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’m so glad it’s not just me, my kids love Halloween and I feel like such a fun sponge when I refuse to buy the plastic tat decorations. Even pumpkins aren’t great but at least that’s a uk waste problem.

We try to limit Christmas buying and do experiences when we can, but that’s not cheap! I often feel my small efforts are pointless and wonder if I’m just making life more difficult?

DD16 is great at buying almost everything second hand. DS14 and DH are big into trainers which obviously can’t be recycled at all. I try to buy natural fibres and only what I need. Very difficult with jumpers though, they’re so expensive, so easy to ruin in the wash if you buy wool or cashmere and one I have that’s only a couple of years old has just been destroyed by moths! I have just bought a new polyester jumper, it will last much better than natural fibres, yes microplastics but me not having it isn’t realistically going to make any difference at all. What is needed is better water treatment, mandatory filters on washing machines?

We are totally addicted to consumption and it’s completely unsustainable but I don’t think there are any easy answers.

I try to only buy what is needed, DH and I are not typical consumers, we're not too bothered about having the latest anything. But I don't think it's entirely in our hands, as the consumer to impact overproduction.

The onus should be on brands to be stricter with the amount they produce. The cost of production goes down significantly when you produce high volume - but this comes at an environmental cost, and clearly it leads to over-production. Brands only need to sell a certain percentage of their stock at full price to turn a profit. Whatever surplus stock they are left with - it's a marginal cost to them whether they burn it, bin it or give it away as they've already made their money on that product. There needs to be better regulation on businesses to curb overproduction.

100% on the regulation.

But I also think drastic measures are needed at consumer level. Like everyone can buy X number of X items new a year. Unlimited second hand. It’s drastic but otherwise how will people stop??

Tbh it was cost I was thinking of. But I’ll do more research. Thank you.

I’m inclined to think from what I known that the mid tier brands like Zara as just as bad as the cheap ones but most people assume they aren’t partly as the shops feel more luxury.

Much of the fashion industry produces quantities of stock which they very well know they'll never shift entirely (particularly at the lower end where everything is man made fabrics. Although cultivating natural materials is also resource intensive and extremely polluting - and workers within the supply chain get a raw deal from cotton farmers to garment workers).

Governments need to identify ways in which to incentivise the likes of fast fashion brands to better gauge how many of each item they 'need' to produce. Perhaps setting quotas based on population size and shopper habits to work out who and how many are likely to purchase certain things and then only produce based on the predicted demand. When an item of fast fashion goes out of stock then so be it.

We can also consider penalising brands that produce significant amounts that go unsold and end up in landfill.

I must admit I've been in shops and thought you couldn't pay me to buy this awful stuff but I thought it was just me being hopeless at fashion. If they are deliberately producing stuff that won't sell that explains a lot.

They are producing excess but I doubt the produce a ton of specific product they know won’t sell.
People buy this stuff. Clothes are so cheap now they’ve become like wrapping paper, wear once & bin. You can get a too for your night out for less than the price of one drink. Who cares if you really like it?!

It’s really sad, and we dump the output of all this excess on the third world.

I am hoping to move her away from them as she gets older. She loves Vinted! Which is great!

I requested consumables only last Christmas (food / drink / toiletries) and got my best selection of gifts ever! Lovely hand cream and body lotion, cheese and chutneys, wine, and some really fancy olive oil and balsamic vinegar that I wouldn’t have justified buying for myself.

It’s all really rocketed over the last decades, unbelievable if it wasn’t true.
I’m an old fogey, I admit, please don’t jump on me, but it really doesn’t have to be like this because it wasn’t. I grew up just after the war when rationing was in force for most of my early years. But apart from that plastics were hardly around. Milk came in glass bottles that were returned, washed & reused, same with beer bottles, you got money for retuning them. The butcher wrapped everything in paper, usually reckoning up your bill in pencil on the wrapping paper, the greengrocer sold everything loose, you took a bag or basket, they weighed the stuff & tipped it into your bag. Cheese was cut off a whole cheese & wrapped in grease proof paper.
Clothes were virtually all natural fibre from our thriving cotton & wool production till nylon & the dreaded crimplene came along.No polystyrene containers at the chip shop, grease proof paper bags & newspaper. You didn’t need recycling bins cos there was hardly anything to recycle.
It really is incredible how just the basic things have changed so much in one lifetime. I suppose supermarkets & the death of the small shops are the cause of most of it.

