Sustainable clothing

[openspaceman]

2 hours ago, Stere said:

 

I suppose wearing clothes second hand or the same clothes for ages til they fall apart & darning you socks etc patching holes on trousers,  would be is most enviro, but it would makes you look abit of an oddball.

I suppose I'm an oddball but draw the line at darning holes in socks, I will sew  ripped work clothes to make them usable.

 

Most of my clothes are hand me downs from dead relatives so I have seldom bought new but get gifts of new clothes.

 

However the issue is with what happens to clothes in and after use; after use they can be disposed of into landfill or incinerated for power, and never enter the wider environment, but in use they get washed, fibrils get beaten off in the wash and the water containing these microscopic bits of plastic and natural fibre mixes passes through the sewage system and into the sea. The natural fibres rot but the plastic bits get into the marine food chain very quickly.

 

So the public outcry against plastics in the marine environment is about large visible waste, which will degrade over time to bits small enough to be ingested but the insidious stuff is these small fibrils from washing that  are already small enough to enter the food chain immediately.

2 hours ago, Stere said:

 

Clothes are  cheap enough that there not worth patching up like in the olden days, and people like new stuff even when theres nothing wrong with the old.

 

Even in poor third world places they have cheap mass produced brand new  clothes were as the poor used to have second hand  rags/make there own clothes.

 

 

Quite so and aside from the wastefulness aspect discarding clothes is not an issue as long as the disposal method is sound.

[AHPP]

4 hours ago, Stere said:

So going naked?

 

Or are they worse than polyester or cotton etc?.

 

I suppose wearing clothes second hand or the same clothes for ages til they fall apart & darning you socks etc patching holes on trousers,  would be is most enviro, but it would makes you look abit of an oddball.

  

Clothes are  cheap enough that there not worth patching up like in the olden days, and people like new stuff even when theres nothing wrong with the old.

  

Even in poor third world places they have cheap mass produced brand new  clothes were as the poor used to have second hand  rags/make there own clothes.

 

 

I have good clothes and look pretty normal. Almost all charity shops or hand-me-downs. I buy new when I need to and look after it. Stuff that really is too worn out to mend (keeps my mother busy) gets reused into rags, then firestarters etc. In my ideal vision of the world, people would do as I do until there are significantly fewer excessive consumers to bottom feed from and then the market would adjust to selling stuff that's built to last. Unlikely though. Most people are wasteful.

An often overlooked environmental cost of buying new everything is taxes. Corp, income, NI, fuel duties, import duties, road fund, insurance premium etc etc all get generated before the dreaded VAT at the point you buy your new polo shirt. The government then uses that money to engage in some of the most environmentally destructive practices available, war mainly but also stuff like building pointless new railways.

 

A lot of stuff that's touted as eco friendly isn't. Like plastic vs paper bags. Plastic is an excellent material. Strong, lasts well etc. The problem is not reusing it. Paper uses more resources (energy and water) than plastic for how long you can use it before it falls apart but it's brown and gets advertised with a tree on it so people think it's better. Even cotton bags need to be used something like 300 times before they make sense over a plastic bag. It wouldn't surprise me at all to discover bamboo and hemp isn't as good as it sounds for making shirts.

 

Rambling but hopefully I've made at least a bit of a point.

[openspaceman]

1 hour ago, AHPP said:

Rambling but hopefully I've made at least a bit of a point.

Yes some good points

[kav]

I'm interested in this too as after new workshirts/hoodies. Some of my best/longlived tshirts were organic ones from Howies but I think their print shop needs big numbers to do a run now.

I'm currently looking at options with shirtworks.co.uk as I've had stuff in the past from them and are local to me

 

[peatff]

23 hours ago, Stere said:

I suppose wearing clothes second hand or the same clothes for ages til they fall apart & darning you socks etc patching holes on trousers,  would be is most enviro,

Man I'm environmentally sound and I didn't even know it. Half of what I wear came from Oxfam and the rest is so old I can't remember where it came from. I have my sewing machine to help with my repairs and alterations. I converted my charity shop 501s from button to zip the other day.

[openspaceman]

1 hour ago, peatff said:

I converted my charity shop 501s from button to zip the other day.

Now that's a good idea

[Macpherson]

1 hour ago, openspaceman said:

Now that's a good idea

Yeah, specially up here in the midges button flies are a mistake ?

[peatff]

9 hours ago, Macpherson said:

Yeah, specially up here in the midges button flies are a mistake ?

 

Nowt to do with midges  I thought I wouldn't mind the buttons, the jeans only cost £3 and looked unworn. Zip cost sod all I did a pair for a mate as well for about another £3 with proper brass zips. The buttons were just annoying and took forever to fasten.

[Pete Mctree]

I often have wondered if button flies were the way forward for chainsaw trousers - less zip issues

[MattyF]

Too many gaps for sawdust pete