Australia’s fast fashion textile waste problem and its Pacific neighbours

Most of us don’t spare a thought for where our clothes go once we donate or bin them.

But a new short documentary, Good Neighbours , urges us to consider the impact of Australia’s fast fashion habit on our Pacific neighbours.

Directed by Phoebe Hart with Associate Professor Tiziana Ferrero-Regis and Dr Zoe Mellick of Queensland University of Technology, the film takes viewers to Honiara, Solomon Islands’ capital, to meet the people at the centre of its buzzing second-hand clothing trade.

A small fraction (2.57 per cent) of Australia’s used clothing ends up in Solomon Islands. But for the small country, about halfway between Townsville and Nauru, it constitutes about 88 per cent of its imported clothing.

Australians are among the world’s biggest consumers of new clothing , buying 55