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The Long Term Costs of Your New Clothes
- Sep 12, 2019
- 2 min read
Updated: Sep 14, 2019
My Grandma always goes on about how much clothing we have nowadays... I shudder to think of what she'd say to my bedroom at the moment. Got me thinking so I did some research ...
In an article written by Alden Wicker, For Newsweek, he relays some serious information. Even in the article title, "Fast Fashion Is Creating an Environmental Crisis" there is a hint of this trend many of us have been trying to ignore for a while now, mostly by giving to charitable organizations, recycling, and so on... Wicker quotes data from the EPA, estimating that in under 20 years, the stuff we toss every year in the U.S. has doubled...
" from 7 million to 14 million tons, or an astounding 80 pounds per person"
The EPA estimates that diverting all of those often-toxic trashed textiles into a recycling program would be the environmental equivalent of taking 7.3 million cars and their carbon dioxide emissions off the road. "
Holy free-range-organically-fed cow, I knew it was bad... but that is even worse than I realized!
So Grandma is right, in the last 40 years, Americans have upped their purchasing 5 times over. This has been my own lifetime, I see it too, but not the same as someone who grew up in the wake of the Great Depression.
I remember getting a coat, 2 pairs of everything from shoes to sweaters... One for play, and the other for dress up. Now, I'm lucky if I see the same outfit on these kids twice in a month.
That's pretty bad, even though we buy second hand and recycle all of our clothes... who really needs all this stuff anyway.
We are just teaching another generation that excess is normal.
Even 3rd world countries are refusing second hand modern clothing from the U.S. as the clothing is such poor quality. In Africa where most of the lesser quality items end up, and where some 80% of clothing bought and sold- is second hand, can you imagine how many landfills are full of chemically processed materials...
Starting out as plant based does not mean that all the clothing from Generation Disposable is doing mother earth any great favors. So from production, shipping, packaging, selling, to the disposal: our fashionable trends are creating even more environmental issues than we know about.
So ReAdress your own closet, shop sustainable when you can!
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