Chris Winlaw, General Manager - UMS
In schoolwear, a garment has to earn its place. It has to represent identity, carry pride and survive real life. That lens makes fast fashion hard to ignore. Across the broader apparel market, too many garments are now bought as disposable commodities, judged on price alone and discarded almost as quickly as they are purchased.
That mindset is costing Australia more than we think.
We are buying at scale, discarding at scale, and calling it value. Seamless Australia's 2024 National Clothing Benchmark found Australians bought 1.51 billion items of clothing in a single year, about 55 pieces per person, while 220,000 tonnes of clothing went to landfill. Official federal waste data reinforces the grim reality - Australia's broader textiles, leather, and rubber category had the lowest recycling rate of any major material group in 2022 to 2023, sitting at a dismal 5 per cent.
What is striking is that Australian consumers are already signalling a different standard. Research from both Monash’s 2025 Retail Sustainability Spotlight and the journal Sustainable Production and Consumption confirms that durability is now the leading sustainability factor for shoppers, outranking recyclability and recycled content. Backing this up, 69 per cent of consumers are willing to pay more for long-lasting products, and 48 per cent for ethical production.
Yet the supply side still tells a different, darker story. Baptist World Aid's 2024 Ethical Fashion Report found the average score across 120 fashion companies was only 31 out of 100, and 89 per cent were not paying a living wage at any stage of their supply chain.
That should force a reset in how we think about the word cheap.
A well-made, ethically manufactured, responsibly sourced garment that guarantees years of performance is not a luxury. It is disciplined purchasing. And that is the true lie hidden in the price tag - if a piece is designed to fail after a handful of wears, the real product was never clothing. It was waste, dressed up as value.
If your organisation is evaluating its uniform or apparel standards, shifting away from a disposable mindset can feel like a complex task. I am always open to connecting with fellow leaders to discuss practical ways to assess garment longevity and true cost-per-wear. Feel free to reach out to start the conversation.
