How we’re making textile waste Vanish!

Vanish Napisan has teamed up with UPPAREL to help #MakeTextileWasteVanish through a partnership like no other.

Last year, we teamed up with Vanish Napisan Australia to make a serious impact on Australia’s textile waste problem. If you’ve found your way to this page, you’re likely well aware of the negative impacts textile waste can have on our environment. However, there are millions of Australians that aren’t. There’s a widespread awareness problem that needs to be addressed before we can solve this issue because we can’t expect to fix a problem when people don’t know it exists.

The average Aussie purchases 27kg of new clothing and textiles every year, and discards 23kg into landfill. This contributes to the 6,000kg of clothing and textile waste being discarded into landfill every 10 minutes³, putting Australia as the second largest consumer of textiles per person in the world, after the US². However, 40% of Australians believe we rank between 6th – 12th¹.

Led by the goal to help #MakeTextileWasteVanish, Vanish made the commitment to divert 1 million textile items from landfill over the span of two years with the help of UPPAREL.

A stain on the nation report.

To shine a spotlight on the problem at hand, Vanish conducted a report to highlight why Aussies need to better understand the negative impact textile waste has on the environment. The report commissioned by Researchify found a number of interesting statistics that revealed the following:

      • There is a lack of awareness of the gravity of the textile waste crisis in Australia – Australia is the 2nd largest consumer of textiles per person in the world, however, 40% of Australians believe we rank between 6th – 12th.

      • We are doing some good by buying sustainable, but it’s not enough – 50% of Australians think that purchasing from sustainable brands/collections is enough to help the textile waste issue in Australia.

      • We are not aware of our individual role in the crisis – 22% of respondents believe that Australia’s textile waste issue is something we are collectively contributing to, and 21% believe it is only being driven by fast fashion.

Australia’s greatest vanishing act!

To demonstrate just how much textile waste is discarded in Australia, we worked with Vanish to drop 6,000kg of clothing at two locations across the country. That’s the amount discarded into landfill every 10 minutes! This massive activation ran over a couple of days on the St Kilda Foreshore and Bondi Beach, drawing the eyes of thousands of Australians passing by the mountain of textiles. We even interviewed a few everyday Aussies to see how much they knew about the textile waste crisis. 

Asset 1VanishIcon@300x

92,590 KG

Textiles Diverted

Asset 2VanishIcon@300x

1,037,008

Items of clothing

Unsurprisingly, the awareness surrounding the sheer scale of the issue was incredibly small. Very few people had an idea just how large the problem really is. When asking passersby how long they think it takes for this pile of textiles to be discarded, many couldn’t believe that it took only 10 minutes!

Numbers and statistics can often get lost in translation and become incomprehensible. The human mind is exceptionally bad at interpreting and visualising large numbers, so what better way than to show you in person!

Now, you might be concerned as to where all of the clothes used in this activation came from and where they were going. Every item was sourced from our facility and had already been identified as suitable for recycling. So we weren’t creating any additional waste. At the end of the event, the textiles were then returned to our facility for recycling.

Working with Woolworths to make a greater impact.

In order to achieve Vanish’s mission to divert 1 million textile items from landfill, we knew we’d need something big. So we partnered up with Woolworths to bring our textile recycling service to the masses! Over the course of a month, Woolworths customers could redeem a free UPPAREL clothing collection valued at $25 for any pre-loved clothes and shoes with the purchase of any pack of Vanish Gold Multi Power products online or in-store!

The response was incredible! With thousands of Australians stepping up and getting involved! This campaign was absolutely everywhere. From in-store signage across hundreds of locations to TV commercials. It was a very exciting opportunity to get UPPAREL and the dire textile waste crisis in front of more eyes than ever before to take our positive impact to the next level.

Whilst this promotion alone hasn’t achieved Vanish’s one million item goal, it has proven that Australians are more than willing to step up and make an impact given the opportunity! We’re planning some very exciting things with Vanish for later this year to take the partnership and positive impact to the next level.

1. Vanish Stain on the Nation Report. Conducted in February 2022 by Researchify
2. Department of Agriculture, Water, and the Environment, 2021.
3. ABC War on Waste 2018

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