Clothing waste.

[GettingStuffed]

This is the artist that piqued my interest and since then I've seen more

Do you know where recycling and overproduced clothing goes. I always assumed that they were broken down in to fabric and then reused.

This isn't the case. If you look a Ghana you'll find immense piles of our clothing. Much as I love clothes and have far too many 😀. I've vowed not to buy stuff I done need nevermind how pretty.

https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/global-development/2023/jun/05/yvette-yaa-konadu-tetteh-how-ghana-became-fast-fashions-dumping-ground

I buy all natural fibres as far as possible.

If clothes really are only fit for the bin then cotton, viscose & linen can be shredded and go in the compost heap. Wool coats and sweaters I usually repair and give to the Sallie Army.

School uniforms go to the school second hand shop.

I think people are getting a little bit more aware (but also quality of clothing seems to be dropping too).
Have to admit Ive taken alot of stuff to the chazza these last few years (unavoidable as I went from a 22/24 to a 8/10!).

But I do have some old stuff 'saved'. If you open any of my cushions or pouffe you will probably find they have extra padding of old socks and pants!😅

I was aware of this.

I try to only buy my kids stuff on Vinted but I still buy too much and now that I think of it every time I buy something on Vinted I don’t really need someone else doesn’t get to buy it and might buy new etc

I can’t walk into shipping centres these days without just seeing landfill. For example went into H&M with my little girl and she was begging for all this plastic crap - Frozen umbrellas etc

As extreme as it may seem while I don’t want us all to be going around in hemp I do think we should put some sort of limit on consumption of clothes. I don’t know how that could be rolled out though.

As a geography teacher I make and effort to teach about this to my classes

I can’t walk into shipping centres these days without just seeing landfill.

Same @the7Vabo, Zara and H&M are just a vast sea of polyester tat. The only high street clothing shop I bother to go in now is Massimo Dutti, because it's quite old school in there and a pleasant atmosphere, but I rarely buy anything. I enjoy browsing the new styles and colours, then look on Vinted, Vestiare, Depop etc. for things I actually want.

I also only buy natural fibres, unless it absolutely can't be avoided (e.g. shower curtains—surely there must be a waterproof viscose or something? It's all polyester). For things like jeans, underwear, t-shirts, if I buy new, I look for organic cotton.

I suppose all this makes me feel better, but I know it's pointless. I wish we could put the plastic genie back in the bottle but—as with climate change—it would require a level of international cooperation that's just not possible.

I show this video Lifecycle of a t shirt to my KS3 pupils. Makes you think hard about need vs want.

I can’t walk into shopping centres these days without just seeing landfill.

I feel the same. Shop after shop with endless rows of clothing, dozens of each item in 20 different sizes and 7 different colours. It's overwhelming.

Christmas jumpers, plasticky dressing up/book day costumes and at the moment acres of throwaway Halloween tat - plastic cobwebs encrusted with plastic spiders, miles of plastic blood splattered hazard tape, nylon witches hats and polythene bat curtains.

It will almost all be in the bin on 1st November. Why are we doing all this?

It does feel like some sort of collective madness.

I blame social media for wanting decorations for every occasion.

We do it because we live in a capitalist society and need to be sold the next new thing. I’m glad you started this thread @GettingStuffed but this shouldn’t be new news in 2024. Do people still not get what we are doing to the planet?

I’m far from perfect myself and very much a work in progress but I think appreciating that shops and fashion only wants to sell you the new thing now, and that that thing will be superseded by something new in a few weeks, is helpful. Influencers are not helping.

I think when the quality of clothing is so poor it's harder to get people into the mindset of valueing clothes and being prepared to repair them. Sometimes the fabric is so poor that they can't even be repaired and they will not be able to be passed on either. Much of it feels like cheap trash.

I don't buy as much as I used to as I feel too old and frumpy for current fashions to be fair.

It’s not just clothing… bloody Halloween tat and Christmas shite. It’s really sad that we’ve got to this state

I’m struggling a bit with my dd. She’s 11 and just getting in to fashion. I’ve had to compromise in some way. So, during the normal year she’s only allowed to buy off Vinted. But for Christmas and Birthday she can have a voucher for places such as H&M and Zara to have a bit of a shopping splurge for the experience.

