[9급 국가직 영어 2021년 16번]

Social media, magazines and shop windows bombard people daily with things to buy, and British consumers are buying more clothes and shoes than ever before. Online shopping means it is easy for customers to buy without thinking, while major brands offer such cheap clothes that they can be treated like disposable items―worn two or three times and then thrown away. In Britain, the average person spends more than ￡ 1,000 on new clothes a year, which is around four percent of their income. That might not sound like much, but that figure hides two far more worrying trends for society and for the environment. First, a lot of that consumer spending is via credit cards. British people currently owe approximately ￡ 670 per adult to credit card companies. That’s 66 percent of the average wardrobe budget. Also, not only are people spending money they don’t have, they’re using it to buy things __________________. Britain throws away 300,000 tons of clothing a year, most of which goes into landfill sites.