a flash-sale-distributor of premium brands, OnTheList has saved to date over 2.24 million fashion and homeware items from ending up in landfills, powered by over 700 brand partners and 710,000 members in Hong Kong, Shanghai, Singapore, Australia, South Korea, Taiwan, and Malaysia.
The current rate of apparel production far outstrips recycling efforts
According to the UN Environment Programme, the fashion industry is the second-largest consumer of water and creates 8 to 10 per cent of global carbon emissions—more than all international flights and maritime shipping combined. It also generates around 20 per cent of the world’s wastewater and releases half a million tonnes of synthetic microfibers into the ocean annually. Compounding the problem is the fact that polyester has now replaced cotton as the most popular textile fiber in the world. This is problematic because polyester is primarily derived from petroleum, sheds microplastics, and requires lots of energy to produce.
Many companies have introduced great recycling and upcycling initiatives to tackle textile waste. K!BO, for example, is a terrific Hong Kong-based recycled sneaker brand. But the impact of recycling continues to be limited, due to the sheer volume of material being generated and the skilled work required to sort the different fiber blends and materials used in each garment.