WAS 2010 THE DECADE SUSTAINABLE FASHION WENT MAINSTREAM?

If 2010 was the decade sustainable fashion went mainstream, then 2020 must be the decade to act on everything we learned about living more sustainably. Let’s MAKE EARTH GREAT AGAIN!

Acronym MEGA – Do you see what I did there? *runs out to have baseball caps printed…

Happy New Year my lovely readers and thank you for being here!

My brother, his wife and their two little cuties have been visiting from Australia this past month so I took an extended break from the blog and social media. What began as a digital detox lasted longer than I anticipated raising the question of whether I wanted to log on again at all. My social media respite started simply so I could dedicate all my spare time to the children. Bonding with my six and eight year old nieces and strengthening the connection between them and my three children will always take priority above everything else. Naturally when your family lives all the way across the other side of world, spending time together in real life is rare.

As our precious weeks flew by, the world news grew dark and I started to wonder how I’d ever muster up enough blogging mojo to go back online again. I’m sure you know what I’m referring to, you’d have to be living under a rock to miss the global climate strikes instigated by the phenomenal Greta Thunberg. Coincidentally as millions marched, the climate crisis escalated to an emergency. Massive fires burned across the Amazon, California and now Australia, floods drowned Venice and swept through Jakarta among other places. Yet even today we still hear denial from some leaders who refuse to accept the science even while their own countries suffer the direct consequences of it. Ironically, as my family from opposite hemispheres, happily grew closer, the rest of the world simultaneously fractured and went to war.

There’s no doubt in my mind that Mother Nature is under attack from our collective abuse of power. As fires rage and floods surge, delicate ecosystems on land and at sea are destroyed, perhaps permanently. If we aren’t seeing this for the carnage that it is, we will be next. The sixth extinction is a real possibility unless WE THE PEOPLE, wake up and stop what we’re doing right now!

This is not a drill, this is a war against future generations.

THE SUSTAINABLE FUTURE OF FASHION

What outfit could I possible post that wouldn’t seem pointless and dumb next to the political and environmental turmoil of today? Is my sustainable fashion message even worthy of documenting? How many ways can I write please stop supporting fast fashion when we see little to zero effort from big brands? Equally, I despair the time for debate has passed. I wonder if trying to convince people and corporations to change their wasteful ways is still a good use of my time. Surely if we don’t know the facts by now we only have ourselves to blame for the devastation unleashed on humanity? We’re inundated with information, anyone with a phone and access to the internet can look it up. Action is what the world needs now not more advice, tips or warnings. I mean how many ways can you practice sustainability, boycott fast fashion and do zero waste? The advice is already out there, the lists are terrific but they’ve been written so many times in endless fonts and formats, nobody needs another one from me. In truth I have nothing new to add to this magical list. Like everyone else, I’m just trying to work through it as sensibly and quickly as possible.

I stopped buying fast fashion altogether, cut right back on new clothes and shoes unless they are second hand or from a sustainable brand. Even the children look for a second hand option before they ask for anything new to wear. We’re still working on the rest of our consumption but it’s going well I think.

However, removing single use plastic from the home of a family of five doesn’t happen overnight. You don’t just throw out a cupboard full of plastic containers and start fresh, that’s adding to the problem not fixing it. The same goes for textile waste and cleaning products. Most zero waste actions start by re-using what you already have and ultimately THE single best thing you can do EVERY SINGLE DAY is NOT BUY A SINGLE THING. The next best thing to do is look carefully at the product you’re about to purchase. Ask how the item was made and by whom? Remember there are also tonnes of hidden plastic products in circulation, like polyester, that can slip under your radar. A good rule of thumb is to look for the least amount of processing in manufacturing and if you’re not privvy to the intricacies of a company supply chain just walk away and repeat the words of Ghandi “There is no beauty in the finest cloth if it makes hunger and unhappiness”…and oft times slavery to be sure.

If it’s a service you’re buying ask what’s involved. Does it require water and if so how much, and ASK whether chemicals are used. Ditto food, is it organic and if it’s an animal product, what quality of life did they have, was it free-range and cruelty free for example? Everything can be done with less impact, take my dry cleaning for example. I only dry clean clothes that absolutely cannot be hand washed and I use an eco-friendly dry cleaner that doesn’t use chemicals or plastic bags.

