Post No.: 0722
Furrywisepuppy says:
The most sustainable thing for the environment when it comes to clothes is to buy good enough items, then to wear them as many times as possible.
Fix any bits of damage if and when they appear (a stitch in time saves nine), like buttons that come off or seams that start to break (where any stitches are dead easy to hide) – and basically wear, wash, care for and repair your clothes until they’re truly worn out. Unless you have hand-eye-coordination problems, this isn’t tricky. It’s less expensive than throwing serviceable clothes away too. The time it takes to do a small repair will likely be far quicker than the time it takes for you to earn the money to buy a replacement item, hence repairing is simply the rational decision.
On a slight diversion, I’ve seen negative product reviews for clothing that mention excess threads or maybe small holes in the seams. Indeed write a negative review to state the facts (yet be fair based on the price you had paid) and/or negotiate for a partial refund – but don’t concede that the item will need to be discarded or necessarily returned because it’s so easy to cut short those excess threads or to stitch up those holes oneself unless they’re in a prominent place (which is doubtful if they’re across an existing seam). It just takes a pair of scissors, a bit of thread (go a shade darker than the fabric if you want it as hidden as possible) and a needle; and you can do it by hand while watching TV. A seam ripper tool is useful too, and a good thing with most clothing fabrics is that if you make a mistake then your stitches can be totally unpicked then ironed over without leaving a trace. Other types of consumer products that aren’t perfect might just need a little bit of the right glue, a bit of ironing, sanding or whatever and it’ll be perfect too (read Post No.: 0673). No stress, no waste!
If you constantly want different stuff though then a halfway solution would be to wear or use clothes or accessories as much as you want, then to swap them with other people via a swapping service. This still introduces additional transport miles for all the deliveries and returns however. Very similarly, renting clothes via a renting service is better than using clothes only a few times, but it’s still overall better to wear one’s own clothes to near destruction.
Instead of using a clothes rental service however – some unscrupulous consumers just keep the tags on clothes and wear an item once (they take a couple of social media snaps with them wearing it) then return it to the online retailer, claiming that it’s the wrong size or something like that to get their money back so that they can buy something else, and do the same thing again. They then rationalise to themselves that it’s good for the environment because that item will get sold to someone else and thus no harm is done. But that’s not how it always works. The returns process requires transport, checking and cleaning the item, and thus requires energy. And some retailers will calculate that this isn’t worth the cost and, because of ‘fast fashion’, it’ll soon be last season’s stock too, hence the returned item often just gets dumped and wasted. Online clothes retailers have gotten wiser to this egregious practice though.
This issue relates to the greater subject of ‘reverse logistics’, which is about the reuse of products and materials and aiming for a closed-loop rather than disjointed returns or unsold goods management process, to recapture value and minimise waste. It can include remanufacturing or refurbishing returned products, reclaiming raw materials, reusing packaging, and reselling items that have been restocked. This makes sense for the environment and should make sense for business too.
We should still aim to wear and keep our clothes for as long as they can be functionally worn. However, the fashion industry makes the most profits for itself when customers regularly buy new clothes and stuff repeatedly i.e. fast fashion. So this is a conundrum between capitalist versus environmental interests. The industry does employ lots of people from around the world so it’s about economics and jobs too hence it’s not just a case of corporate greed. Having said that, the occasional use of sweatshops (even by some major global brands) by exploiting poor workers and sometimes even child labour, especially in poor countries, in return for unfair wages, no benefits, poor (unsafe) working conditions and unreasonable hours, will tell us that corporate greed is absolutely a factor!
The big clothing labels have entered the rental sector because they want to at least control as much of that space regarding their own products as they can. But they’ll never want rental to dominate how clothes are traded – if they can help it.
There’s so much misleading greenwashing in this industry too, like regarding recycled trainers.
For their price point, clothes, in particular, and in general, don’t appear to be made as robustly as they used to be – as if they’re intentionally designed to only last a few washes before they warp or disintegrate! This shows us that just because consumers may demand something, it doesn’t mean it should be supplied. In this modern world, fashion is a corporate and media construct – otherwise clothes are just things that keep you warm and cover your bits and you can wear whichever ‘season’s’ clothes whenever you want.
So clothes rental and swapping are great ideas; like library book rental and book swapping are. Most extended family networks already hand down clothes that older children don’t fit anymore to younger children to wear. But a problem is that most clothes manufacturers and retailers would rather us constantly buy new whenever we personally want different clothes. They’d rather us not lend or borrow, or resell or buy used. (This has happened with videogames where it’s increasingly about downloading or streaming games rather than selling physical copies that can be lent to friends or sold second-hand; although here there’s an environmental benefit of doing without the plastic cases, discs and transport of physical products.)
