"Shoddy" as a noun - updated

"This heap is composed of the shredded remains of used wool rags, socks, clothes, and remnants from the textile industry, all slowly disintegrating into the earth. Despite containing the refuse of multiple fiber-based industries…this is not a dump in any typical sense. In various states of chemical decomposition and arranged in strata-like layers, this debris has a biological purpose; wool contains a high amount of nitrogen that it releases slowing as it breaks down….Here, textile waste…gradually turns into agricultural fertilizer that is intended for use on the surrounding fields of rhubarb….

Today when most people hear the word shoddy, they think of an adjective meaning “low quality” or “badly fabricated.” But, in fact, the term came into existence in the early decades of the nineteenth century as a noun, referring to a new textile material produced from old rags and tailors’ clippings. Workers made it by shredding wool rags in what were christened “devils,” grinding machines equipped with sharp teeth. Recycled waste and other leftovers were turned into plentiful “new” raw materials in the “shoddy towns” of Batley and Dewsbury….Over the next century, shoddy…was widely used in the production of suits, army uniforms, slaves’ clothing, carpet lining, and mattress stuffing.…"

An excerpt from Shoddy: From Devil’s Dust to the Renaissance of Rags (University of Chicago, $25), via Harvard Magazine.

Reposted from 2021 to add this interesting statistic:

70 pairs of pants per person per year.  We should clarify that it's not all pants - it's the equivalent of that many pants, and it's not all consumer discards, because much of it occurs "upstream" at industry level.

The concern is quite different from the "shoddy" described at the top.  Nobody worries about lost cotton or wool fibers.  The problem is that modern clothing contains high levels of plastic (polyester) that requires extracting from fossil fuels and winds up generating microplastics.  

Graphic adapted from The Global Glut of Clothing is an Environmental Crisis, where there is much more information:

Today, in fact, fashion accounts for up to 10% of global carbon dioxide output—more than international flights and shipping combined, according to the United Nations Environment Programme...

The International Energy Agency (IEA) estimates that plastics will be the largest driver of net growth in the demand for oil in the next two decades. Textiles are the second-largest product group made from petrochemical plastics behind packaging, making up 15% of all petrochemical products...

Most clothing around the world is made with polyester, the synthetic fiber derived predominantly from petroleum. It has overtaken cotton as the main textile fiber of the 21st century, ending hundreds of years of cotton’s dominance.

Shein puts out an average of about 1,000 women’s new clothing styles a day based on our sample, 85% of which were made with polyester...

 Santaniello, who worked in the fashion industry for 15 years, says retailers and consumers both need to change their habits and expectations for a true reckoning to occur. “When I worked in fashion, the other sales reps and I would sit there and talk about how we wanted to set fire to the whole industry and start over again,” she says. It may be a chicken-or-egg problem, but “if stores just started offering less inventory, maybe consumers could get used to there being less out there. I think that would make us all a little bit happier.”