The Daily Bulletin

A paper coauthored by Vida Vanchan, interim associate dean of the School of the Professions, director of the Buffalo State Global Studies Institute, and professor of geosciences, titled “Localised Waste Reduction Networks, Global Destruction Networks and the Circular Economy,” has been published in the Cambridge Journal of Regions, Economy and Society, 2024. https://doi.org/10.1093/cjres/rsae026.

The study, which has been generating broad media coverage, explores post-consumer policies in the athletic wear sector to see how geography influences their efficacy. The findings suggest that consumers’ physical location has a major impact on the effectiveness of “greener” circular economy policies designed to reduce waste.

The clothing industry is one of the biggest global polluters, with fast-fashion companies creating cheap clothing made of synthetic materials that soon ends up in landfills. According to the European Parliament (2020), less than half of used clothes are collected for reuse or recycling, and only 1 percent of used clothing is recycled into new clothes.