Yet we cannot solely blame this fast fashion culture on the manufacturers and retailers because it’s about both supply and demand. Too many people want to give the impression that they’re living a certain kind of lifestyle when they seem to never wear the same clothes more than a few times; as if wearing the same items too often implies that one is poor (even somehow dirty) and cannot afford new clothes regularly i.e. clothes, and new clothes, are seen as status symbols. It’s about the dreaded conspicuous consumption again!
We’re in an appalling culture when some people attempt to mock others for wearing the same clothes more than once if they’re public figures. (School uniforms are partly about avoiding this kind of snobbery and bullying.) But hopefully one day soon the new virtue signal will be to show that one truly cares about the environment by wearing the same clothes for years. It’s not disgusting to wear clothes that are old because they’re obviously being continually washed – it’s disgusting to be wasteful.
Wear clothes for 5, 10, years, or more. People should be praised and respected instead of sneered at for having clothes (and other kinds of possessions) that are old or show signs of repair. (Sashiko – a type of Japanese embroidery – shows us that fixed patches can be decorative.) However, you can probably guess what’s going to happen if this behaviour does get praised – it’ll become an ‘image trend’ and manufacturers will make, and people will buy, new clothes that are faked to look old and repaired, just like pre-distressed jeans that give the impression that the wearer’s life is rugged and adventurous(!) Your own little stitches showing repairs will show that they’ve authentically had a life because you as the wearer has had a life; whereas pre-distressed clothing is inauthentic yet sells because people care more about their public image than the private truth!
The term ‘sustainable’ written in marketing materials isn’t presently a regulated term either, hence could mean anything, or virtually nothing. We therefore need to check the small print and obtain some clear and firm minimum guarantees expressed in numerical terms rather than ‘up to’ figures (which only express an upper limit of their ambition) or mere statements that an item uses ‘less’ or ‘more’ of something (which can be made to sound better than something really is when a deliberately poor benchmark is selected for comparison).
A little bit of knowledge can be a dangerous thing too. For example, someone might learn that it takes ~7,500l of water to produce just one pair of cotton jeans. So they avoid cotton and buy polyester clothing instead. (They might even chuck away all of their existing jeans because they want to virtue signal to others that they don’t support the purchase of cotton clothing, even though they’ve already been purchased and the best thing now is to keep wearing them for as long as possible.) But they haven’t learnt that polyester uses fossil fuels and sheds microplastics, which are a potential risk to marine and freshwater environments.
So it’s not only a greenhouse gas issue but a freshwater issue. It’s thus a case of ‘if it’s yellow, let it mellow; if it’s brown, flush it down’ too i.e. people don’t need to flush every time they pee. (There’s plenty of seawater on the planet but desalination requires tons of energy.) Hmm, perhaps we should train humans to pee outside in the garden like dogs do?(!) Woof!
Alternative fibres have their pros and cons presently. Having one or two leather handbags that last a lifetime is better for the environment than buying dozens of vegan-friendly-material handbags every few years, at least with current material technologies.
Only once we learn enough do we realise that the problem is complex if we wish to continue our present level of consumption. Well, once more, we do know that the best thing to do is to reduce our level of consumption, to buy less, and to wear and maintain the clothes we get, or really likely have already got, for as long as possible.
In ‘developed’ countries, we may think it’s okay though because we can simply donate our clothing to poorer countries. But this is misguided because there’s more than enough clothing being donated nowadays – so much that their problem now is to deal with the scrap! The waste problem is being passed onto them. The best thing is to wear clothes until they’re un-donatable, rather than donating them when still wearable – donate the money saved from not buying new clothes instead.
With non-biodegradable waste, richer countries have been producing the most waste and then exporting much of it to poor countries so that the problem is offloaded onto them. These poorer places have become the toxic and unsightly rubbish tips for the richer places. Some of these ‘developing’ countries are thus beginning to reject these kinds of international trades, and the more industrialised countries will therefore need to find their own ways to fully treat, recycle and dispose of their own waste (and rightly so).
In summary, we may attempt to shame people who wear old clothes or still use old phones or other old stuff, but such judgements should backfire because if we continue to improvidently consume the planet’s limited resources and pump out industrial pollution and greenhouse gases at the rates we have been, then we should really be the ones hanging our heads in shame instead.
We have to ditch this fast fashion culture. We must start respecting individuals for showing restraint and being frugal. We should care more about the environment than being short-sighted snobs. Regulations may help here.
Woof.
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