Rise of secondhand clothing and finding ethical charity shops for clothes

Research for the Ethical Consumer high street clothing guide found that the spectre of 'ultra-fast fashion' from online brands like Shein has continued. These brands can add upwards of 10,000 new clothing designs to their website each day. 

This is not exactly the solution to reducing carbon emissions we were hoping for. Our Climate Gap report recommended a reduction in carbon emissions by 2030 of almost 60% compared to levels in 2018. We still have a long way to go – in 2022 they had fallen just 7.6%. Our report recommended a target for repair and reuse of 52%, up from 29% in 2022. A rapid upscaling of repair and re-use in clothing and household goods is one way of bringing about this significant de-growth. 

The good news is that we're seeing this happen.

A boom in secondhand clothing sales

Sales of secondhand clothing are reported to have been $289bn (£213.1bn) in 2025 and forecasted to rise to $393bn (£289.8bn) by 2030, globally. This increase is roughly twice that of the wider clothing market.

In 2025, GlobalData reported clothing was the greatest segment in the UK secondhand apparel industry, at 35.9%, versus 15.6% and 11.2% for footwear and accessories respectively. More than half of secondhand clothes purchases in the UK (55%) were made in shops. GlobalData attributed this to the prevalence of charity shops and vintage outlets on our high streets.

Shoppers attributed their desire to buy secondhand clothes to cost: 77% said they bought secondhand due to financial pressures.

One of the stand-out stats in our Ethical Markets report in 2023 was the 49% rise from the previous year in the amount spent on secondhand clothes. Sales at Depop rose 42% to £101m, and Vinted by 36% to £813.4m.

Earlier in 2026, the Guardian reported demand has led brands to sell secondhand items or repair and revive used items. These include such as Dr Martens, Zara and Mulberry. The newspaper quoted the 2026 Resale Report by US thrift store ThredUp, which cited generation Z as a driver for this change. ThredUp stated 58% of gen Z consumers said they checked secondhand items before buying new, and that 53% are more likely to buy clothes with a resale or trade-in option. Indeed, according to the Resale Report, 60% of gen Z and millennial shoppers said resale grew their trust in a brand.

Our ethical clothing guide looks at clothing resale websites, as well as the usual ethical innovators we have been featuring for years. 

Fast fashion brands cash in on secondhand clothing

Entering the secondhand market in a slightly more disconcerting way are a range of fast fashion brands. 

In the last few years, companies including ASOS, Boohoo, H&M, PrettyLittleThing, Primark, Shein, and Zara have launched their own resale marketplaces and secondhand schemes. 

PrettyLittleThing’s platform, reGAIN, is described as "a fab way to exchange your unwanted clothes and in return receiving discount coupons for your fave sites”. This acts as an incentive to buy more clothes, rather than slow down consumption, and signals to consumers that they shouldn’t feel bad because there’s an app where you can sell it on and it’s all secondhand and ethical don’t-you-know.

In a sense, moves by all companies into reuse and repair should be applauded because they can make important contributions to the rapid carbon reductions human societies need to make. And big corporations have the scale that could make a real impact quickly. However, cynically getting in on the secondhand market, while doing little to address the scale of overall production and the model of disposable clothing is not helping anyone. Companies might be able to greenwash consumers, but you can't trick the atmosphere into thinking it has less carbon than it has.

We need to see scale and ambition here with detailed targets for it to move beyond tokenism and greenwash.

The role of the inequality crisis

Of course, it is likely that much of the growth of interest in secondhand clothing is a result of the inequality crisis we are also living through. "Are you making an ethical choice when you have no choice?" may be an important question for philosophers, but the climate does not care.

And ethical fashion is not just about buying new, or even secondhand, clothes. Running and participating in clothes swaps, making your own clothes from scratch, upcycling, repairing, and renting – all these options are not only financially affordable, but they offer other benefits as well. They can lead to upskilling, building community connections, and greater appreciation around what it takes to make a piece of clothing.

Secondhand clothing and repair is a rare example of where the most ethical choice is usually the cheapest too. This is a good thing, partly because it is inclusive and everyone can join in and reap the genuine benefits, but also because it means that growing rapidly is possible.

Buying clothes from charity shops

Charity shops are often a popular choice when looking to buy secondhand. There's often several different shops in most towns, including local charities and larger national UK charities. 

But as with high street clothing shops, they're not all the same. 

How do charity shops compare on issues like animal testing and highest paid employees?

We have looked at seven high street charity shops in the UK  to see how they compare on issues like pay, funding animal testing, and charitable spending. We choose the seven with the largest number of shops: Age UK, British Heart Foundation, Cancer Research UK, Mind, Oxfam, Salvation Army, and Sue Ryder. 
 

NB Income, expenditure, pay and staff from Charity Commission figures for year ending 31 March 2022.

* Reflects packages which include redundancy payments made to international staff as a result of organisational changes and as required under national legislation in the countries where they were based. 
 

Charities and animal testing

British Heart Foundation and Cancer Research UK are two health charities listed by Animal Aid as funding animal testing. Age UK used to fund animal research but it stopped in 2015. The other health charities in the table, Mind and Sue Ryder, do not fund animal research.

Testing on animals is both cruel and medically unsound, giving unreliable results that cannot be applied to humans because of the fundamental differences between humans and animals. 92% of drugs fail in human clinical trials despite appearing safe and effective in animal tests, often on safety grounds or because they do not work.

Charities, staff, pay and charitable expenditure

In 2023, 500 Oxfam GB employees in Oxfam’s shops and offices went on strike. It was the first time industrial action has been taken at Oxfam GB. An agreement was reached within a week. In 2018 and 2021, reports arose about sexual misconduct by Oxfam staff in Haiti and Congo. 43 members of staff were dismissed and Oxfam has now significantly improved its safeguarding strategy. 

More positively, Oxfam has been a key partner with Ethical Consumer over corporate tax avoidance and workers’ rights in global supply chains.

The Salvation Army is a church charity. Around 30% of its charitable expenditure was on ‘church and evangelism programmes’ – Christian worship and the teaching and promotion of the Christian message at their churches.

What happens to unsold secondhand clothes?

Clothes that don’t sell or are dirty or damaged are usually sold to a textile recycler. Damaged or low-grade items might be shredded into rags and reused. But good quality, unsold clothes often end up being exported overseas.

A 2015 BBC investigation found that the majority of donated clothes are traded abroad for profit. Wrap estimates that more than 70% of all UK reused clothing heads overseas. Top destinations for UK clothes were Poland, Ghana, Pakistan, and Ukraine.

Used clothing has a significant market share particularly in Sub-Saharan Africa, which can negatively affect the textile industries in those countries. In 2015, Burundi, Kenya, Rwanda, Tanzania, and Uganda announced that the import of second-hand textiles and shoes would be banned from 2019. While reuse is vital, the system currently allows richer nations to displace their fast fashion problem onto poorer countries.

Furthermore, clothing that can’t be resold in these countries will inevitably end up in landfill. This means Europe is essentially exporting its clothing pollution problem elsewhere.

Repairing, reusing, and upcycling in different ways are therefore useful steps to explore first, before discarding clothes.

Additional research by Richard Stirling.

This article was first published in 2024, and updated in September 2026.