Why Clothing Rental Services Aren’t as Green as You Think
Explore the hidden environmental impacts of clothing rental services and discover why their sustainability claims deserve closer scrutiny.
Clothing rental services have exploded in popularity, advertised as the sustainable alternative to fast fashion. By borrowing instead of buying, customers hope to keep wardrobes fresh while reducing waste. But a closer look reveals that rental models often create their own environmental problems—sometimes exceeding the impact of simply buying clothes and wearing them longer.
The Lure of Fashion Rentals
Subscription platforms like Rent the Runway, Nuuly, and Armoire let users borrow items for days or weeks. The business model appeals to:
- Eco-conscious shoppers seeking reduced environmental impact.
- Consumers who want variety without the guilt of buying fast fashion.
- People looking to save money and closet space by not purchasing items outright.
The promise: keep clothes circulating, prevent waste, and cut emissions caused by the production of new garments.
Understanding the Environmental Promise
The fashion industry is responsible for up to 10% of global greenhouse gas emissions and produces millions of tons of clothing waste each year. By extending garment lifespans, renting should–in theory–reduce this impact. Research shows that renting one piece of clothing can save up to 24% water, 6% energy, and 3% CO2 emissions compared to purchasing new. Rent the Runway, for example, claims to have diverted over 1.3 million articles from landfills in a single year.
The Hidden Costs: Transportation, Cleaning, and Packaging
However, each rental comes with unseen environmental costs driven by logistics, cleaning, and packaging:
- Transportation: Garments must be shipped back and forth between customer and warehouse—sometimes across vast distances. This package route is longer and more frequent than a simple one-time purchase shipment, multiplying the carbon footprint.
- Cleaning: Industrial laundering or dry cleaning is required after every wear, consuming large amounts of water, energy, and, in some cases, harsh chemicals. For delicate garments, specialty cleaning is even more resource-intensive.
- Packaging: Rental items are often shipped in protective plastic and branded wrapping to maintain a “like new” feel, contributing further to waste. Each shipment requires its own packaging, sometimes even more than new clothes bought outright.
Carbon Footprint: When Rental Backfires
Several recent studies provide real-world evidence that rental isn’t always the greener choice:
- Emission per Wear: MIT research found that a monthly clothing rental subscription emitted 1.998 kg of CO2 per garment per wear if each piece was worn just once. That’s higher than even traditional fast fashion consumption if clothing is worn more than twice.
- Higher Impact for Some Categories: Seasonal clothing like jackets, coats, and knitwear generated more GHG emissions per wear when rented compared to owned because of additional laundry cycles and shorter lifespans in rotation. For instance, emissions for sweaters increased by 112%, and coats by 214% under rental models versus ownership.
These numbers mean that unless garments are circulated rapidly among a high number of renters—and transportation and cleaning are optimized—the claimed sustainability benefit often evaporates.
Inventory and User Behavior: Rebound Effects
Adding to the challenge, popular business models often require large inventories to satisfy consumer demand for variety, increasing resources spent on manufacturing, storing, and maintaining goods. Some users are drawn to rental services by the rapid turnover and novelty, leading to more frequent shipments and cleaning—what researchers call the ‘rebound effect’.
- Companies providing a high degree of choice must expand their stock—and many pieces spend time unworn, unable to offset their production footprint.
- Shorter rental periods (i.e., renting for special occasions) limit the number of times each garment is actually worn across its lifespan.
When Rental Models Are Greener
Despite numerous drawbacks, rental programs can offer environmental benefits under specific conditions:
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- Garments intended for infrequent or single-use—such as formal dresses, suits, and maternity wear—see a reduction in per-wear emissions when rented instead of bought.
- When the same item is circulated among many users over time, maximizing wears per garment, and transportation is minimized or shared among multiple rentals.
- If eco-friendly cleaning processes and reusable or minimal packaging are employed throughout the supply chain.
