Luxury consignment company The RealReal has launched a new Sustainability Calculator designed to quantify the positive impact consignment can have on the apparel supply chain.
Launched to coincide with National Consignment Day on Monday (1 October), the aim of the calculator was to create a sound, science-based, tool to quantify the positive impact of consignment on the planet.
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The first generation calculator focused solely on women’s apparel with the initial calculation measuring the impact of 2.5m women’s clothing items consigned to The RealReal. The results showed the company has offset 65m car miles in greenhouse gases and energy since 2012, it claims.
“Consigning is good for the environment, and I am thrilled we have developed a valid and quantifiable way for our customers to measure the positive impact their consignment has on the planet. It takes my breath away that people consigning apparel alone have made such a tremendous impact — the equivalent of 340,000 trees planted,” says founder Julie Wainwright.
The RealReal worked with Oregon-based sustainability consultancy Shift Advantage to develop the methodology quantifying greenhouse gas (GHG), energy and water saved from women’s clothing items consigned. Experts from World Resource Institute (WRI) and the Ellen MacArthur Foundation, and sustainability expert, Michael Sadowski reviewed and provided feedback on the methodology.
Four areas were taken into consideration to assess the overall environmental benefits of recirculating/consigning apparel:
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By GlobalData- Impact by Material: Energy, Greenhouse Gas (GHG) and water consumption were estimated based on global averages for each material type. The RealReal does not own the manufacturing process of its goods.
- Item Archetypes: The most common women’s clothing types were used to develop four archetypes for calculation: dresses, tops, jackets and knitwear.
- Fabric Composites: The RealReal defragmented the inventory mix into the most common item-fabric combinations (i.e. silk, cotton, polyester, viscose, wool and linen).
- Product Type Composites: Since every item consigned is unique, The RealReal used sample weights to develop average weight measures for each archetype fabrication group.