It is truly tragic that all this “modern convenience” is just destroying the environment - visually too, all the plastic and advertising everywhere. It’s so ugly and stress-inducing to look at.

Even at supermarkets though people have become conditioned to use plastic when there’s no need. I watched someone put one garlic bulb in a plastic bag the other day - just why? Same with all fruit and veg, you still need to wash or peel it when it gets home, why bother with all the little bags?

Perhaps not there, but a related problem that comes is the need to weigh vegetables yourself at the weight, which gives you a little sticker. You have to get a bag for those. In Waitrose, they claim to be compostable, but I live in a flat and have no compost. I use the same bag for multiple products, but this risks issues with scanning (e.g. cashier scans the wrong sticker twice)

I just put the sticker on the fruit / veg. I also have a few lightweight reusable cotton bags for multiple items.

Although actually none of the supermarkets where I live do the self-weigh or self-scan system. One of them used to but they abandoned it.

Any road up, the supermarkets could just use paper bags.

I do that scan as you go thing and put stuff in a bag and keep a collection of the stickers. I guess in theory you could keep them all on some paper until check out and scan them all at once. Don't know if they'd let you do that on checkout.

I can't remember the last time I bought brand new clothes. There is so much good quality second hand clothing for almost nothing, I have to stop myself looking for bargains because I'll end up buying too much.

That’s what I was thinking. Everyone on this thread is on the same page, but on all the threads about seasonal tat they get so angry at the suggestion that it’s not really ok to buy all this stuff endlessly. And there’s so much justification about why it’s ok for their specific situation and they aren’t part of the problem…

I'm doing this, have been for quite a few years now.
Generally when asked i say bottle of wine please.

At least it's a bottle of wine I don't have to buy later and they can be any price point.
It's a win win for me and them.
I'll add, I try to say no it's ok dont bother, but some people insist.

Another option is anything for the foodbank and a link to said foodbank so they cant go wrong. Or pick your charity of choice.

Because people don’t care, they either don’t want to know or they do know and they just don’t care enough to do anything about it because goodness forbid little Johnny be deprived of a plastic bat display at Halloween.

Even though little Johnny would be perfectly happy with a costume and a few sweets and doesn’t need American style Halloween decorations to have a good time.

I wonder why this is the case though? Why do they think it's ok for them, actually, not just OK but vital that they be allowed this indulgence? I wonder if its insecurity, a sort of keeping up with the (insta) Jonses?

Nobody i know does this, i suspect, because we're too old and remember rationing and good quality stuff (plus we're not really bothered about trends or social media display).

How do we get through to people that consumerism is killing the planet?

Insta Jones, and the feeling social media gives that if you don’t do or have X and Y, you are missing out or your life is less, less aesthetically pleasing and therefore not as good.

The underconsumption core trend might help.

Quite shocked to read in that article that only 20% of stuff that goes to charity shops gets sold.

I thought they actually recycled fabrics of things that weren't sold .

I don’t know, @Game0fCrones (great username!)
There seems to be a weird disconnect where people know it doesn’t make them, or their children, truly happy, but still can’t contemplate the idea of not doing it in case their children miss out. The same as with social media. We know it’s bad for us and worse for kids, we know life was calmer and more meaningful and happier before it came along, but most people can’t quite make that leap to give it up. And with the consumerism, “I don’t want my kids to go without” is almost always the reason. The insane, unreachable idea that every day has to be special and magical and memorable, or you’ve failed. It’s a recipe for disaster in so many ways.

That's an interesting idea @LoobyDoop2

Almost 'do it and be damned' - a compulsion almost to carry on a destructive behaviour due to fear of what happens if you dont conform to the norm, even though you know it's wrong. Almost like a shoplifter or gambler.