Each day, op shop volunteers and staff are hurling clothes packed into bin bags onto rubbish trolleys. Some of the clothes are stained, while others are soiled. Their destination: landfill.
"There’s no dignity in giving people worn-out or used underwear," Anuja Mukim from the St Vincent de Paul Society (Vinnies) told The Feed.
And a growing number of the items that aren't soiled or ripped are unwanted fast fashion buys, many of which are unworn, Mukim said.
"We're seeing a lot of fast-fashion brands come through new with the price tag still on. People are buying on impulse and then not wearing it," Mukim said.
She's seen a growing wave of these cheap brands — which she said now make up about 30 per cent of all donations — having to be sorted through. And they're causing significant problems at op shops.
"Fast fashion has exploded, and with that, the quality of donations that we receive is also being impacted. It is lower quality than it used to be," Mukim said.
"Fourteen per cent of clothing donations end up in landfill, and it's mostly because of fast fashion. Fast fashion isn't made to last. It rarely survives a second life. It's made for us to just keep consuming and moving on."
Vinnies can't resell anything that is wet or stained: so clothing that is often dumped and left in the rain is adding straight to Australia's waste pile.
Kelly (not her real name) said she’s seeing the same trends unfolding at the Tasmanian op shop where she volunteers. She preferred to stay anonymous to protect her employment.
Kelly's job is to sift through piles of donated clothes to filter out what she can sell.
"The clothing pile averages six foot high at least a few times a month. I've only seen it go down to zero once in the year that I've been working there," she told The Feed.
"A shocking amount is going to landfill."
She said more clothes from brands such as Shein, Temu, Boohoo and Kmart's Anko are being donated or simply dumped outside the op shop. She estimates half the donations she sees come from these brands — with many arriving unworn or still in their packaging.
Even in Kelly's mid-sized town, she said the scale is staggering.
"You'll come in and everyone will sort of laugh at you and say: 'well, good luck today'. And you'll go in and it'll be literally impossible to move in the warehouse."
"I'm not in a major city. This must be incredible if you're looking at Sydney or Melbourne or something."
The op shop Kelly works at is inundated with donations — many of which are cheap fast fashion or clothes that can't be sold due to their poor condition. Source: Supplied
"Please put it in your own bin. Our rubbish collection isn't free. We have to pay for it."
Op shops pay substantially to dispose of unusable donations. A Tasmanian Vinnies branch reported more than $50,000 in annual tip fees for handling soiled or damaged items in 2022.
Gen z ethics rising, habits lagging
While young people value sustainability, they're being drawn in by social media fashion trends, Dr Harriette Richards, a senior lecturer at the School of Fashion and Textiles at RMIT University, told The Feed.
"They're wanting to keep up with their friends, they're wanting to feel included," Richards said.
"And then on the other side is this great increase in awareness of sustainability, ethical production, labour rights."
Young shoppers' TikTok feeds are flooded with "get ready with me" videos to show off outfits and "hauls" showing creators trying on stacks of new clothing.
Trends can change often, and cheap brands provide an easy way to keep up.
The result, Richards said, is a widening "attitude-behaviour gap" between what young people can afford and what they believe in.
"We don't necessarily always buy our values … It's not a simple correlation between what we actually do and what we would prefer to be able to do."
Kelly said she's seeing this from other consumers as well — buying trend-driven items worn once or not at all.
"'Why wouldn't I buy five tops off Shein for $10 and just see what happens?' And then they end up at the [op shop] as disappointment purchases still in the packet because when it arrives, it's not like it was on the screen."
'Disappointment purchases' flooding op shops
Kelly grew up in an era where op shops were the only place to buy second-hand clothes. But now online platforms are increasingly dominating that space.
"You've got eBay and Depop and resellers and you've got vintage shops and they sort of take the cream off it … by the time it gets to the op shop, it's really like the last line of defence before the landfill."
That "last line" is buckling. Australia now consumes more textiles per person than any country on earth, according to a 2024 report from the Australia Institute's Textile Waste project. That’s an average of 55 new garments every year.
More than half — or 220,000 tonnes end up in landfill each year.
