Authors: Anna Schytte Sigaard and Kirsi Laitala Abstract Extending product lifetimes through repair is a central strategy in sustainable consumption and circular economy initiatives. This article examines how consumers evaluate textile damages and potential to repair,… Repairability of clothing and textiles: Consumer practices and policy implications
Forfattere: Ingrid Haugsrud, Ingun Grimstad Klepp and Kirsi Laitala Abstract The impact of the fashion industry on the environment is undoubtedly size-able. In response, the last decade has seen various changes in the fashion industry… Clothing Care – The Palgrave Handbook of Sustainability in Fashion
Increasing product lifespans is one of the most effective environmental strategies and therefore repair is a part of the circular economy approach that aims to keep products and materials longer in use. This article explores drivers and barriers for repair from consumers’ and commercial repair actors view-points, in order to understand how the repair rates of household appliances, mobile phones and clothing could be increased.
Rapporten diskuterer klesanskaffelser og vedlikehold i dagens Norge basert på en spørreundersøkelse om bærekraftig forbruk. Respondentene rapporterte at de hadde anskaffet i gjennomsnitt 23,5 plagg i løpet av det siste året. De yngste mennene 18-19 år og alle kvinner frem til 59 år anskaffer like mye klær. Menn anskaffer færre ettersom de ble eldre og de eldste over 60 år anskaffer minst. Kvinner derimot holder samme nivået, 28-29 plagg uavhengig av alder frem til den eldste aldersgruppen. Kvinnene over 60 år anskaffer noe mindre (totalt 20 plagg). De aller fleste (20,2 av 23,5) plagg kjøpes nye. Dette tilsvarer 86% av klærne. Det nest vanligste måten å skaffe klær er å få de som gaver med 2 plagg per person.
Rapporten undersøker reparasjonsbransjen for klær og hvitevarer og aktørenes synspunkter på barrierer og muligheter for utvikling av tjenestene. Det er viktig å få en bredere forståelse for hvilke muligheter og barrierer de opplever i sitt arbeid med reparasjon, fordi dette kan være en viktig del av sirkulær økonomi og bærekraftig forbruk. De aller fleste reparasjoner foregår privat, og forbrukernes holdninger er også viktige for bransjen. Derfor har vi trukket forbrukernes oppfatninger inn i analysen basert på en spørreundersøkelse. Rapporten diskuterer dermed ikke bare hva som kan styrke en bransje, men også hva som kan bidra til at flere produkter blir reparert og dermed brukes lenger.
Den første delen av rapporten er en litteraturgjennomgang. Vi presenterer tidligere studier av bransjen i Norge, samt svenske erfaringer med redusert merverdiavgift. Videre følger en analyse av 15 kvalitative intervjuer med aktører i reparasjonsbransjen, 10 innen klær og 5 innen hvitevarer. I analysen har vi også inkludert datamateriale fra spørreundersøkelsen med forbrukere. Reparasjonsbransjen er svært sammensatt og består delvis av store bedrifter hvor reparasjon er en forsvinnende liten del av deres virksomhet, og av små enmanns bedrifter hvor reparasjon kan være, men ikke alltid er en viktig del av virksomheten. Likevel er det flere likhetstrekk for hva som er barrierer og muligheter for bransjen. Blant barrierer finner vi at den gjennomgående lave prisen på produkter og lav kvalitet bidrar til liten lønnsomhet for reparasjoner, og det er svært liten betalingsvilje blant forbrukere for reparasjonstjenester. Videre er tilgangen på kompetent personale en stor utfordring, som forventes å bli større i årene fremover.
Mending, re-design, and altering are alternatives for prolonging the use period of clothing. It is a common assumption that nobody mends clothing anymore in Western societies. This paper studies Norwegian consumers’ clothing mending and making practices. We ask how common the different mending and making activities are, has this changed during the past several years, who are the clothing menders and makers, and further, are these practices related to consumers environmental opinions?
We build on three quantitative surveys in Norway from 2010, 2011, and 2017. Many consumers do mend their clothing at least occasionally, especially the simpler tasks, such as sewing on a button and fixing an unravelled seam. Women and the elderly are more active in making and mending, whereas the young are a bit more likely to make something new out of old clothing. The mending activities were correlated with respondents’ environmental opinions. Mending clothes is more common than is usually assumed. Knowledge of current practices and barriers for clothing mending enables us to recommend measures that can potentially increase the use time of clothing. These results can be beneficial in clothing design, home economics, and crafts education as well as understanding consumer behavior and making policies that aim at environmental improvements within clothing consumption.
One of the possibilities consumers have for more sustainable clothing acquisition is to select pre-owned products. This article explores consumers’ motivations for clothing reuse: why they choose or do not choose to acquire second-hand clothing. First, a taxonomy of motivation categories based on previous studies is presented. This demonstrates that similar properties can be used as arguments both for and against acquisition of second-hand clothing. An analysis of a representative sample of Norwegian consumers shows that both environmental and economic reasons are important for those who take part in informal clothing circulation. Uniqueness and style are more important for those who buy second-hand clothing.
Those who do not take part in any of the forms of acquisition of used clothing, use vague and open justifications, as well as contextual aspects; hygiene, health and intimacy. Previous studies have mostly been based on how clothing is reused as part of a market exchange, and therefore the motives have been embedded with a rational choice understanding of consumption. Studies of the private exchange of clothing should also address additional reasons such as routinized practices and established rituals, family ties, feelings, friendship and love. The article concludes with an invitation for further research to explore several possible motivations that are more relevant for private circulation of clothes.
This chapter takes a close look at the different forms of sharing based on empirical material on leisure clothing in Norwegian families. We ask what forms of sharing are practiced, which terms are used, and how consumers draw distinctions between them. We find that the forms are numerous and have an established place in Norwegian clothing culture. Sharing within the household, outside the pecuniary market, appears still to be the most important and also the most understudied form of sharing.
The literature about clothing consumption is increasingly about sharing, but limited to the new forms. However, sharing is a common form of human interaction, often misunderstood or overlooked. In order to understand the role of collaborative consumption in contemporary society, it is necessary to study both new and old forms of sharing. For a more systematic mapping of these forms a good place to start might be the study of relationships between access and ownership, and between different temporalities.
Reuse organised by non-profit and commercial actors is a strategy that recently received a lot of attention. This article discusses the question: what do we know about the amount of clothes that circulate outside the pecuniary markets? And is this amount increasing or declining? The questions are answered based on quantitative material from Norway. Almost twice as many had received used clothing as those who had bought used clothing, and our material do not indicate that this are declining. At the same time 59 per cent of Norwegian adults had neither received nor bought used clothing for themselves during the past two years. For children, inheritance is very common and the younger the children are, the more they inherit. The amount of the private clothing exchange is greater than the formal market in Norway. Therefore, when the goal is a more sustainable clothing consumption we need to include the parts of consumption that are not only related to money.
prosjekt om grønn vekst gjennom kunnskap om bærekraftige klær i lokale verdikjeder med fokus på utnyttelse av norsk ull (KRUS). Studien viser at bruk av ull er utbredt i hele befolkningen. Det er imidlertid klare kjønns- og inntektsforskjeller i befolkningens forhold til ull. Kvinner kjøper og bruker ullplagg oftere enn menn.