Can environmentalism kill fashion?

As my search for ethical things to buy continues, I find myself being more and more fussy about things. I’ll admit that I do have lapses into bad habits when it comes to buying underwear and bargain CDs on the odd occasion but most of the time I do try to find the most ethical way to buy. I’ve even switched to lip balm from Burt’s bees which doesn’t contain petroleum products (after I’ve finished up the old one first), organic toothpaste and paraben free hair products.

I love the way that ethical shopping is becoming more mainstream; this month Marie Claire magazine dedicated a whole issue to green glam. My only concern with this consumerist version of ethical shopping is that it’s still shopping. OK, you can buy an organic or fair-trade dress that’s £132 from an ethical online store such as Adili but that’s expensive to most of us and there’s no transparency is where the money is going. I think given the choice between high priced ethical good and standard high street prices, the high street is going to win. But then if you can save £100 by shopping on the high street and then donate a percentage of your savings to a suitable charity (such as a child labour charity) then surely that can’t be bad? Even something simple like an organic t-shirt can seem pretty pricey plus if it’s from a high street store is it really that much better?

Fashion is such a wasteful industry and disposable fashion can be just as damaging to the environment as air travel so you can see why Traid started. Traid is a charity that collects and recycles old clothes by repairing them and reselling them, the money raised is then used to fund sustainable development projects. Traid works at both reducing waste and making a difference in the world and it makes me want to buy things just so that I’m supporting it. It’s very difficult to see how fashion can be sustainable at all as the nature of fashion means throwing out unfashionable items regularly just to stay in vogue. The phrase ‘make do and mend’ is bandied about a lot but seems totally incompatible with fashion. I wonder if our new found love of saving the planet will impact on the fashion industry. Sustainable fashion is probably an oxymoron so maybe environmentalism will overthrow the tyrannical reign of fashion.

Could recycling save a city?

The recent news footage of the rubbish problem in Naples is rather disturbing. This is a modern city, in a modern world but it cannot deal with its own waste. The images clearly show that amongst the litter is cardboard and many other recyclable materials. I suppose, to some extent, I take for granted the kerbside recycling collection in my area, its not something I really think about any more as I’ve been recycling for so many years now. Taking the glass to the bottle bank is habit for me now, as is separating the paper from the plastic and taking the veg peelings to the compost bin. Waste is such a huge issue; in Naples they have run out of space to put their waste. In New York they had Fresh Kills landfill on Staten Island – personally, I find the idea of dumping your unwanted waste on an island a rather dismissive attitude. (Perhaps I’m biased because I used to live on the Isle of Wight but it feels rather like an Alcatraz idea to me: keeping something you don’t want to think about at a distance rather than confronting and dealing with the problem.) There’s also a floating pile of rubbish drifting around the Pacific Ocean. Recycling, reusing and avoiding packaging can stop these problems from getting worse. I don’t know if the litter we’ve already created can ever go away but we really should be doing everything we can to stop them from getting worse. If we don’t, then more and more cities will be stinking like Naples.

Will the credit crunch threaten ethical spending?

Many people will have noticed that the cost of living has rocketed in the past few months. Most noticeable is the cost of food. A few months ago, I was starting to buy more fair trade and organic produce and hoping that the rest of the country would be doing the same. We’ve all seen Hugh’s chicken run and most of us are keen to make more ethical choices when it comes to buying food. But with these rising food prices, I think we’re going to find a lot of people turning back to the cheaper alternatives. Plus, many people are finding that general living costs such as utility bills and mortgages are also going up so belts will have to be tightened on the non essentials. It’s a very sad state of affairs. Some might say we were on the brink of being able to change the food industry in this country to a more ethical and sustainable industry, but as usual, money has come between us and our ideals.