Churchill fellow investigates ways to reduce our material footprint

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Hot on the heels of Earth Day (April 22) and Fashion Revolution Week (April 18-24), Churchill fellow Jane Milburn departed on April 28 to undertake fellowship study investigating ways that being more aware and hands-on with clothes can help reduce our material footprint.

Clothing accounts for up to 10 percent of our environmental footprint and everyday practices that extend the lifespan of clothes – caring, repairing, rewearing, restyling, upcycling – can reduce its ecological impact and create independence from fast-fashion cycles.

Since 2012, Jane has advocated for living simply through sustainable practices with a particular focus on how we choose, care for and dispose of clothing. Jane won a Churchill Fellowship in 2019 to “investigate ways that hands-on upcycling can help reduce textile waste and enhance wellbeing” but her 2020 trip was postponed due to the pandemic. This week Jane begins eight weeks’ travel in New Zealand, the United States, the United Kingdom, and Japan to meet with slow fashion practitioners, academics and sustainability leaders.

Jane Milburn interviewed by ABC Mornings Presenter Rebecca Levingston before leaving on her fellowship.

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On the Textile Beat enews

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Our enews update, On the Textile Beat November 2021, includes this graphic, below, summarising circular textile approaches: practical, mechanical, chemical, microbial and by design which I shared at a recent Circular Economy Futures event in Brisbane.

Everyone can enact the practical approach through everyday actions and choices as per the Slow Clothing Manifesto: think, natural, quality, local, few, care, make, revive, adapt and salvage.

 

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Rising to resilience

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Disruption arising from the pandemic reminds us of the need to live thoughtfully in tune with nature, as Jane Milburn reports.

Jane Milburn wears self-made upcycled silk dress. Photo by Robin McConchie at Mt Coot-tha Botanic Gardens.

Sewing arose as a survival skill during the COVID-19 pandemic when global supply chains fractured and locally-made cloth face masks became valuable personal protection equipment. Even New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern made her own face covering to help stop the spread of the coronavirus when masks became mandatory on public transport during the Auckland breakout.

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Investigating slow clothing culture

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By Robin McConchie

We live in a throwaway society, with an increasing amount of textiles used in the fashion industry made from synthetic fibres and garments produced using underpaid labour. Jane Milburn has a passion for natural fibres and believes behaviour change is needed towards dressing more responsibly, wearing clothes for longer and limiting the amount of textile waste thrown into landfill each year.

Using her campaigning and making skills, Jane created Textile Beat in 2013 and developed a 10-point Slow Clothing Manifesto of ways to reduce our material footprint. During the past six years, Jane has advocated for change across Australia through more than 560 engagements.

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Wear change, do clothing slow

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One million species are at risk and we humans are largely to blame, according to the latest UN biodiversity report.  Governments, business and individuals need to act because we are eroding the very foundations of our economies, livelihoods, food security, health and quality of life worldwide, said Sir Robert Watson, chair of the UN’s Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services.

We can agitate for governments and business to take action – AND take action ourselves through the everyday choices in what we eat and what we wear. I wrote this Slow Clothing Manifesto back in 2015 to summarise the actions and choices we can take to reduce our material footprint: think, natural, local, quality, few, care, make, revive, adapt, salvage.

It becomes more relevant each year, with each new report on the need for transformative change. The power is in everyone, through everyday choices, to change the culture of consumption to one of conservation. Use what already exists, don’t feel pressured to buy more new, think bigger than yourself.

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Sustainability in fashion

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Long before sustainability became fashionable, HRH Prince Charles was urging people to consider the environment when choosing what to wear and patron of the campaign promoting wool as a renewable and biodegradable resource.

In The Australian Financial Review Magazine April cover story, Marion Hume reported Prince Charles has long suspected synthetics would impact the environment and ‘minds deeply about the poisoned legacy we are leaving our children and grandchildren’. He also ‘hates throwing away things without finding another use for them or mending them’.

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Slow Clothing at TEDxQUT

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TEDxQUT talkBelow is original script from Jane Milburn’s TEDxQUT talk on April 8, 2017.

This suitcase weighs 23kgs – it’s overweight if you’re flying. And it represents the amount of leather and textiles that each Australian sends to landfill every year.

Every one of us … every year.

We know about food waste and that a third of food is never eaten – clothing waste runs parallel to that.

Every day we eat and dress to survive and thrive.

Our clothes do for us on the outside what food does inside. They warm and protect our body – and influence the way we feel.  Continue Reading →

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Textile Beat leads change

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Few people sew their own clothes these days because factory-made options are cheap and plentiful, yet this trend creates a clothing surplus that requires creative solutions to keep it out of landfill.

Textile Beat is celebrating four years of upcycling and helping influence a more sustainable clothing culture based on using natural fibres and applying traditional skills in innovative ways.

Jane Milburn of Textile Beat

Sustainability consultant Jane Milburn of Textile Beat

Textile Beat founder Jane Milburn said the Slow Clothing Manifesto identifies 10 actions we can take to thrive in a material world: think, natural, quality, local, care, few, make, adapt, revive and salvage.

“Clothes do for us on the outside what food does inside – nourish and warm our body and soul. Fast and processed industrial food has had a dramatic impact on health in recent years and similarly the shift to industrial clothing has social and environmental impacts we are only now learning,” Jane said.

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Engage in slow clothing

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There is a huge excess of clothing in society due to the transformational shift in the way we buy, use and dispose of our garments these days, which is leaving us less engaged and wasteful.

We are buying up to four times more clothes than we did two decades ago, exploiting people and resources as well as creating environmental problems because of the trend towards synthetic clothes derived from petroleum.

We need to think more about whether we need new clothing, then choose to buy quality, natural, local and just a few.

Alternatively, we can get creative and learn to care, repair, adapt and revive existing clothing.

The Slow Clothing Manifesto is a summary of ways to thrive in a material world. Be more conscious about our clothing, in the same way we have become conscious of our food.

Slow clothing manifesto

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More clothing, fewer skills

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Australians buy an average of 27 kilograms worth of new clothing and textiles each year, two-thirds of which are made from manmade fibres derived from petroleum according to sustainability consultant Jane Milburn.

Ms Milburn said Australians are the second-largest consumers* of new textiles after north Americans who annually buy 37kg each, and ahead of Western Europeans at 22kg while consumption in Africa, the Middle East and India averages just 5 kg per person.

jane-milburn-in-brisbane

“There’s been a transformational shift in the way we source, use and discard our clothing which has major social and environmental implications. Fast fashion produced from global supply chains is driving excessive purchasing of affordable new clothing often discarded after a few wears,” she said.

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