Nature in Your Closet
The Rotary Club of Brampton welcomes JoAnne Fleming, a member of Collingwood South Georgian Bay Rotary Club. Nature is an integral part of JoAnne’s life growing up on a farm in South Western Ontario. JoAnne is excited by the environmental initiatives of RI Presidents Ian Risely and Barry Rassin and has proposed ways for Rotarians to embrace environmentally sustainable ways of living and doing business.
Our clothes mean a lot to us. A fashion week is every week; there is something new coming out every week and if you want to keep up you got to shop. Shopping has gotten us into big trouble. The advertising industry has been convincing us to change our shopping habits by 400% increase in the amount of clothes we put in our closet.
Consider cotton which is the most intensive pesticide crop grown on the planet. In the US nearly 25% of pesticides is used to grow cotton. Farmers apply a quarter pound of fertilizer and pesticides for every pound of cotton harvested. There are 800 chemicals in the textile industry.
Consider items in your closet from last season, we don’t see the faces, the pain, polluted water that creates great sickness, the poor working conditions, we only see cheap items that are causing us to become unthinking and obsessive. Putting clothes in the box is really the black hole. Part of that will be sorted into 125 different categories; part go to second shops and part will go overseas. What can we do differently? We need a mind change, a shift.
Instead of buying several fast fashion shirts, buy one high quality ethical piece that lasts forever, support local designers and locally made clothes, shop vintage and thrift shops to reduce consumption of new materials; second hand is not as toxic as new, shop local shops, organize clothing swaps and rent, share, trade for special occasions.
95% of fashion ends up in landfills. YOU are a part of Nature. Consider who made it? Who suffered for it? How were they treated?
“When those answers are more important than our need to look a certain way the world will change for the better.” Maranda Pleasant