Australians love buying cheap clothes ... too much!
Have you ever thought past the cheap top you bought recently to where it ends up once you've discarded it for a new and shinier version?
I have to say that I rarely did.
But I will now.
At present Australia is the second highest user of textiles (including synthetic materials) per capita in the world after The United States. According to Planet Ark, we buy 27kg of clothes a year but put 23kg of that into landfill. As if that wasn't enough, a recent ABC Foreign Correspondent report by Linton Besser ("Dead white man's clothes", 12 August 2021) suggested that 15 million used garments arrive in Accra, the Capital of Ghana, each week from developed nations including Australia. About 40% of that is worthless and is dumped in landfill [see link below]. One bale that was opened in front of the camera came from Australia. of the approximately 150 items it contained only 6 were usable. Six!
One of the contributing factors is the business model adopted by some fashion houses - "fast fashion". Put another way, instead of following the four seasons for the fashion cycle, fashion companies artificially induce up to a dozen "seasons" a year and manipulate even weekly changes to the styles produced. Today, a new item of clothing (usually marketed to young women and girls) can take only a week from creative, to design, to prototype, to production, to distribution to point of sale. They are cheap, worn for only a few times and discarded because the next best thing is on its way.
A few years ago I started culling items of clothing I hadn't worn at least once every couple of months. I noticed that I could fill a large shopping bag with perfectly good socks, shirts, t-shirts, even towels each year. I've started spending slightly more on better quality clothes so they last longer and also be more "op-shop ready" when I choose to give them away.
On one occasion in 2019, according to Ethical Consumer, a British not-for-profit publisher, the Pretty Little Thing brand advertised 284 items under "New In Today" (https://www.ethicalconsumer.org/fashion-clothing/what-fast-fashion-why-it-problem) In some cases this pattern is repeated weekly and even daily.
One can't but help notice that the company's business, as its name suggests, is specifically geared to very young girls, whose brains, while still not anywhere near fully developed, nevertheless are able to cajole and manipulate their parents to buy the "latest" for them.
It is a business model that plainly isn't sustainable but it brings large short-term profits on the back of waste, manipulation, environmental degradation and disrespect.
I was shocked to see the mountains of discarded clothes and leather heaped up on the outskirts of Accra in the ABC report.
It made me wonder how much of the so-called recycled clothing in Australia is rejected outright by the charities for which they are left because they are absolutely unusable.
It made me wonder whether the clothes bins outside our supermarkets are simply dumping containers for people who are too stupid (maybe that's too harsh - unaware might be closer to the mark) or too selfish to imagine what an insult that is to people who really need help, both in our own country and in developing countries.
It made me realise that my carelessness has real consequences.
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