Wow! 2 hours went really fast today at the Natural History Museum, with barely a break for a biscuit. We talked about the problems of fast fashion and looked at some of the amazing innovations people are developing to combat the problems.

Did you know??

Washing clothes releases half a million tonnes of plastic microfibres into the ocean every year. The equivalent of over 50 BILLION (!) plastic bottles. Ooops!
75% of the impact of our clothing over its’ life time comes from WASHING and DRYING. Wash less people!! And use all that lovely wind to dry your clothes. :)
One cotton tee takes as much water to make as a person drinks in 2.5 years!!
The clothing industry accounts for 10% of global carbon emissions - and we thought it was farting cows!
All sorts of other noxious emissions such as Volatile Organic Compound are released to the air when clothing is made. Very bad news for people who work in and live near those factories.
100 billion items of clothing are bought each year. A DUMP TRUCK of clothing goes to landfill EVERY second!

Thanks to Ellen MacArthur Foundation, Forbes.com, The Guardian and other fabulous information providers for these juicy facts which raised our indignation and got us thinking.

On the positive side we enjoyed the following initiatives -

Trad businesses trying new models

https://www.marksandspencer.com/c/plan-a-shwopping

https://www.retailgazette.co.uk/blog/2019/10/john-lewis-launches-sustainable-buyback-trial/

Back to the drawing board approaches

https://www.wearethought.com/sustainable-fabrics/

https://po-zu.com/pages/about-po-zu

https://rapanuiclothing.com/our-story/

Rent don’t own business models

https://mudjeans.eu/lease-a-jeans/

https://www.hurrcollective.com/

And the most fun - new fabric tech!

https://boltthreads.com/

http://www.modernmeadow.com/our-technology/

Now in solution mode, we talked to Zaqiya, the founder of clothes exchange project, Swopitup, about how to set up clothes swaps in schools. Fired up we all left with action plans intact.

Salient moment for me today. I asked the students whether they needed any help from the adults to get the swap shops off the ground and they just shook their heads. They were confident, determined and organised - planning their next steps as they left the session. I thought that just about summed up the relevance of the adults these days - the teens have got this covered. We just need to move over. It felt good.

“I think it was really good. I liked how there were lots of conversations and discussions. I didn’t just get to learn new things, I also got to hear other people’s perspectives and ideas. This has showed me how there are things we can do to help. ”

— OCC participant, Feb 2020

“Do this workshop in schools!”

— Everyone who participated today.

Thanks so much to Sam, Oxford student and Climate Club volunteer, for ideas, support, contributions and positivity. More Climate Club in a few weeks.

Kim

PS - these guys, www.beeco.green saw this blog and emailed us suggesting we link to their guide on sustainable (and unsustainable) fabrics. It looks really good so we said yes. There is lots of other good information on there too. We haven’t verified anything about this organisation but the information seems sound - check out sources before you base an essay on it however!