Influencing behaviour change

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Fashion is responsible for up to 10 percent of carbon emissions and about  70 percent of the clothes in our wardrobes are not worn. These are some of the reasons to choose ways of dressing that are more circular and regenerative.

Changing our behaviour is the biggest thing we can do to reduce our energy and resource consumption. Great to see reloving options expanding, with UNTAGGED Sustainable Fashion Exchange a new option for keeping wardrobes fresh whilst being kinder to our wallets, each other, and the planet.

They’ve been sharing quotes through their Instagram platform, including words from Cate Blanchett, Jane Goodall, Emma Watson, Livia Firth, Vivienne Westwood, Carry Somers, Elizabeth Cline,  Celine Semaan, and Jane Milburn (that’s me).

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The Maker Within

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There is a maker inside us all. People often speak of the soothing and satisfying nature of making for relaxation, reward or reinvention. In earlier times, working with our hands was how we explored and became connected to the world. Then with industrialization and the feminist movement, many of us shifted away from making and towards higher-status thinking careers.  Working with our hands was often associated with home-based domestic work – and we didn’t want to be trapped there.

The COVID-19 lockdown gave pause, for some not on the frontline, to explore making and creating with our hands – gardening, cooking, baking, sewing, knitting and mending clothes.  We are ready for more conversation about slower living, adaptation and resourcefulness – using our hands, head and heart to create change.

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WornOUT? The future of waste

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Reverse Garbage Queensland is returning to the Princess Theatre in November to celebrate Brisbane’s growing upcycle community of refashion, wearable art and cosplay designers in their annual WornOUT Exhibition.
The future of waste in the textile industry will be explored by Brisbane’s community of slow fashion designers when their creations hit the runway at Reverse Garbage Queensland’s (RGQ) WornOUT? 2019 showcase on Saturday, November 23 at the Princess Theatre, Woolloongabba.
According to Jane Milburn from Textile Beat, slow fashion advocate and Exhibition ambassador,  Australians are the world’s second-largest consumers of new textiles, absorbing around 27kg of clothing fibres annually, while sending 23kg of textiles and leather to landfill each year.
This trend could be set to turn with the world’s largest fashion resale marketplace ThredUp reporting that the second hand market is expected to make up one-third of global consumers’ wardrobes by 2033.
“We’ll be showcasing double the number of garments from last year, which is our largest contingency of refashion, wearable art and cosplay designers in our three-year history”, said Bill Ennals, Exhibition Coordinator.

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Individual stewardship matters

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The question to ask ourselves is where is it going after it leaves me? Being conscious consumers means leaving the planet a better place.

We consume 1.7 planets of natural resources every year and can’t sustain that, Queensland’s chief entrepreneur Leanne Kemp told a recent Game Changers event at State Library of Queensland.

Ray Weekes with Queensland’s chief entrepreneur Leanne Kemp at SLQ Game Changers event

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Creating, not consuming

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Waste is now visible in our lives. Throwing away our unwanted stuff is an act of power. We move it to the edge of the kitchen, then to the edge of the curb where it is taken to landfill on the edge of the city or to the ocean on the edge of the land. Recycling and upcycling are only shuffling the problem.

The waste solution lies in relearning skills we have forgotten like reusing, cooking, sewing, composting and creating for ourselves. Making everyday choices for health and wellbeing.

These insights are from a recent Circular Economy Futures meetup where speakers Jacq Driscoll from Biome and Dr Manuela Taboada from QUT’s Institute for Future Environments discussed waste solutions in our crazy convenient throwaway society.

Jacq Driscoll and Dr Manuela Taboada with Yasmin Grigaliunas at Circular Economy Futures Brisbane

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Creating a climate for change

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Climate change is everybody’s business.  We have lived experience of it, with extreme weather events now taking a physical, monetary and emotional toll on society. We have a profound obligation to act. If we don’t, future generations would be justified to look back and say ‘what were those people thinking – consuming and amusing themselves without thought for the future’.

We are in a climate emergency. It is not hyperbole. World scientists are ratcheting up their pleas for politicians to act and Mother Nature is speaking loudly with record heat waves (most recently in Europe), bushfires, storms and floods, and coral bleaching.

