Australians bought an average of 55 new garments in 2024 and much of this clothing made the short journey from retailer to owner to rubbish bin. More than 880 million of these garments – totalling about 220,000 tonnes – wound up in Australian landfill. The Seamless Circular Clothing Textiles Fund, winner of the Australian Financial Review’s Sustainability Leader Award in the Government, Education, Health and Not-for-Profit category, looked into how this pattern of consumption and waste can be changed.
“We have an urgent clothing waste challenge, and in Australia we’ve also got over-production and over-consumption,” says Seamless CEO Ainsley Simpson. “The clothing system is just not designed to handle the volume and the speed of clothing moving through our markets.”
Clothing buys have accelerated in recent years with the emergence of ultra-cheap online platforms, known as “hyper-scalers”, she adds. Australia is a world leader in clothing consumption: averaging about one new garment purchase per person per week, second only to the US.
Statistics indicate accelerating sales by the three largest online retailers – Temu, Shein and Amazon. “They have found a way into Australian hearts and wallets, and they’re doubling down on it,” Simpson says.
An important source of waste is the overproduction built into global supply chains, including minimum order requirements imposed by offshore manufacturers which force Australian fashion brands to order up to 30 per cent more garments than they actually need, Simpson says. About 97 per cent of clothing sold in Australia is imported, and Seamless benchmark data show the volume of unsold clothing increases by about 17 per cent year on year.
Australian clothing re-use, meanwhile, is minimal, and less than 5 per cent of textiles are recycled in this country.
“We have the capacity and the capability to do so much more, but without a coordinated clothing system to collect and process our unwanted clothing, we do have an extraordinary amount heading for landfill,” Simpson says.
The Fund’s purpose is to drive and coordinate industry action to divert clothing from landfill and contribute productively to Australia’s circular economy, she adds. As the national clothing stewardship scheme, Seamless is also the world’s first circular product stewardship scheme.
Launched by then federal environment minister Tanya Plibersek, Seamless began operating as a product stewardship scheme in July 2024. Many other industries have a system to manage products at their end of life, Simpson says, including mobile phones, print cartridges, tires, batteries, and oil. Not clothing – until now.
The Seamless stewardship scheme is based on the core idea that brands which produce clothes should take responsibility for the entire life of the garments. “A circular product stewardship means we take that responsibility right from design all the way beyond the point of sale through to reuse and recycling and end of life,” she adds.
Clothing brands including David Jones, Rip Curl, R.M. Williams, The Sussan Group, The Iconic and Lorna Jane joined Seamless as foundation members and each now contributes 4 cents for every item they sell.
Fifty-eight clothing companies are Seamless members, but Simpson points out 14,000 businesses now trading in Australia have yet to step up. This means councils, charities and households (via rates and taxes) unfairly bear the cost of garment disposal.
The story is changing overseas. The European Union is now rolling out extended producer responsibility for the end-of-life for garments: the destruction by large companies of unsold new clothing is now banned and only a certain standard of product will be accepted on the market, Simpson says.
In California, an equivalent product stewardship scheme began on July 1. New York and Washington are considering similar schemes, as are Chile and Kenya.
Here in Australia, Seamless has four strategic priorities, including encouraging the industry to design longer-lasting clothes that can readily be recycled, and supporting brands to evolve and adopt more circular business models, with initiatives such as e-commerce, rentals and repairs. Many brands are interested in circular business models, Simpson says, which can enhance brand loyalty, customer experience and repeat purchases.
Other priorities include ensuring the effective collection, sorting and recycling of clothing textiles and helping Australians choose, enjoy and recycle their clothes more responsibly.
“Real change happens if we work together: clothing brands, government, the supply chain,” she says. “And, of course, all of us who wear clothes.”
With grant funding from the federal government, the Seamless Fund invested in seven pilot programs to test three clothing collection models and several recycling technologies, using the data to build an independently audited dataset, she adds.
These three-month pilots included 33 organisations testing four clothing collection models and six recycling technologies. Ending in early 2026, the programs included the collection of 31 tonnes of clothing. Wearable clothes were sent to charities and 13 tonnes of unwearable clothes were recycled into eight new products, from housing insulation to hydromulch for construction site revegetation.
In one program, R.M. Williams customers were provided with Australia Post satchels which they could use to send their no-longer-worn clothing for recycling. In another, waste recovery company ResourceCo teamed up with The Sussan Group and Salvos Stores to recycle donated clothes and unusable samples as well as shredded uniforms into commercial grade building insulation.
The pilot programs provided valuable insights on how best to set up a nationwide coordinated clothing system, Simpson says.
The life of garments and the problems of clothing waste are not well understood, and Australians often don’t think twice about dumping unwanted clothes in their red bins, she adds. Awareness of clothing waste and textiles reuse can be boosted. Australia has the capacity to increase clothing recycling and consumer sentiment backs overall increased recycling. Yet the market needs an overhaul.
“Without a regulatory setting, most businesses putting clothing onto the Australian market have no accountability beyond the late-night shopping cart or the point of sale,” Simpson says.
“If we continue down this route, and there isn’t that strong commercial reason provided to brands to design out waste, Australia will become the dumping ground for ultra-cheap garments which no other country is willing to accept.”
Coming second in the Government, Education, Health and Not-for-Profit category is SureWaste, a waste intelligence system that uses bin‑mounted AI and sensors to identify items as they are discarded and an internet data system to prevent the purchase of unused items.
Developed by environmental monitoring company Novecom, SureWaste addresses the waste in Australia’s healthcare system, exemplified by many thousands of tonnes of discards, less-than-optimal recycling and the disposal of hundreds of millions of dollars of unused consumables.
Third in the category is an innovative smart farming suite from Griffith University, with tools which use machine vision, robotics and data analytics to embed sustainability in farming operations.