- Ruth Strange from Ethical Consumer magazine– We were joined on 24thJune at our TDEG Zoom meeting by Ruth Strange, who talked to us about environmental impacts of the fashion industry and how to slow down fast fashion, which, we discovered, is responsible for ‘more greenhouse emissions than all international flights and shipping combined’. We learned of some staggering statistics, such as the average UK consumer buys 60% more clothes now than 15 years ago – but keeps them for half as long! Fast fashion is cheap and changes at an alarming rate, and only 1% of it is recycled to new. Shocking figures that we all need to know about and consider when we are thinking about buying new clothes.
- But it wasn’t all doom and gloom. We now know there are things we can do, e.g. buy organic cotton or linen, buy good quality clothing that will last, swap and repair, and check out the Ethical Clothes Shops guide (at ethicalconsumer.org) in the Ethical Consumer magazine before buying! You can see Ruth’s presentation and read our notes from the group discussions after the talk here. Look out for tips and recommendations appearing on our Facebook page in the coming weeks.
- Check out some great tips for avoiding fast fashion in this Guardian article.
