Florals & Musings

Let’s talk about clothes. Specifically about how much I love fashion and shopping. I love the first time you put on a new outfit. I love putting together outfits from makeup to clothes to accessories to shoes, a put together look gives me “good outfit energy”, which can set my mood for the rest of the day.

But it’s doing our planet no favors.

Fashion is the world’s biggest polluter after oil. The average American throws away 70 pounds of clothing each year, which are commonly made of synthetic materials. Approximately 80 billion pieces of new clothing are bought each year and 26 billion pounds are sent to the landfills.

We buy clothes. We wear them for a bit. Then we get bored of them and throw them away. Then start the cycle all over again. And I am not exempt from this problem.

My earliest memories are shopping trips with my mother. We would have ‘yes days’ where we would shop the whole day and I would get anything (within reason) that I asked for. It was so much fun and I loved it.

So, I developed a love for shopping. I couldn’t pass up a good bargain, and I always thought that this new piece of clothing would complete my wardrobe. Then, as if on cue, I would get bored and want to buy new stuff all over again.

Basically, I was a consumer through and through and I had to break that habit. Overconsumption is bad for the environment, it’s bad for human workers who are exploited to make our clothing, and it’s bad for my wallet.

Last year, I started buying the majority of my clothing second-hand from consignment stores. I found the clothes to be in just as good condition as new, and I avoided the production cost of new clothes. Plus, it was fun to find the hidden gems that were still in excellent condition at amazing prices. Ever pay $0.99 for a shirt that was originally $100+ in the store? It’s awesome.

Buying second-hand helps but I want to do more. That’s why for 2019, I pledged not to purchase any clothing at all and to donate clothes I was no longer wearing. I purchased my wedding dress in November 2018 and that is the last piece of new clothing I’ve purchased since then.

We have to get away from both the ‘fast fashion’ that is created, used, and discarded in a short amount of time. It’s severely damaging the environment.

But even clothing that isn’t ‘fast fashion’ still has a negative environmental impact. Synthetic materials leech microplastics into the water every time they’re washed and lose microplastic fibers whenever they’re worn.

And actually, solutions we think are eco-friendly really aren’t quite. In fact, t-shirts made out of recycled bottles stills leech microplastics into our oceans when that t-shirt is washed, which affects everyone. (Source). It seems like a great solution on the outside, but when you dig deep under the surface, it could be suggested that you’re trading one issue for another.

So what can we do? The first step I decided to take was to stop purchasing clothing for this year. It’s hard because we’ve been taught to think that things make us happy, that we will unlock that last bit of contentment with these shoes but that is a lie. We don’t need that t-shirt or dress to make us happy, happiness comes from within.  It ties back into my larger goal of living a minimalist lifestyle and rejecting the consumerist messages we’ve been inundated with our whole lives.

But what after that? Obviously I will not be able to go the rest of my life without buying clothes. Well, I’m going to purchase second-hand as much as possible, to extend the life cycle of the clothing, but that’s still not perfect because synthetic fibers still exist. So, I’m also going to do my due diligence about clothing fabrics, and purchase clothing with the smallest carbon footprint.

Being eco-friendly is complicated and it’s not easy. It takes a lot of dedication, research, and acceptance that you won’t be perfect at it. A lot of people believe that if you can’t solve the issue completely then it’s not worth solving, but I disagree – I think any progress toward the goal is good. We just also have to remember that small steps aren’t enough, we’ll have to to be bold to solve the issue of climate change.