Granted, sourcing these new ways is time consuming although once I find the best option of what I’m looking for, I tend not to deviate. At the moment I’m looking for a package free fruit and veg market so I can buy all my groceries in one place and cut out one of the shops I currently use that doesn’t provide everything plastic free. So far this is proving to be a proper pain in the butt although I know once I find the right market I’ll stick to it and all the minor hassle will be forgotten. It’s so easy to take the convenient road, believe me I get that. But “convenience” is what got us into this precarious situation in the first place so isn’t being inconvenienced a small price to pay for getting us out?

Unplugged but not disconnected

It’s the first week of January by the time I catch up on social media. With the beginning of this new decade my feed is unsurprisingly saturated by personal reflections and walks down memory lane. I quite enjoy reading other peoples posts and find some journeys particularly fascinating. This gets me thinking about my own convoluted path through the 2010’s but my mind wanders. While there was a lot of change in my life and some big events over the course this decade, nothing feels particularly extraordinary. Yes I gave birth for the last time at 42 and yes it was incredible yet that experience doesn’t define the decade for me. Nor does moving my entire family from a Brexit ravaged U.K to the Trump adled U.S feel particularly special or unique. Of course like many of you, there were some incredibly painful events to overcome, along with many happy moments peppered with sheer unadulterated joy.

However, my journey through this past decade really comes down to learning about one thing – OBSERVATION. How to observe without prejudice and learn from what I see, hear and feel, truly embodies the 2010’s for me. That’s not to say I’m completely without judgement or woke as fuck because I know I’m not but I am more self-aware than I’ve ever been and I want to be better. I’ve no doubt this is my personal work in progress and I’m happy about that, really happy.

Let’s build a sustainable population in the 2020’s

Throughout the 2010’s I observed a gradual shift in mainstream opinion on global warming. Essentially people now agree that the human impact on Earth since the industrial revolution, is responsible for global warming. I daresay burning fossil fuels alone wouldn’t have made such a mess if our species population hadn’t grown so exponentially in such a short period of time. Exploding from one billion in 1800 to 7.616 billion in 2018 and putting the wests carbon footprint leaps ahead of the rest of the world means our impact on the natural environment can only be minimised if we devolve the linear economy and adher to a circular one. Cradle to cradle or die.

Early in the decade we referred to GLOBAL WARMING in ambiguous terms – The Ozone layer is depleting, due to the over production of Co2 possibly from burning fossil fuels… and that puts us at risk. Wear sunscreen…. The decade moved on and talk grew louder as the average person started to debate preexisting science in general conversation and that’s when our collective concern ramped up.

Over a short period of time extreme weather events became common and life-threatening. Most people began to equate the wasteful lifestyle of the west with the damage to the environment and agreed that something should be done about pollution. We started calling the problem CLIMATE CHANGE.

As more of us notice the growing mountains of waste and oceans over-flowing with plastic we learn to our horror how little of it is actually recycled. The curbside recycling programs once seen as the answer to our insatiable shopping addiction presented a new problem – an over-supply of recycling was quietly sequestered. Here I am proudly recycling my single-use items for decades when suddenly I read more and more reports on the discarded mountains of it hidden in poor countries. Abandoned by nefarious companies with no intention of recycling any of it, a new term was born – There is no away…

When reality hit I felt completely naive. How could I believe so much waste, often shipped across oceans, was actually recycled into more of the same? This stupid stuff we invented to make our busy lives manageable isn’t so convenient any more. Moreover, our dependence on the source of this manufacturing goes straight back to fossil fuels! Once again it comes down to the fact that too much stuff is made to be literally thrown away. And for what? CONVENIENCE?

By the end of the decade the term CLIMATE CRISIS is replaced and escalated to the appropriately frightening CLIMATE EMERGENCY.

As the entire world watches bushfires continue to ravage Australia, two things stand out for me. Borders are bullshit and burning fossil fuels cannot end soon enough.

*Links to read more about Arielle’s incredible collection, her philosophy on sustainabile fashion and the zero waste movement.

Bye for now eco warriors xx

*Photos by Mariela M Photography