Of recently I watched a documentary episode from Compass on the ABC. Let me tell you I learnt some interesting information on how polluting the textile industry is. Throughout the episode they interviewed some key holders in the charity sector; Camille Reed is the Director and Founder of Australian Circular Textile Association, Susan Goldie she’s a part of the St Vincent de Paul Society in NSW, Luisa Marrollo a Textile Student and Richard Wood Head of Retail at Red Cross NSW; and here are some quick hard facts I learnt from them:
· Australia is the second largest consumer for textiles globally next to the United States
· The textile industry is the 2nd biggest polluter in the world
· Roughly an Australian will buy 27kg worth of clothing and about 23kg of that will end up in landfill each year.
· 150 billion garments are produced yearly, and to note the world population is 7 billion
The last piece of information made me question so much! 150 billion garments are made each year and only the world population is 7 billion, so where the hell are all these clothes ending up?
To think donating your clothes to a charity shop is the right action to do because it is seen as a good deed I think is seen as no longer, as Susan Goldie says “$13 million worth of damaged goods and garments are sent to the landfill from Charity shops each year.” Wow. That’s a lot of money and goods. A mending sewer Erin Lewis-Fitzgerald says that you should not “donate things to an op-shop that need to be repaired. Fix it yourself.” I agree with Ms Lewis-Fitzgerald she also mentioned this idea of “wish cycling” when a person hopes that giving torn clothes to an op-shop a volunteer or an old person will fix the damaged clothes to be sold. That is not the case in op-shops, they get massive amounts of donations given or sent and they sort through that amount of clothing and items. Even if one person hopes giving damaged items are good enough to be fixed and sold, there wouldn’t be more than one person thinking that. So, if there are many people that hope giving an item in whatever state it is in and hope it will get sold, maybe take a second to re-evaluate the situation and think carefully.
A new movement in the charity sector where Red Cross Australia, Vinnies and The Salvation Army have all joined this movement; Moving the Needle they’re an organisation that are helping people and clothing brands to stop the process of clothes reaching landfill. So even donating damaged clothes are good cause they will get fixed and up-cycled through Op-shops. Moving the Needle hope to achieve by 2022 to have reduced 20% of clothes going to landfill which is about $2.6 million if we were to refer back to Susan Goldie’s statistic. It might seem a lot at first but if each year people were conscious of the clothes they donate and maybe repair before giving to charity shops, so many clothes wouldn’t go to landfill.
I have linked below Moving the Needle website if you wish to look into reducing clothes going into landfill and I have also linked the episode from Compass if you also wish to watch as well.