The clothing we wear is a source of carbon emissions and landfill waste. Sarah Pinner, co-founder and CEO of Beni, introduces a new plugin for Google’s Chrome and Apple’s Safari browsers that helps shoppers find reused alternatives to new clothing. Beni makes thrift shopping easy with a digital helping hand, and the team is working to add environmental impact information to make choosing the lowest-impact option simple.

Reusing clothing is an important step toward reducing our carbon and waste footprint. And, according to GlobalData, a research firm, reuse shopping has grown from almost no revenue in 2012 to $14 billion in 2021. It’s projected that it will reach $51 billion by 2026. Shoppers need a guide to the exploding world of clothing reuse options. Sarah also shares her ideas about how to transform thrift clothing into a meaningful, hot topic to make more popular with all generations.

The World Economic Forum reports that the fashion industry emits up to 10% of annual human emissions, though other estimates run as low as 2%. McKinsey & Co. says that less than 1% of the cotton produced annually is recycled and suggests that keeping global warming below 1.5 degrees Celsius requires that we make clothes last longer and embrace reuse and rental programs. Reusing clothing is an important step to reducing our carbon and waste footprint.

We’ve been testing the Beni plugin, which can understand what product you are looking at on an e-commerce site and suggest reuse alternatives from other sites. Beni takes the shopper to the reuse site with a single click, keeping the original window open so it is easy to compare. You can learn more about Beni at joinbeni.com.

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This podcast originally aired on December 9, 2022.

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