Types of clothing most likely to be greener when rented:
| Garment Type | Rental Greener Than Ownership? |
|---|---|
| Formal Dress | Yes |
| Dress Shirt | Yes |
| Maternity Wear | Yes |
| Knitwear / Sweater | No |
| Coat / Jacket | No |
| Jeans / Pants | No |
For everyday clothes or basics, simply buying fewer new pieces and wearing them longer remains the lower-impact option.
What About Fast Fashion?
Critics point out that rental models invite comparison to ‘fast fashion’: affordable, mass-produced apparel designed for a few wears. Both models promote frequent wardrobe churn and the illusion of ethical consumption through new channels.
While fast fashion’s harm largely flows from the volume of new goods produced, the rental model’s main impacts are logistical—each time a piece is shipped, cleaned, and repackaged, the earth pays a price.
In both cases, overconsumption remains the core problem. Without a genuine reduction in the number of new items manufactured and purchased, the system remains unsustainable.
Industry Responses and Future Directions
Some companies are working to address these challenges:
- Investing in more efficient, local logistics to cut transportation emissions.
- Switching to greener cleaning technologies and biodegradable detergents.
- Using reusable garment bags and minimal packaging to curb waste.
- Encouraging longer rental periods and more uses per garment before cleaning.
Policy and research also stress the need for life-cycle analysis and comprehensive data tracking throughout the value chain. Experts encourage consumers to ask hard questions before assuming that “green” messaging automatically equals a lower impact. Buying higher quality, fewer items, and keeping them in use longer continues to be the most reliable path to sustainable fashion.
What Should ‘Sustainable’ Fashion Really Mean?
The debate around clothing rental services speaks to a larger dilemma within sustainable fashion:
- True sustainability prioritizes reduced resource use, minimal waste, and a longer product lifespan.
- Models that primarily stimulate consumption—whether buying or borrowing—fall short of these goals unless the total environmental load is reduced.
- Transparency about logistics, cleaning, and end-of-life disposal is critical to assessing the real impact of any fashionable alternative.
Ultimately, business models and marketing claims must withstand rigorous environmental scrutiny, not just consumer aspirations.
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)
Q: Is renting clothes always better for the environment than buying?
A: No. Research shows that unless garments are rented multiple times by different people, and transportation and cleaning are very efficient, renting can actually emit more greenhouse gases per wear than buying and wearing items longer.
Q: Which types of clothing are more sustainable to rent?
A: Rental is more sustainable for clothes that are only needed occasionally, like formalwear, special occasion dresses, or maternity clothes. Everyday basics and seasonal items usually have a lower footprint when bought and worn repeatedly.
Q: How much does shipment and cleaning affect the environmental impact of rentals?
A: Transportation and industrial laundering can become the largest contributors to a rental garment’s carbon footprint, especially if shipping distances are long and cleaning uses lots of energy, water, or chemicals.
Q: What can consumers do to make fashion habits more sustainable?
A: Buy fewer, higher quality pieces, wear them often, and care for them well. If you must rent, try to select local services with transparency on cleaning and logistics, and maximize each use before returning.
Key Takeaways
- Clothing rental can reduce the need for new production but often increases emissions through shipping, cleaning, and packaging.
- Only certain garment categories—like formalwear and maternity clothes—tend to have a lower impact when rented.
- Frequent rental of basics and fashion churn can worsen the industry’s carbon footprint.
- Long-term garment ownership with repeated wear remains the most sustainable choice for most wardrobes.
References
- https://sustainable.mit.edu/rentalclothing/
- https://www.euronews.com/green/2025/04/02/clothing-rental-companies-are-a-sustainable-answer-to-fast-fashion-so-why-do-they-rarely-w
- https://www.econyl.com/blogs/thoughtful-threads/behind-the-curtain-is-rental-fashion-truly-sustainable
- https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-025-87893-w
- https://www.threadingchange.org/blog/renting-fashion
- https://www.thefashionlaw.com/does-renting-clothes-really-have-a-positive-environmental-impact/
- https://time.com/6285257/is-clothing-rental-resale-recycling-sustainable-nuuly/
- https://www.fashionrevolution.org/rental-fashion-vs-throwing-away/
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