Care, wear and repair – improving sustainability with our clothes and textiles.
I have had a long and winding journey with textiles…
As a volunteer with Brighton Repair Café I do textile repairs.
Before we moved here 2010 I ran a business making costumes and wedding dresses. I loved moving to Brighton and meeting like minded people and browsing in vintage shops. Over the years, I started reading and learning more about the fashion and textile industry – my first book was Loved Clothes Last by Orsala de Castro, who co-founded Fashion Revolution in 2013 in the wake of the Rana Plaza factory collapse in Bangladesh. Following that I made a pledge to only buy clothes from charity or vintage shops or make my own (which I hadn’t time to do before) and apart from underwear, I have largely stuck to that. For me, it gave a sense of freedom as well as saving a lot of money as I was then working as a teaching assistant.
Now I have retired I have taken on more volunteering; I do Upcycling with Emmaus in Portslade. They get beautiful donations but not necessarily ones that their customer base wants to buy so we upcycycle them into garments that have more appeal. I also do upcycling with the Textile Reuse Hub. Sibel, the main organiser, collects unwanted clothing from Shabitat, on Lewes Road, and other organisations and we repair and upcycle them and distribute them to homeless and refugee charities. I also run workshops with other local groups demonstrating basic hand sewing skills so people can repair and alter their clothes rather than giving them away.
We’ve seen an incredibly hot and dry summer – I’ve never known a July without rain – so I think we can all agree that global warming is with us. Fashion and textiles are a major contributor to this. Yet it can feel like world leaders are more focused on spending money on arms rather than protecting our environment and water supply.
WRAP – the Waste and Resources Action Programme – a global environmental action NGO has estimated that;
- 8-10% of global greenhouse gas emissions come from the fashion and textile industry.
- 93 billion cubic meters of water are used by the textile industry every year. That’s 37 million swimming pools!
- Global production of textiles will reach 147 million tonnes by 2030 -to put that into context a double-decker bus weighs 14 tons so that would be 10, 500,000 buses!
- Global clothing consumption is set to rise by 63% before 2030.
- The average person buys 28 new items of clothing each year.
- ¼ of every UK wardrobe is unworn .
- Only 1% of used textiles globally are recycled back into textile products.
So the need to rethink fashion’s linear model- make-take- waste – has never been more urgent and the move to a circular economy where companies have a closed loop system from the design process and offer resale, repair, rental and Upcycling is a powerful lever for change. This could reduce greenhouse gas emissions, slash water use and tackle textile waste. However, things are still at an early stage, it’s a very complex industry with a lack of transparency and it’s difficult for companies to scale up to make these innovations commercially viable, alongside resistance from certain sectors.
WRAP is in communication with people across the whole textile industry and there is general agreement to bring in Extended Producer Responsibility – EPR– into the UK. It has already been agreed by EU member states and will make companies responsible for the collection, sorting and recycling of textiles. WRAP are also working with the industry to enhance and scale up the sorting and recycling infrastructure and increase demand for recycled content.
The UK charity sector is currently under severe strain with the sheer volume of clothing and other goods which are donated, many of which are either broken or in too poor a condition to sell. The sorting and recycling sector is also under strain. It lost a lot of its workforce after Brexit and it’s currently a manual, very labour intensive, dirty, poorly paid job that few British people want to do.
Customers want durable, good quality, long lasting clothing. When clothes last, people develop emotional attachment to them and are less likely to throw them away. There is demand for clothing which is durable, made with safe and low impact materials which can be remade or recycled but with so many people facing financial hardship, cost is the main priority.
“No silver bullet that’s going to fix the linear economy… it’s helping us to reduce risk and scale more confidently and effectively, “ said Philippa Grogan, Head of Sustainability at Nobody’s Child.
So, although the future might look bleak I think we can all help to bring in a change in our attitudes towards clothing and textiles.
- Companies should choose eco-friendly materials and processes to reduce fashion waste
- Consumers should be encouraged to purchase clothing that will not be discarded after only been worn a few times
- We need to expand initiatives that promote textile recycling and Upcycling.
- We need responsible handling of textile waste
Some of you may already know this information and are dealing with their clothes and textiles in a sustainable manner, in which case please share what you know.
Brighton and Hove is fortunate in having a thriving sustainable, vintage and second hand clothing sector, and we’ve had the fourth Sustainable Fashion Week – called Slow Fashion Week here – which brings together industry pioneers, independent designers and makers who are focusing on sustainable fashion solutions as well as graduates from fashion courses
Making textile art is a beautiful creative way to make use of fabric remnants and I’ve seen some wonderful examples of that this year.
So to conclude, here’s what we can all do:
- Cut consumption
- Buy more durable clothing
- Buy second hand
- Wear longer (will I wear this 30 times?)
- Repair/upcycle – find tutorials and ideas at Repair What You Wear
- Host/go to a clothes swap – upcoming events: No New Clothes / The Party Clothes Shop
- Give something unwanted to a friend/relative
- Make your own clothes (carefully sourcing, researching fabric type) – research has shown people who make their own clothes are more likely to wear and keep them and they often have a better fit.
Please also consider signing this petition to Urge the UK government to enforce EPR in fashion
Making textile art is also a beautiful creative way to make use of fabric remnants and I’ve seen some wonderful examples of that this year.
Below are some photos of garments that I have upcycled and repaired – where there’s a will there’s a way!
The Upside Down Jacket for the mad mad world we live in! Upcycled from a pair of skinny leg jeans that are now out of fashion for Emmaus, Portslade.
This is a classic man’s shirt I upcycled into a boxy, multi size shirt for a woman. The collar was worn so I reinforced it with the decorative stitching. One of the sleeves had a hole at the elbow, which I repaired using one of the original shirt pockets and Sashiko stitching. For more inspiration on Shashiko, visit this fantastic youtube channel @XiaoxiaoYarn
Needle felting to cover moth holes.
Give me a follow on instagram, I’d love to see some of your own clothing repairs, or maybe we’ll meet at Brighton Repair Café soon.
Repairing is caring,
Shirley