We’ve been encouraging you tostart swishing your clothes. We want you to try and help out the environment by swapping clothes in a fun way, rather than chucking out those unworn glad rags and contributing to the vast amounts of clothes that go to the landfill each year and the vast amount of carbon that is wasted in their production.
Well, now the government has stepped in themselves and has launched what they’ve calling the, “sustainable clothing action plan“, at London Fashion Week.
As we showed you with some of our own research we put together, the amount of clothes that are wasted each year is unbelievable. About 900,000 tonnes of clothes are sent to landfill every year in the UK alone. The Department for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) says the clothing and textiles sector in the UK produces around 3.1m tonnes of carbon dioxide, 2m tonnes of waste and 70m tonnes of waste water per year. We’re not talking small numbers here.
The Government is looking at working with UK retailers, and have put together an action plan:
· Marks and Spencer, Tesco and Sainsbury’s have pledged to increase their range of Fairtrade and organic clothing, and support fabrics which can be recycled more easily
· Tesco is banning cotton from countries known to use child labour
· Charities such as Oxfam and the Salvation Army will open more sustainable clothing boutiques featuring high quality second-hand clothing and new designs made from recycled garments
· The Centre for Sustainable Fashion at the London College of Fashion will be resourced to provide practical support to the clothing sector
· The Fairtrade Foundation will aim for at least 10% of cotton clothing in the UK to be Fairtrade material by 2012.
It’s a great start. There’s loads more information on the campaign and the struggle that lays ahead to try and shift people’s preferences away from quick, cheap and disposable fashion on the BBC website too. Feel free to discuss these plans on our board as well.
Lifestyle News 24/7
Take a Traincation
Do It In Public
Turn Up The Style
Get On Yer Bike
Love It For Life
Must-Have Smart Buys