The clothing we wear can have a negative environmental impact before we buy it, while we own it and after we dispose of it.
‘Fast Fashion’ results in clothing that is made for the absolute lowest price possible ensuring the clothing is made in unethical sweat shops which exploit workers, that huge amounts of resources are consumed to make them and ending in large amounts of unsold clothing that have to be disposed of by burning or in land fill.
The raw materials to make and dye the cloth have their own negative consequences, whether it is consuming fossil fuels to make synthetic fabrics or consuming water, taking up agricultural land and requiring large amounts of fertilisers and pesticides for ‘natural’ fibres like cotton. The dyes used to colour the cloth are also toxic and once their job is done, the excess finds its way into local (usually third world) waterways.
Unfortunately the damage does not stop once we have bought a garment. Over-washing, with harsh detergents in washing machines which are rough on the clothes results in microplastics/microfibers being released into the environment along with the detergents we use to clean our clothes. These practices also result in reduced clothing life so we need to buy more clothes sooner. Of course, when clothing does reach the end of its life, it is highly likely that it will end up in landfill, which generates its own set of environmental problems.
OK, so we know that there is a problem, but what do we do about it? It seems reasonable to use our purchasing power and behaviour to reduce our environmental impact as much as we can but that presumes we know where to start. The premise of this article and the associated Sustainable Household Clothing Audit Form is that it gives us a way to review how sustainable our practices are at the moment and help us work through what we need to do to improve.
You may want to work through the Sustainable Lifestyle Assessment Matrix 2021 first to understand the bigger picture of sustainable living or if you just want to focus on clothing alone (and it is a great place to start, everyone wears clothing of some description, unless you want to get arrested!) give the clothing audit a go. It can be as simple or formal as you like, filling the form out as you go or just running through things in your head and working out where you go from there. I recommend the more formal method so you have a record of where you are starting from which you can come back to later, re-do and get a feeling of how far you have come.
I also suggest that you share this with your family, or the people you are living with, so improvement can be on a united front.
Instructions
Go through all of the questions one section at a time and mark the number most appropriate for your answer from “always” = 3 down to “never” = 0 by circling, crossing out or whatever. Some questions may appear to support a more yes/no answer so to reflect this it would be best to mark 3 for yes and 0 for no. If the question is not applicable to your situation, strike it out and when counting up the maximum possible number to work out score do not add 3 for that question.
To calculate your score add up all of the potential answers and multiply by 3 to give the maximum possible score, and then add up all of the scores from your answers. Divide your answer score number by the maximum possible score and multiply by 100, this will give you your sustainable clothing score as a percentage. The number itself does not mean much, but acts as a base upon which to improve.
