Don't feed the monster

  The document "don't feed the monster" was published in The Guardian newspaper on February 19th, 2019 by Paula Cocozza. The main topic of this piece is fast fashion and second-hand clothes. Two women, Lauren Cowdery and Maria Chenoweth have stopped buying new clothes and they explain why we should stop doing it.

  Cowdery loves clothes, but has made it his mission to stop buying them for sustainability reasons. To avoid buying she asks herself the simple question, "do I need this?". She used to buy two or three £20 clothes a month. When her clothes started to pile up she wondered what she was doing she reacted and turned to local exchange shops which allowed her to refresh her wardrobe without being irresponsible about environmental issues. In fact she allows herself to exchange 10 to 15 clothes per month against 2/3 at the time.

Chenoweth is the Chief Executive of Traid, which is a charity that fights against discarded clothing when she was younger, in the 80s, she disobeyed her parents when they forbade her to go to the sales because they did not want her friends to think she was poor. Today she has an eco-responsible view of the fashion industry, and she thinks that you shouldn't keep your clothes in your wardrobe if you don't wear them.

  According to wrap, a charity that promotes sustainable waste management, the average life for a garment in the UK is only 2.2 years. £30 billions of clothes in UK wardrobes go unused. For every 38 million items of clothing purchased per week, 11 million are sent to landfill.

Fortunately, more and more consumers are turning to second-hand purchases, there was a 30% increase in turnover in Traid shops between 2017 and 2018.

Buying second-hand items is an act of considerable activism, according to Chenoweth

  For the environment, and for our children, we need to think about being more responsible, and this starts with buying new clothes, which can be found in second-hand stores.

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