I pledge to participate in the 7Rs of fashion
In a 30 min interview with Allen Langdon at Closing the Loop, Founder and Executive Director of Fashion Takes Action- Kelly Drennan talked about their commitment on advancing sustainability within the fashion industry and deepened on their Textile Recycling Feasibility Report, as well as the actions we can take to make a difference. I was shocked to learn that only 1% - 3% of the textiles collected globally are being recycled and the fact that half a million tons of textile ends up in landfills all across Canada. But instead of alarming everyone with this data- and don’t get me wrong, I believe knowing this is relevant to promote change- I’m going to focus on talking about the 7 R’s of fashion that FTA promotes as a way for us to take action on reducing our fashion footprint by going beyond the regular 3 R’s: Reduce, Reuse and Recycle.
One of my favourite vintage finds were these men’s leather pants.
I’m going to start with the most important: Reduce, meaning buying less. My goal is to reduce my new clothing purchases to 25% as well as doing fewer and fuller loads of laundry and hang dry instead of tumble drying to reduce water and energy consumption. Next is Reuse- by shopping at thrift, consignment and vintage stores we are giving these clothes a second life. I also love borrowing and lending clothes with friends as part of my reuse strategy and the best part is I’m also spending much less money. And now that we started talking about money, Resale is our next R. I’ve found marketplace as a very useful platform to sell clothes I’m not using anymore but that are still in excellent condition. There are other apps that work perfectly fine such as Poshmark or ThreadUp.
Repurpose is actually something I need to work on. My struggle with creativity for Upcycling clothing has made it a little bit difficult for me to actually take this action but I still love to see how many people and brands do it. Repairing items is my go-to solution when clothing is damaged. I have found that YouTube tutorials come very handy when I need to sew lost buttons, but to be honest, for a more elaborate work I always go to my tailor.
The next R is for Rent, this is really helpful specially for items that we would otherwise have limited use of. There are sites like Boro, Fresh Fashion Library or Rent Frock Repeat with a lot of options that offer this service online, but you can also look for clothing rental libraries in your area.
Our last resort is Recycling. This past few days, I’ve learned that in order to make recycling possible and easier we have to choose clothing made with non-blended materials. Going back to my closet, I realized many of my clothes are actually a blend of poly-cotton or poly-spandex and other, I was mortified. I didn’t know at the time that these kind of materials were even worst, but now that I do, it is my responsibility to make better choices when buying.
As Kelly Brennan said during the interview- “ Nothing belongs in the garbage.”. I’m encouraging myself to have a deeper understanding of actions I can take to make a difference. While writing this post, I realized there are many small things I do to improve my footprint but there are also many others that I’m still missing. My pledge is to keep improving my daily life by incorporating those new actions.
I’ll keep you posted on my progress!