Smaller op shops are also copping it. Dani Baron, the owner of Cheaper Than Vinnies in Canterbury in Sydney's inner-west, told The Feed she has seen an increase in cheap, bulk-bought clothing being donated, with about half of her donations being fast fashion.
"It just shows how much people are spending and not really thinking about what they're buying," Dani told The Feed.
About 60 per cent of Dani's doesn't resell about 60 per cent of her donations, including fast fashion, instead re-donating them to major op shops.
"So that gets quite a lot for me to handle in that way for sure," she said.
Dani Baron from Cheaper Than Vinny's has seen an increase in cheap fast-fashion coming through her doors - none of which she resells. Source: Supplied
"It doesn't matter if they don't like it. They just chuck it out and we've got to figure out what needs to be done with it," she said.
"More thought needs to be put into the process."
How fast fashion flooded the market
Australia felt the full force of fast fashion after tariffs on imported apparel were dismantled between the mid-90s and 2010s, according to Richards.
"You're seeing that that just ushered in that wave, really a tsunami of those low-cost, low-quality items because it was cheap."
One program that has tried to regulate and correct for the over-consumption of clothing in Australia is the government-supported Seamless Stewardship Scheme, which imposes a 4-cent levy on all garments imported into or manufactured in the country.
The scheme is designed to mitigate the environmental and social impacts of the clothing industry, as well as fund recycling and waste solutions, but Richards said the impact will remain limited until the scheme becomes mandatory.
"If we're regulating it, it's going to even the playing field somewhat … and also create this enormous fund of resources," she said.
Anuja Mukim from Vinnies says the charity is receiving more low-quality donations over recent years. Source: SBS / Jack Giam
The problem of excessive clothing purchases in Australia is also handed on to other countries.
Mukim said 47,000kg of textiles are sorted in NSW each day and Vinnies told The Feed in a statement that an average person donates about 12.1kg a year in clothes, with 16.5 per cent sold at a charity shop, 36 per cent recycled domestically, 14 per cent sent to landfill, and 33 per cent exported to be resold.
The exported clothes end up in countries like UAE, Malaysia, Papua New Guinea, Fiji, Ghana and Pakistan, where they are either resold in secondhand clothing markets or end up as waste.
Giving 'another life' to clothing
Richards said op shops are still a vital part of Australian fashion culture in helping to recirculate clothing. According to industry estimates, Australians’ donations contribute around $1 billion to social welfare initiatives and prevent around 1.4 million tonnes of CO2 emissions each year.
Australia's op shops have an 86 per cent resource recovery rate, meaning the majority of donated goods are successfully reused rather than considered waste, according to Charitable Reuse Australia, a national advocate for charity-run reuse shops.
Fast fashion from countries like Australia are contributing to clothing waste polluting Ghana's beaches. Source: Bloomberg / Bloomberg/Bloomberg via Getty Images
"It's not a way of getting rid of your waste. It's a way to give another life to the items that have been in your life," she said.
"I really feel for the charities."
To combat the growing number of unwanted fast fashion donations, Vinnies is now opening outlet stores that will sell these items for cheap.
"Because fast fashion has exploded and the quality of donation that we've receive are also impacted, we are now starting outlet stores and which means that we are trying to give second life to even the fast fashion items that we do receive," Makim said.
"We're trying to sell as much as we can in keeping items from landfill or recycling, because as we know, recycling is also an intensive process and it does require energy."
So, what can shoppers actually do?
Kelly's main message is for consumers to buy less — and stop treating op shops as dumping grounds.
"The sheer amount of clothing we are buying and discarding is beyond anything we can imagine," she said.
"Don't donate broken and stained things … don't buy single-use … don't have a themed party and buy a thing specifically for that. Go to your op shop instead."
Kelly said a lot of people would be shocked if they actually knew that their cheap, bulk-buys were ending up in bins, or being shipped overseas.
"It's a lot of out of sight, out of mind."
Share
Through award winning storytelling, The Feed continues to break new ground with its compelling mix of current affairs, comedy, profiles and investigations. See Different. Know Better. Laugh Harder. Read more about The Feed
