What Am I Passionate About?

My definition of sustainability is the ability to reduce water and natural resource use and waste in every step of a product's production or services. Reusing materials and properly managing waste of old products. This creates a balance between production and waste clean up. Circularity is keeping natural resources in a closed loop system to maintain the resources we have. This means keeping the environment, ecosystem, and future generations in mind when creating and producing. 

 I have a huge problem with unfit working conditions and child labor. While learning about the Sustainable Development Goals I had come across many problems which relate to the fashion industry. It's upsetting to hear about how many people who make our clothes ,that we spend thousands of dollars on, don't have safe drinking water, food, or even homes. Clothing brands send their waste and post-consumer waste to impoverished foreign countries where it’s unethically disposed of. This pollutes people's water systems and air quality, which affects their crop growth and food production. I know I am thousands of miles away and can't see this happening in front of me but when I buy a garment I don't want to envision the hands of starving people and children making the garment. That's why I am conscious of where I consume from. I haven't bought from a clothing franchise in years and mostly shop second hand for eco-friendly reasons. I tell everyone I know not to buy from fast fashion brands and try to advertise this on my instagram too. I hope I encourage people to be a conscious consumer and even if I don't, I at least know where my clothes are coming from. 

This is a scene from the documentary, “Fast Fashion: The real cost of low-cost Fashion”. I found it so upsetting to see this woman who is only twenty years old living with gray hair and health conditions. This scene always comes to mind when I think about the effects of fashion pollution on people.

“Fast Fashion: The real cost of low-cost Fashion”, is a documentary that will always be a strong learning moment for me. The content is very transparent and allows a perspective into the lives of many fast fashion contributors. Witnessing the conditions people and children can be in is a very moving sight. I don’t think I completely grasped how dire this situation was to me until I watched how people and the planet are suffering from the making and disposing of fabrics and garments. This documentary also shows you how ruthless and unaware people in the fast fashion industry are. You are able to grasp a concept of the oblivious influencers who promote these cheap and corrupt brands. While you also see an inhumane business man avoiding confrontation about inhumane working conditions. Every detail in this documentary is important and eye-opening to creating a humane and environmentally-safe fashion industry. This has been my second time watching this but it was still as breathtaking to watch.

Since, I have advocated for environmentally-safe actions and transparency in the workplace, I’d like to back my words up with my own fashion carbon emissions test results. The image above is from last year when I had first taken this test and the image below is this this years results. I am happy to see i’ve improved my CO2 emissions by 68 pounds since last year. That is a huge improvement for me, especially because I am already on the low end of the scale. I encourage you to check out your fashion carbon emissions by clicking on the image above.This will direct you to Thredups Fashion Footprint Calculator. There are many climate forward, circular, and eco-friendly organization and groups you can check out and subscribe to. These communities may help spark interests, ideas, or just keep you updated.