Why it matters

New Zealand has a clothing
waste problem. Here's
how we're fighting it.

We're a resale business first — but the reason Lost & Found exists at all is that too much wearable clothing is ending up in the ground. Here's the scale of it, and what we're actually doing about it.

180,000+ tonnes
of clothing and textiles are sent to New Zealand landfills every year
Est. — WasteMINZ / Ministry for the Environment
~40kg
of that landfilled clothing works out to per person, per year, across the country
Est. — industry waste audits
~4%
of New Zealand's gross emissions came from fashion, largely from landfill decomposition
2019 figures — WasteMINZ
The problem, close to home

It's not just a global issue.

Clothing dumped and overflowing beside donation bins

Textile waste is one of New Zealand's fastest-growing waste streams. Cheap, fast-turnaround clothing — a lot of it now arriving directly from overseas retailers — gets worn a handful of times and thrown out, and most of it has nowhere to go but landfill.

Once in the ground, synthetic fibres don't break down cleanly. They shed microplastics and release methane as they decompose — a big part of why the fashion industry's climate footprint in NZ is larger than it looks from the outside.

And it's a growing habit, not a shrinking one. The rise of ultra-cheap overseas retailers has made it easier than ever to buy clothes that were never built to last — which means more of it ends up as waste, faster.

Zooming out

The global picture isn't much better.

The fashion industry produces an estimated 92 million tonnes of textile waste globally every year — and that figure is projected to keep climbing as fast fashion accelerates. Less than 1% of clothing material is ever recycled back into new garments.

The Ellen MacArthur Foundation puts it starkly: every second, the equivalent of a garbage truck full of clothes is burned or buried somewhere in the world. Fashion now accounts for roughly 8–10% of global carbon emissions — more than international aviation and shipping combined.

Every second, worldwide
1 truckload

of clothing is burned or landfilled somewhere in the world — even as global garment production keeps climbing year on year.

— Ellen MacArthur Foundation
What we're doing about it

Our part in fixing it.

We're a small East Auckland business, not a global fix — but here's how Lost & Found is actually built to keep clothing out of the ground.

Recent donations, straight from the boot

Car boot full of collected clothing donations Boxes and bags of clothing ready for a Lost & Found pickup
Resale-first, always
Quality clothing goes through The Arkhives and gets genuinely worn again — not just diverted to a bin that may or may not move it on.
Selective by design
We're picky about what we collect for free pickup so every trip is worthwhile — less driving for low-value loads, more capacity for collections that matter.
Real donation partners
What we can't resell goes to local charities and op shops we work with directly — Dove Hospice, Pregnancy Choice, Red Cross, and the Salvation Army — not a generic bin.

Keep your clothes
out of the ground.

Drop it off, or tell us what you've got — we'll pay you for what we can resell, and donate the rest.

Sell your clothes →