Extant marketing literature focuses heavily on increasing consumption yet does not oftenconsider its aftermath. Waste is an inevitable externality that is frequently considered bad, useless, and worthless. Food waste contributes substantially to greenhouse gas emissions while simultaneously highlighting the glaring disparity of undernourished individuals worldwide. Similarly, the fashion industry is regularly criticized for harboring poor working conditions, stimulating wasteful consumption, utilizing toxic materials, and burning surplus (Napier & Sanguineti, 2018). Additionally, water use, carbon use, and pollution from manufacturing cotton, the most common natural fiber used to make clothing, causes irreparable environmental stress and damage. These two industries are universal and substantial; both food and clothing are basic needs. However, these two wrongs can be made right by combining their negative dimensions into a positive opportunity. Waste is an abundant, renewable resource that can be efficiently exploited by the fashion industry to produce sustainable, profitable outcomes. The marketing discipline continually searches for ways to shift perceptions and stimulate purchases. Promoting valorization of waste in the fashion industry poses an innovative merging of externality and stakeholder theories that has been underexplored in marketing and business research.
