Pause ‘fast fashion’ – for the planet’s sake
WHILE it can be tempting to snap up a bargain in the Black Friday sales, owner of sustainable fashion platform The NU Wardrobe.com, Aisling Byrne, is urging buyers to consider their purchases carefully – for the sake of our planet.
The fashion-lover (25) from Malahide in Dublin is now based in London. She said that while she understood some shoppers might have waited for the sales to buy something they really want, others might find themselves treating themselves to new clothes they don’t necessarily need.
With “fast fashion” now one of the biggest pollutants in the world, she is warning consumers that buying something that will soon lie at the bottom of the wardrobe to eventually be discarded could have a negative impact on the environment.
“Often people aren’t aware of the impact fast fashion can have. Clothes are often made from finite resources,” Ms Byrne told the Irish Independent.
“A lot of them are made from blended materials, such as acrylics and polyester, which are oil based.
“It’s too expensive to break them down when they’re recycled as they are made with contaminants – elastic on jeans, for example is a contaminant.
“So tonnes of clothes end up in landfill each year, even if they are given away in the hopes of being re-sold or re-styled.”
Ms Byrne recommends shoppers step back and ask themselves if they could borrow, tailor or re-style their current wardrobe to re-define the meaning of something “new”.