Who doesn’t want a Pinterest-inspired closet with clothes matching the aesthetic of your choice? Then what’s stopping you from having the wardrobe of your dreams? You’d say money, and yes, money is a big factor, but apart from that, the environment’s welfare also matters, right?
Fast fashion is responsible for a lot of factors leading to environmental degradation.
Garment industries emit 4% -10% of greenhouse gases every year and are responsible for water pollution, microplastic pollution, and exhaustion of fossil fuels. The exploitation of workers is also very common in the fashion industry.
You’d be surprised to know the time period taken by different clothes to decompose in a landfill-
- Polyester items- 200+ years
- Lycra sports clothing- 20-200 years
- Leather items- 50 years
- Nylon clothes- 30-40 years
- Woolen items- 4-5 years
- Silk clothing- 4-5 years
- Denim items- 10-12 months
- Lenin and viscose clothes- few weeks
To think that 60% of all the clothing items made are landfilled or incinerated in a year is shocking indeed.
So, now you may ask how you can take an eco-friendly approach to fashion?
Simple, follow sustainable fashion habits wherein you can utilize clothes without compromising mother nature’s health while also supporting small businesses, laborers, and skilled workers. The following factors will help your wardrobe to be as sustainable as possible:
Thrift
Thrifting has become very popular in the past few years. Thrifting is when you go shopping at a thrift store, garage sale, or flea market to get gently used items at discounted prices. There are many great online thrift stores to check out too. Some items might be brand new or worn once or twice with enough life to be useful to the new owner. Thrifting is very exciting as you can find cool, rare items at very affordable prices. Thrifting has also become a prevalent business domain where people can run it from home with the help of e-commerce websites such as Shopify. These businesses can create a profile on such websites and opt for additional security features like a Shopify fraud prevention app to ensure they don’t encounter fraudulent transactions.
Rent
Have to buy a dress for a party? But do you know if you’d ever wear it again? When you’re unsure about such a possibility, why not rent an outfit for the event? Renting a designer dress rather than buying one would be much more affordable. This will help you save a lot of bucks, and you can also get the perfect dress for the occasion.
Buy From Sustainable Fashion Brands
Look out for sustainable fashion brands that source clothes from local garment makers, thus ensuring they earn a fair wage in safe working conditions. Look out for Sustainable fashion brands who use upcycled textiles in their designs along with using other eco-friendly measures of making clothes. You could even find brands that make unique, organic clothes such as comfy bamboo socks. Try to incorporate as much of sustainability in your clothing options; you should be able to find different brands as more and more companies start turning to nature-friendly manufacturing.
Such brands create limited clothes with top-quality material that have a long life. You can get anything from the sustainable market, sustainable loungewear, trendy dresses for parties, traditional suits, winter wear. You name it, and you will find a sustainable brand producing it.
Try Upcycling And DIY
Do you still have your old school uniform or childhood clothes stored in the dusty box?
It’s time you take them out and experiment. Choose a design and make new clothes out of those fabrics. This is called upcycling, which is such a cool and fun way to give new life to those clothes. DIY from YouTube tutorials or go to your tailor. The choice is yours on how you want to get your sustainable personalized outfit.
Conclusion
Be conscious of what you buy and how you take care of it so that they last as long as possible. Gently use your clothes while taking care of them to ensure they have a second life. Don’t just dispose of clothes if you don’t wish to use them anymore when they’re still usable but instead resell them to thrift stores or donate them to charitable organizations looking for used clothes.
If the clothes are too worn out for these options, try to find recycling methods, especially for such items.
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