Is Your Retail Therapy Hurting the Planet?
Sunday, May 06, 2018
Top - Glassons
Skirt - ASOS
Inspiration - Sies Marjan Spring 2018 Ready-To-Wear
That dress you just pulled out of your wardrobe,
like any other piece of clothing, you will probably only wear it seven times
before tossing it out.
Now take a closer look at your closet, if you’re
like the almost 40 per cent of millennials out there, you’ve probably purchased
half of it in the last 12 months.
And 30 per cent of that will likely be thrown out
after one wear. Australians throw out over $550 million of clothing and
textiles to landfill each year.
That’s 30kg each for you and me.
As a society, we buy 400 per cent more clothes
today than just 20 years ago. We produce 80 billion clothes each year and our
American counterparts buy 64 of these each in a year alone. Their UK friends
buy 2.15 million tonnes of clothes and shoes. This is despite the fact that as
a country, they have a total of £30 billion worth of unused clothing sitting in
their closets. Do these statistics sound crazy to you? They are.
Today, fashion has become increasingly available
to everyone. Fast-fashion stores like Zara, H&M and more are bringing
runway pieces to the masses. But as the price goes down, so has the number of
wears. Although a lot of us donate the clothes we don’t want, to charity bins
and stores, it’s a small band-aid to overcome a much larger beast – our
overindulgence in fashion, like many other things, is harming Planet Earth. A
measly 15 per cent of clothes donated to charities are actually sold again in
op-shops. Most, are sent to developing countries. Sub-saharan Africa gets
the largest chunk, a third of all globally donated clothes land up there. Although
our insatiable hunger for shiny new clothes continues to grow, the same trend
doesn’t extend to the second-hand clothing market. Asian stores have made
buying the next date night outfit cheaper than take-out. And developing nations
have also decided to say no to being our dumping ground for discarded clothing
– Africa’s own textiles industry took a hit under our ‘generosity’. Thus,
Rwanda, Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania, South Sudan and Burundi announced their own
plans to stop importing second-hand clothes from the UK and US by next year. The
take-away from all this: the brand new trousers you just impulse bought
are going to cost the planet a lot more than the $70 you spent on it.
This isn’t to say you stop shopping. It’s just a
reminder to buy thoughtfully and to take pride in what you buy. Curating
fashionable looks that you put thought into, can help you get attached to each
and every piece you own. Every time you wear, it’ll remind you of how much
Sally from Advertising or your neighbour Rob loved it. Fashion doesn’t have to
be about copying every trend. It can be about rummaging through the clutter to
find the best of the best and turning that into something timeless. And, look
after your clothes. You don’t have to buy a $300 top to make it last a few
years, you can get that longevity from something a quarter of the price too.
The key is to know your materials and how to look after them. And
most importantly, repeat after me: I will not get carried away by a sale. We
all have been all too guilty of buying that shoe reduced on 70 per cent that’s
a size too small. It may sound cheesy to say this, but fashion really can be
timeless.
Links à la Mode, May 10th, 2018
- Have Clothes, Will Travel: 1st Time Vintage Dress Shopping Featuring Green Goddess Dressing
- Have Clothes, Will Travel: Outfit – Florals? For Spring? Groundbreaking
- I'm a Norbyah: How to Wear a Jacket When it's Not Jacket Weather
- L'ambassadrice: Interviewing a Pattern Maker: Catarina Marques
- Online Personal Stylist: Lime Crime: The Vegan Beauty Brand that Started the Unicorn Trend
- Sifa's Corner: 6 Things Curly-Haired Women Should Avoid
- Tales of Two Blog: Is Your Retail Therapy Hurting the Planet?
- The Borrowed Babes: The Best Moody Florals for Spring
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