Alarming Numbers

Australians send an estimated 231,000,000 kg of fashion waste to landfill every year¹. We are the largest per capita consumers of fashion with 56 new garment purchases annually², outranking even the United States.

To feed this habit, we import over 1.4 billion garments annually with less than 3% made domestically¹. It is estimated that more than 280 million of these will never be worn, with most going into landfill³.

Australia is the 5^th largest cotton producer in the world with annual production in excess 5.6 million bales⁴. Our cotton is high quality with long fibre lengths and low organic contaminants. Despite being the most efficient and high-yielding country of origin⁵, we export 99.9% of our annual production⁶.

We do little to convert one of our major exports into a higher value product, we overconsume imported finished goods and we have few ways to deal with the waste byproduct of our excess.