I want to start this post by saying I love YouTube. I contribute to the TMK channel a fair bit, and I also watch lots of channels too. I’ve long been a fan of digital influencers and the opinion they give, especially with fashion, taking it to the realms of real women as oppose to catwalk models. However, increasingly, I find myself getting annoyed with ‘haul videos’.
We all need to wear clothes, and I fall into that part of the human race who tries wear clothes that also look nice (in my opinion!) as oppose to just having a utilitarian use. Increasingly, the fashion world seems to have moved towards fast fashion. Instead of going to the shops a handful of times a year, we seem to be nipping in and ‘picking up some stuff’ on a more and more frequent basis, and here lies my problem.
“I picked up this *insert clothes item* and it was so cheap that it doesn’t matter if I don’t really wear it”
What happens to it next? It goes to charity? Into a clothes bank? Potentially, a charity shop will take it and sell it on, but more often than not, they can’t. The trend has passed and no one wants the item, so it ends up in landfill. In 2015 three-fifths of all clothing produced ends up in incinerators or landfills within a year of being made*. Given the amount of water and energy needed to create said clothing items, that is a tremendous amount of pollution and greenhouse gas for ‘something so cheap that it doesn’t matter if I don’t wear it’.
If your fashion tastes are fast and you’re buying items most weeks or months, it doesn’t matter how much you recycle, power your house with solar panels and not drive your car, your carbon footprint is going to be huge.
I’ve made the conscious effort to ‘buy less, buy better’ so my wardrobe doesn’t need refreshing frequently, and my plea to the haul vloggers out there: You have huge digital influence and make people feel great; how about in 2017 you use your platform to show how fashion can be more sustainable? Look, there’s a new content idea – what to do with your clothes when you don’t want to wear them anymore!
Thank you for reading, and I would love to know your views on fast fashion and the environment: Do you think it is problem? Are you making changes to the way you buy clothes to protect the environment?
* Figure from McKinsey and Company Report