The frequency of extreme weather events has increased and global economic losses from these events in the past two years is estimated at $653 billion, according to insurance giant Aon. The UN estimates the world could see 1 billion climate migrants as their food and water supplies are impacted. This is not someone else’s problem, it will affect us all.

We know that climate change is real, because we have seen it and felt it. Of the hottest locations on Earth on January 24 this year, 91 were in Australia. Rain dumps in north Queensland led to massive flooding in Townsville and the loss of 600,000 cattle. There were catastrophic fires in central Queensland rainforest.

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Memories in cloth

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Do you carry an old-fashioned cloth handkerchief in your pocket or purse? Tissues and packaged wipes might be more convenient but we are becoming aware of their cumulative waste and moving back to reusable products.

There are memories in cloth. Favourite pieces may be mended and patched to extend their lifetime. Special garments may hang in wardrobes, even if they no longer fit, because they hold moments in time. The glimpse of an old favourite floral shirt, down-cycled to cleaning rag, evocatively sparks remembered joy of wearing. I am thrilled with my fabric-painted hanky squares that once were my little kids t-shirts (they’re now aged 24, 29 and 30) now upcycled as all-purpose cloths in my handbag.

These words first published in QCWA’s Ruth Magazine Winter edition 2019

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Composting clothes into nutrients

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There is simply no precedent for the volume of clothes in society today and we need to experiment with other ways of keeping material in circulation locally. When you’ve exhausted options for swapping/reselling clothes or donating them to charities, recycling in your backyard is a valid option. When something is biodegradable, it is capable of decomposing into raw materials and cycling back through the ecosystem without pollution. All natural-fibre clothing is in this category and therefore biodegradable, although the time taken will vary.

Composting your natural-fibre clothing works in exactly the same way as putting vegetable scraps and spoilt food into the compost. They decompose and becomes food for new plants. The composting process cycles four of life’s building blocks – carbon, oxygen, hydrogen and nitrogen – back into the soil so that it can support new growth. The clothing fibres need to be moistened to encourage and speed the decomposition process. The fibre becomes food for microbes, bacteria, fungi, moulds, worms, beetles, snails, mites, cockroaches and other critters, which are all part of the process.

I confirmed this in my backyard science experiment when I buried synthetic and natural fibre swatches in my garden during 2018. Almost all the natural fibres decayed while the synthetic remained untouched. Synthetics are derived from petroleum, do not absorb water, and are effectively plastic. In May 2019, we set up a compost experiment at Bulimba Creek Catchment Sustainability Centre at Carindale with which we will revisit at the end of August.

Jane Milburn and nursery manager Leigh Weakley at Bulimba Creek Catchment Sustainability Centre.

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Bold steps needed at this time

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There are incredible changes happening in this period of time that will be important for the history of the human race, Queensland Government Minister Leeanne Enoch told The Circular Economy: it’s our future forum in Brisbane yesterday.

As Minister for Environment and the Great Barrier Reef, Minister for Science and Minister for the Arts, Ms Enoch said there are certain actions we have to take right now in the way we utilise materials, how we tackle climate change, and use energy and resources in everyday life.

“When I visited Wujal Wujal community in far north Queensland after recent weather events, the elders said there are no stories passed down the generations who have lived there to deal with rapid change in climate,” Ms Enoch said.

“We are a speck in time. There have been 3000 generations of people in this place, which is home to great natural gifts like the Great Barrier Reef and Daintree rainforests. But what is happening to our climate is new.

Minister Leeanne Enoch (top left), Uli Becker (bottom left), at The Circular Economy forum and (bottom right) Textile Beat’s Jane Milburn with Blocktexx co-founder Graham Ross.

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A commonsense approach

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The simplest way to reduce our material footprint is wear clothes that already exist and wear them for longer. Less shopping and washing makes economic and ecological sense.

At no time in history have there been so many clothes in the world. In the four years to 2016, global production of new clothes rose 25 percent as did the export of cast-offs from Australia to the third world.

Define ethics as ‘the right thing to do’ and it becomes common sense to shop second-hand first, and re-wear what we own. These are the actions of thinking people.

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