I’ve been thinking a lot about how my business and many others are having negative impacts on the environment without even being aware of it! It’s time for a more informed and transparent fashion industry. I hope that with this blog post and hopefully more to come I can help to inform customers and businesses about the impact of fashion on the environment.
Fashion, it impacts people’s lives in lots of ways, but how does it impact the environment and our animal friends? The world of fashion is constantly evolving, and although it may seem like you were just wearing your light up jelly shoes last week, you’d probably get some strange looks wearing them down the street today. This constant fashion evolution leads us to fast fashion, the production of cheaply-made disposable clothing with the sole purpose of keeping up with what’s trending. The problem with this is since our trendy clothes are so poorly made, we are constantly throwing them away. This leads to a large amount of the world’s clothing ending up in places other than our closets.
According to SustainYourStyle.org, only 15% of clothing is donated or recycled! Although sending your clothing to chain donation centers doesn’t always mean it ends up where you expected, small local thrift stores and consignment shops are more likely to get your gently used items in to the hands of someone who will appreciate them much more than the seagulls at the dump. Speaking of the seagulls, the current state of the fashion industry isn’t very helpful to them either. To be continued.