Each French person buys an average of 10 kg of textiles per year? This is 60% more than 20 years ago! In question, the fast fashion and his clothes low-cost that we choose on a whim and get rid of at high speed. Before cleaning up your wardrobe, we explain why buy fewer clothes…
Significantly limiting your purchases of new clothes is a sure way to reduce your carbon footprint personal and act against climate change.
I explain to you why three arguments :
- If you are like everyone else, you buy every year 9.5 kg of clothes. However, on average 70% of the clothes in our wardrobe are not worn and remain in our closets.
- 70% of the synthetic fibers that make up the clothes come from petroleum.
- 100 billion pieces of clothing are sold each year in the world and the fashion industry is the fifth largest transmitter of greenhouse gases.
Clothing production has doubled since 2000 and the textile industry has become a major emitter of greenhouse gases (1.7 billion tonnes of CO2e per year). If it were a country, it would be the fifth biggest polluter behind China, the United States, Europe and India.
Why buy fewer clothes?
Textile is the third consumer of water in the world after the cultivation of wheat and rice. 500,000 tonnes of microplastics are released into the ocean every year from the washing of our synthetic clothing. It is the equivalent of 50 billion plastic bottles ! In addition, less than 1% of the fabrics that make up our clothes are recycled to produce new ones.
Each purchase of a new garment has a impact on the planet in general and climate change in particular. Brands and manufacturers have a part of the responsibility in this unbridled consumption, but the end user, that is to say the consumer (so you or me) are just as concerned.
You can therefore decide to act, as a citizen, by limiting your purchases new clothes.
Smart tips to limit your purchases
The first piece of advice is not to give in to sales and other event promotions such as
Black Friday… These marketing operations aim to boost sales playing on urgency. They lead to impulse purchases not always helpful.
The idea is to stay in control of your consumption : you can buy a piece of clothing on sale if you really need it, but it’s not the occasion (the sale) that should be the thief and trigger the purchase.
The second smart tip is to be more careful to our clothes. Often, we neglect them, we don’t take care of them. The goal would be to try to extend their lifespan. For example, to make them last longer, you can wash them less frequently (obviously not socks and underwear!), avoid the dryer or even limit the spin speed.
The third advice is, for the future, to buy quality clothes that you will keep for a long time. Quality could become one of your first selection criteria. Of course, it usually costs more to buy, but assume that you will keep it for a long time. You won’t have to replace it anytime soon. See it more like an investment!
And if you did the big cleaning?
The fourth smart tip is to sort your clothes to give them away or sell them (depending on their condition and value). When you give away a piece of clothing that you don’t use, you prevent someone else from buying a new one. The result is therefore the same from an environmental point of view: fewer new textiles will be sold…
To really sort through your wardrobe, you can take all your clothes out of the closet and put them on your bed. Beware of shockbecause you will already have a first overview of the quantity of clothes you have!
Before you start sorting, you gather the clothes that look alike (duplicates) and you keep only one, the one you prefer (except for jeans).
Then you review one by one and you ask how long it’s been since you’ve worn that item of clothing (this doesn’t apply to out-of-season clothing). If you didn’t need it for more than two monthsit’s probably that he no longer has a place in your home.
If you find it difficult to part with an item of clothing that you haven’t worn for a long time, simply ask yourself if it would not be more useful to someone else who will really wear it. It’s probably more worth giving it a new life than storing it in the back of the cupboard.
Then, you proceed to the actual sorting, i.e. to the final selectionby forming four separate stacks:
- The clothes to keep which you will store carefully in your closet.
- Those in good condition but which have little value that you could give to your friends, resource centerscharities such as Emmaus.
- Those in good condition that are of value only you can sell on Vinted, patatam, Depop Where ethics2hand or even as part of a garage sale in your city.
- Finally, those who are threadbare which you have to get rid of at a textile collection point like Relay.
These practical ideas are equally valid for fashion accessories such as bags, jewelry, scarves, etc., which may not be as useful to you. It’s up to you !
