I am excited about trying new techniques to mend my clothing, in both invisible and visible ways. What remains to be seen is how welcome some of the results will be in professional settings. Even as a sustainability professional, I don’t often see colleagues wearing mended clothing, and I wonder if that is an intentional choice or the symptom of a pervasive business norm.
Most of our clothes today are made with plastic, which tends to be cheaper than natural materials but leads to pollution, climate change, negative health impacts, and more money spent in the long run compared to investing in quality garments and maintaining them. Unfortunately, many of us lack the necessary money, time, or requisite skills to opt for the more sustainable option.
I’m a sucker for marketing gimmicks, especially when they involve sustainability, which is why a new line of wool garments caught my eye. Wool is making a resurgence among outdoorsy and travel-minded communities, and it aligns nicely with principles of environmental conservation. This natural fiber is lightweight, durable, insulating, and doesn’t hold onto odors the way plastic-based performance fabric alternatives do.
As we enter July, it is once again time to examine our relationship with plastic (which permeates so much of our daily lives and this blog already). While it can be difficult to find alternatives to plastic, especially in food packaging, it is important to understand how some so-called alternatives can be harmful (or not really be alternatives at all).
I’m trying to transition my wardrobe and home goods to all natural fibers, retiring items that have reached the end of their useful lives and buying responsibly to replace what I have to, when I have to. Although I probably could have managed with my uncomfortable pillow for a while longer, political events accelerated my switch to a comfortable and sustainable buckwheat hull pillow.
We’re taught that recycling is a good thing, and doing it makes us feel responsible. In reality, there are serious limitations to recycling’s benefits when it comes to certain materials, especially plastics – even begging the question if new processes, such as “chemical recycling” are even possible. Unfortunately the plastic industry is banking on our trust, including when it comes to “recycling” fabrics.
Although I don’t buy a lot of stuff, I do accumulate it over time. Wanting to make the “right” decision when getting rid of it means a lot of analysis paralysis around my options. One option I thought made obvious sense with clothing donations was sending unwearable items to developing countries. In reality, that choice carries some economic drawbacks for the people I’m trying to help.
My mom’s clothes had been sitting in bags in my house for over a year, waiting for me to summon the motivation to sort through them… and do research on how to dispose of them responsibly. Clothes are such an integral part of our lives (and economies) that decisions about what to do with them once you have them are not so simple.
Last year a friend told me he was very excited now that he knew he could take his hard-to-recycle plastic to our local recycling company. I bit my tongue, knowing that it was probably too good to be true. At best, those plastics would end up in a landfill, but I had also heard that chemical recycling might be even worse for the environment.
Misconceptions abound when it comes to recycling, and a new technology called “chemical recycling” is being positioned as a major win for recycling hard-to-recycle plastics. No matter their intentions for the future, most chemical recycling facilities are currently turning plastics into fuel to be burned, not recycled plastics to replace virgin plastics. Perception is everything in the court of public opinion, and information matters.