How can childrenswear become more sustainable? 

There are 183 mil­lion items of out­grown baby clothes tucked away in homes around the UK, accord­ing to research by Moth­er­care and envi­ron­men­tal char­i­ty Hub­bub, which esti­mates that a typ­i­cal British fam­i­ly spends £11,000 every year on chil­drenswear. 

His­tor­i­cal­ly, the children’s cloth­ing cat­e­go­ry has “acquired longevi­ty, dura­bil­i­ty and con­tin­ued reuse in the form of hand-me-downs, both with­in fam­i­lies and across friend­ship groups based on econ­o­my, con­ve­nience and need”. 

So says Dr Anne Peir­son-Smith, senior lec­tur­er, leader of Not­ting­ham Trent University’s MA course in inter­na­tion­al fash­ion man­age­ment and co-leader of its cloth­ing sus­tain­abil­i­ty research group. She observes that “the shar­ing trend appears to have surged recent­ly and tak­en on new life. In the cost-of-liv­ing cri­sis, this will only become big­ger.”

Despite this, Hubbub’s research also indi­cates that a third of British par­ents have binned gar­ments that their chil­dren no longer need, sim­ply because they don’t know what else to do with these out­grown clothes.

Opening up the wardrobe

The Lit­tle Loop is a rental ser­vice for chil­drenswear that was cre­at­ed by Char­lotte Mor­ley, who entered the BBC’s Drag­ons’ Den in Jan­u­ary 2022 and con­vinced investors Deb­o­rah Mead­en and Steven Bartlett to put £140,000 into her busi­ness. For a month­ly sub­scrip­tion fee, users can choose cloth­ing from a “shared wardrobe” of more than 10,000 items and then exchange these pieces for new ones when­ev­er they wish. 

“The key to reduc­ing the envi­ron­men­tal impact of cloth­ing is to increase the amount it is worn. Dou­bling the num­ber of wears that a gar­ment achieves will reduce its impact by 40%,” Mor­ley says. “Every gar­ment has the poten­tial to be worn by mul­ti­ple chil­dren – four to five on aver­age. Yet the infor­mal hand-me-down sys­tem is increas­ing­ly fail­ing to work beyond the first few years of a child’s life, as par­ents become busier with their careers and less fre­quent­ly con­nect­ed to their net­work of fel­low par­ents.”

If con­sumers can be made aware that there’s an eas­i­ly acces­si­ble mar­ket for sec­ond-hand cloth­ing, it can change their atti­tudes and increase their like­li­hood of con­tin­u­ing what she calls shar­ing behav­iour, where­by par­ents and even chil­dren “take bet­ter care of their clothes as a result, increas­ing their lifes­pan fur­ther”.

Rental ser­vice providers such as The Lit­tle Loop help to “remove the incon­ve­nience of hav­ing to sell on used items at a huge­ly reduced price. Par­ents sim­ply swap one item for anoth­er when the time comes,” there­by mak­ing the idea of shar­ing rather than buy­ing much more attrac­tive, accord­ing to Mor­ley.  

Designer solutions

Petit Pli, a pro­duc­er of wear­able tech found­ed in 2017 by aero­nau­ti­cal engi­neer Ryan Mario Yasin, is devel­op­ing new mate­r­i­al tech­nolo­gies aimed at cre­at­ing clothes that will grow with a child. The firm’s COO, Ara­bell Turek, notes that the increas­ing accep­tance of the shar­ing econ­o­my means that “a ben­e­fit of design­ing chil­drenswear that’s not for obso­les­cence is that the design can be shared between sib­lings and still enter the very impor­tant hand-me-down econ­o­my”. 

Petit Pli’s clothes are designed to grow with the child through sev­en sizes, pre­vent­ing much of the wastage that would nor­mal­ly occur as the baby becomes a tod­dler and even a pre-school­er. The com­pa­ny would like its work to ben­e­fit the whole sec­tor, says Turek, who adds: “Extend­ing the usable life of gar­ments is the best means for the cloth­ing indus­try to reach its emis­sion tar­gets by 2030.”

Pur­su­ing the very oppo­site of fast fash­ion is also giv­ing Petit Pli the time and space to come up with ever more cre­ative solu­tions. 

“By cre­at­ing a longer-last­ing prod­uct, we can offer users a com­pet­i­tive­ly priced item over its lifes­pan, while push­ing more inno­v­a­tive man­u­fac­tur­ing capa­bil­i­ties,” Turek says. “We can also ensure that our sup­ply chain adheres to the high­est eth­i­cal stan­dards, from the mate­ri­als to the treat­ment of the peo­ple who make the gar­ments. For instance, our man­u­fac­tur­ing part­ner in Por­tu­gal derives cer­ti­fied 100% green ener­gy for its facil­i­ty.” 

Peir­son-Smith agrees that “mak­ing children’s cloth­ing more sus­tain­able requires col­lab­o­ra­tive under­stand­ing, design edu­ca­tion and com­mu­ni­ty engage­ment through­out the val­ue chain. There is also a need to increase con­sumers’ aware­ness of their role in enabling post-pur­chase solu­tions, from eth­i­cal pur­chas­ing to gar­ment after­care.”

Barriers to circularity

But she acknowl­edges that, as long as the high street’s stan­dard offer­ings remain rea­son­ably priced, not all par­ents will be keen to change their behav­iour for the good of the plan­et. 

Peir­son-Smith notes that “the largest sec­tor for chil­drenswear sales is super­mar­ket brands” such as Next (which had an 8.7% share of the UK mar­ket last year, accord­ing to Euromon­i­tor), Pri­mark (5.7%) and Marks & Spencer (4.7%). 

“These all offer good qual­i­ty and design at low prices, along with being very con­ve­nient,” she says. “This means that small-scale cir­cu­lar busi­ness mod­els are com­pet­ing with the con­ve­nience and low prices avail­able at tra­di­tion­al children’s cloth­ing retail­ers, which also claim to be sourc­ing more sus­tain­ably and eth­i­cal­ly.” 

Turek argues that the rent­ing and reselling of children’s cloth­ing comes with its own prob­lems at both ends of the val­ue chain. 

“There are huge oper­a­tional costs and ener­gy demands in man­ag­ing the stock, as every gar­ment is pro­duced as a unique piece rather than man­u­fac­tured as a batch,” she says. “Clean­ing each item will have an impact on the envi­ron­ment. It’s also impor­tant to note the costs and emis­sions gen­er­at­ed by cus­tomer returns.” 

She con­cedes that there are down­sides to Petit Pli’s mate­r­i­al inno­va­tion mod­el, accept­ing that “the upfront costs are typ­i­cal­ly high­er than with rent­ing or resale – and the lead times are long”. 

Inven­tion can­not be rushed, espe­cial­ly when its effects on the indus­try, the pub­lic and the envi­ron­ment must all be care­ful­ly weighed. The key, though, is to get con­sumers on board with new ways of buy­ing, using and dis­card­ing chil­drenswear that will have min­i­mal impact on the plan­et.