Using waste in good taste

Photo Provided By Reclothing Bank

Excessive buying

Fueled by a growing middle class with growing disposable income, China consumes about 1.6 trillion yuan ($258 billion) worth of clothes every year. In some big cities, the average spending of its people's last luxury purchase is as much as $1,010, according to research by Milan-based company ContactLab.

Four out of five Shanghai residents surveyed purchased at least one luxury product within the past year, and 91 percent said they would be ready to purchase another item within the next six months, compared with just 77 percent of New Yorkers.

The rapid expansion of fast-fashion businesses has also led people to buy more clothes than they need, thus generating more clothing wastage, says Zhang Na, a designer working on a non-profit project to refashion discarded clothing.

"Inculcating a spirit of danshari may provide a solution to this problem," says Zhang. Danshari, originally a book from Japan, is the notion that one should get rid of unneeded items in life and adopt an austere, minimalist approach to possessions.

Zhang says that the clothes she uses for her project generally come from three sources. "We do not know the owners of the majority of the clothes we receive. About 20 percent of the clothes sent to us have a story behind them while another 10 percent are made up of unmarketable products by luxury brands."