What is sustainable fashion and 7 tips on how you can dress for less with a conscience

What is sustainable fashion? Without realising, every year we are damaging the environment. Each clothing item we buy and throw away has a huge, harmful impact on the planet, and a lot of it is down to fast fashion. Sustainable fashion aims to tackle the issue of fast fashion through several approaches. But before we jump into our tips here are some shocking statistics!

Sustainable fashion statistics

• One lorry bin of textiles is discarded every second.
• Half a million tonnes of plastic microfibers released during washing up end up in the ocean, where it is consumed by fish and possibly enters our food chain.
• 80 billion pieces of clothing are consumed every year
• A single t-shirt takes 2,700 liters of water to make. The same amount of water an average person drinks over the course of 900 days.

Sustainable fashion tips to dress for less

Don’t fall into the fast fashion trap.

Try to avoid buying clothes just because they are fashionable. Most trends die down, and when they do people stop wearing the clothing, resulting in the clothes getting thrown away. If you bought your clothes according to the latest fashion, every time a new style appeared your “old” clothes would be thrown in the bin. Around 1.72 million tonnes of brand-new fashion are bought each year in Britain, and 1.5 million of those tonnes get thrown away. Instead of buying clothes that keep up with the trend but become discarded junk as soon as something different pops up, why not try buying much simpler clothing that you can easily accessories to fit your preferred style?

Shop for sustainable fashion brands

Many cheap yet harmful clothing items come from big brands which sell their clothes for a smaller price but tend to follow the fast fashion trend. As mentioned previously, this not only destroys the environment but in the long term will add up to a greater cost. In order to save money and reduce your negative impact on the environment shop at sustainable fashion brands such as Sancho’s, Organic threads, Thought, people tree and many more.

Social media influencers to follow for sustainable fashion

All over social media there are sustainable fashion influencers. You can follow them in order to stay updated on this crisis and to become more involved in the sustainable fashion community! Some popular Instagram influencers are @consciousnchic, @aditimayer, @candicemtay, @englishlassinla and Venetia falconer

Think before you buy.

If you see a cheap, wearable clothing item think to yourself- “am I still going to wear this in five years?”. If the answer is yes, then by all means go ahead and buy it, otherwise forget about it; spending money on it would only contribute to the steadily growing issue of pollution. Make sure to check the material it is made from as well and avoid buying polyester!

NEVER bin clothes.

Fashion is at an estimated 4th to 10th most polluting industry in the world, and if we continue to keep up the fast fashion trend, these numbers could grow. In fact, up to 20% of global water pollution is credited to the clothing industry. Furthermore, the more clothes we bin the more clothes we must make, and in the production of these clothes many chemicals are used which are cancerogenic towards humans. By giving away your clothes instead of binning them, not only are you reducing your carbon footprint but also preventing others from buying more and more clothing

Check the material.

Polyester is one of the most used materials in the making of clothing, alongside other damaging synthetic fibres. It produces up to three times more carbon dioxide than renewable fibres and can also take up to two hundred years to deuterate. Before you buy a clothing item, check the material in order to reduce your carbon footprint and try shopping for clothes with renewable fibres, which are less harmful to the environment. Some examples are bamboo, wool, organic cotton and recycled polyester.

Bring your own bag.

Not heavily related to fast fashion, but the plastic fibres in the bags given out in clothes shops are harmful to the environment. That’s why it always a good idea to bring your own bag when you go clothes or even food shopping instead of wasting more plastic and increasing pollution.

Following these handy tips could really make a difference. Try out our suggestions and help save the planet! Have we missed any useful points on sustainable fashion? If so feel free to leave a comment below