Hi everyone! Welcome back. Today, we will discuss rentals and whether they are actually better than buying new clothing.
Ever since Rent the Runway blazed the fashion rental trail over a decade ago, more and more companies are offering similar try-before-buying and rental models. In this post, we analyze the rise of fashion rental services and weigh their benefits against their pitfalls.
A study was conducted in Finland to see if Rental companies, such as Rent the Runway, are making a difference in the fashion industry and if their business models are sustainable. According to a recent study published in the journal Environmental Research Letters, renting clothes has the highest climate impact. The impact of renting was compared to the greenhouse gas emissions of owning and disposing clothing, including resale, and recycling.
Now that we know rentals aren't the best solution, let's discuss a few of their benefits. Renting allows us to distance ourselves from the fast-fashion norms we have become accustomed to. Renting fashion can potentially change consumers' mindsets. It can shift them away from fast fashion and the constant habit of buying new clothes for every event. Although renting clothing will not be profitable for sustainability, it can aid consumers in straying away from the world of fast fashion, which is a detrimental mindset. It will empower consumers to stay away from fast fashion for good.
Anyways now that we’ve talked about the pros, let's talk about why the cons outweigh them. The main source of pollution for rentals is the pollution they cause transporting rentals from warehouses to customers. I know you must be thinking that all clothing bought online is transported so why does this matter? Well, the reason rentals cause so much more pollution is because they require so much more transportation. Instead of buying an article of clothing and it being delivered to your doorstep, like what occurs with most purchasing of garments, rentals are dropped off at your doorstep, worn, then returned, meaning a vehicle is transporting them again. Then the same rental is dropped off at another doorstep and the cycle is repeated. So, instead of every article of clothing bought being transported one and possibly a second time if returned, the same garment when rented is transported so many times, at so many different lengths. The pollution per article of clothing is much higher for rentals because of this.
However, on a more positive note, Rent the Runway has said that their rental service has actually proven to be more sustainable than we think. Rent the Runway used third party consultants Green Story and SgT to conduct research estimating that their company has actually superseded the production of 1.3 million new articles of clothing since 2010. This has led to the savings of 67 million gallons of water, 98.6million kWh of energy and 44.2million pounds of CO2 emissions over the past decade.
To close, I think that although renting is a more affordable way to keep up with both microtrends and mainstream trends it is just not worth the cost of our planet. Even though renting was a great idea to try and promote less fashion production, the pollution caused by the constant transportation of these garments outweighs the benefit it could have. In my AP Psychology class we are actually learning about the Bateson’s Cube which measures benefit, suffering, and importance. It is a way to see how ethical experiments are, but I believe it could be applied to this as well. According to that cube, the suffering outweighs both the benefit and importance of renting clothing, which would make it unethical. I admire the concept, but in the long run I believe that the pollution caused by the amount of transportation of these rentals just isn’t worth it. I think that the only solution is to buy less clothing and wear it for as long as you can. Let’s make the most of the clothing we own and limit fast fashion so we can pioneer a more sustainable future!
Stay Curious! Signing off with a smile.
-Savannah
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