Lighter Living is more than a book. Lighter Living Tasks are weekly suggestions to make progress on decluttering, organizing and simplifying your life. By working on parts of your home each week, you will breaking big projects into small, manageable tasks.
Fast fashion and too much clothing stuffed in our closets is another form of clutter. This week, let’s talk about clothes. As a starting point, we need to understand Fast Fashion. According to Wikipedia, “Fast fashion is a contemporary term used by fashion retailers for designs that move from catwalk quickly to capture current fashion trends. A second, critical definition adds that fast fashion is not only about quickly moving from runway to store to consumer, but also to the garbage.”
According to the NY Times book review article, How Fast Fashion is Destroying the Planet, Tatiana Schlossberg discusses the book FASHIONOPOLIS: The Price of Fast Fashion and the Future of Clothes by Dana Thomas. “More than 60 percent of fabric fibers are now synthetics, derived from fossil fuels, so if and when our clothing ends up in a landfill (about 85 percent of textile waste in the United States goes to landfills or is incinerated), it will not decay.”
Business Insider Malaysia published an article entitled, The Fashion industry emits more carbon than international flights and maritime shipping combined. Here are the biggest ways it impacts the planet. Reading those articles will get you up to date on what Fast Fashion is about.
It is time to be more conscious about clothing. Avoid Fast Fashion and learn new strategies! There are many ways to better the planet, and understanding the issues around clothes is one of them. Finally, here is a great article about how to look at your clothes in a new light. 6 Ways to Quit Fast Fashion.
After reading these articles, it is time to assess your clothing. Perhaps you can donate items you don’t like or that don’t fit you anymore to a thrift shop. And maybe if you are in the mood to buy new clothing, you can try shopping at a second hand store first or look for better brands or fabric.
Between tasks posted on this blog, be sure to read Lighter Living if you have not already.