I refuse to let her buy from Primark/Temu/Shein…. Although I know H&M and Zara are similar I feel they’re the lesser of the evils and hopefully with time we will adjust to fully 2nd hand, or higher end shops… problem is!!…. Being ethical isn’t always cheap!

I love a bit of decorating but I agree, so much cheap crap. I almost wish there could be quality rules on what's allowed to be sold so at least there would be less stuff that's more likely to last for longer even if it cost more.

I tend to buy good brands that I couldn’t afford new anyways on Vinted.
I have a collection of blazers I’ve had for years and years.

Ive put on weight though, it was easier when a was a size 10 and knew exactly what size to buy, now it’s more of a risk that something won’t fit or won’t be flattering.

I recently got a Sandro coat in an outlet, was around £180 still not cheap but I’ll have it for years and years.

I love Pinterest for making and creating my own… but this often comes at a higher cost. So I can understand why people buy the tat.

If nothing else the fact that it's second hand means it can cope with a few goes in the washing machine and still be fit to wear.

The other thing with this whole unsold clothing to landfill (the Ghana article talks mostly about used clothing, but similar articles on the clothing dumped in Atacama talk also of unsold clothing) is that fast fashion has largely decoupled supply for demand. So much tat being put out and only some of it (albeit too much) sold. Obviously, if society as a whole rejected the fast fashion model, there would be enough impetus for change, but as it is, it doesn't seem that the production is particularly sensitive to actual consumption.

I don't 'do' Hallowe'en now DS is grown but part of the joy of Christmas decorations are their history.

Buy good quality ones that will last, one or two a year. Our Christmas tree is like a red and gold family history, with no waste. 🙂

It's absolutely sickening on many levels. Including the fact that richer countries are able to pollute Ghana and other places, in part because they have a tradition of recycling our secondhand clothing, after being forced to wear western dress under colonial rule.

I live in a town of around 17,000. Like most towns there are clothing recycling bins all over the place. And there is a lot of giving out currently as they are always overflowing (even though they are regularly emptied), and how people will come along see the full bin & dump the clothing beside it where it gets destroyed.
While we are busy giving out about the situation in our lovely town, we are happy enough to ship the stuff off to pollute Africa. The latter hasn’t been mentioned in the debate!!

Read so many threads on here and they'll be banging on about Autumn bits and fake trees and special baubles and new Christmas pjs and Christmas eve boxes and stocking fillers in August and advent calendars for adults and lists of fluffy socks and Christmas bits and ' I'll start with my list' and 'So far I've got all this' crap and I'm so stressed as I'm going to buy loads more crap that noone needs and it goes on and on and on and it's killing the planet. 🤷‍♀️

I refuse to let her buy from Primark/Temu/Shein…. Although I know H&M and Zara are similar I feel they’re the lesser of the evils

@Humphreyshead That's interesting. Why is Primark considered, worse than say, Zara, in your mind?

Primark is of course cheaper, but that's because they don't spend on advertising like Zara, H&M etc. I believe that they also donated a lot more money than other retailers involved in the Rana Plaza incident.

While none of the fast fashion retailers are 'good', I would definitely consider Zara to be one of the worst.

Why have MN hidden my post? Is it an offence to criticise Zara?

Try change the rules. For example, none of the adults in our family either side buy each other gifts, apart from buying our parents something which can be an experience.

Our company talks endlessly about sustainability so I assume we won’t be doing Secret Santa.

Buy fancy chocolate bars instead of boxes of chocolates which are overpriced and way over packaged.

Buy people wine or food, or the perfume they actually use etc

And if anyone on those threads calls out the waste they get wails of "I'm just doing it to make Christmas/Halloween/Holocaust Memorial Day magical for my little family! How dare you take this one small thing away from me, you monster! There's no possible other way to celebrate these things except with tat!"

The only way it'll end is if plastic is outright banned for everything except essential use (e.g. medical equipment). Obviously this will never happen though.