I don't want to mindlessly preach about something I don't (try to) practise, and that goes with anything regarding sustainability, fashion, food, exercise or in this article, zero-waste. The point of writing these posts isn't to toot my own horn but establish a standard for myself, one that holds me accountable.
So here is a short piece I had written in 2018 as I thought about what drove and defined the early pillars of my interest in a responsible lifestyle.
I grew up in a household where being mindful of the purchases we make, and the resources we conserve were not efforts to get a ticket on board the 'sustainability' train, but plain common sense.
Studying fashion, I have a mixed relationship with trends. There is a constant struggle between an urge to follow them, and a need to set them. But for those who choose the former, we as industry Stakhanovites, rely on their temptations to follow these trends and spend endless resources understanding the whats and whys, and how we advocate the trend further to profit from their mindless mania.
So what happens when "sustainability" becomes the new buzz word? Wonderful things and not so great things. I am (almost) relieved that sustainability is a trend (apart from the downside aka greenwashing), for the sole reason that trends are sure ways to seduce consumers, regardless of their personal motives. In an ideal world, we hope to see those blindly on the road most treaded will become conscious of their choice, with it finally evolving into a mindset, even after the "trend" fades away.
The lifecycle of an average t-shirt in my house was rather predictable. My mum would place the neatly pressed t-shirt on my bed before heading out for dinner at a family friend's, enough times until I started to regularly wear it out with my friends. After 20-30 washes later, the colour was too faded to wear in public, so it became new sleep or running attire. If the t-shirt had holes, it lost its wearability status and became rags found in the kitchen or the attic, tending to drying and dusting duties.
The only difficulty I faced due to this lifestyle was the inability to relate to the average pollution per person statistics, focused on textiles. It stated that the average person throws out their clothes after 7-10 washes, and every person is liable for overconsumption and creating 20-30kg of textile waste annually*. The ribbons hanging around the potted plants on my terrace, cut from what was an old plaid skirt from my early teen years, looked at me questionably.
The numbers shocked me, not because I thought I was exempted from the shame of introspecting where everything went wrong. I simply (and naively) believed more people were doing these simple practices. For a fact, I knew Asian culture touted repurposing and mending of old clothes, in attempts to be frugal, conscious of the environment and respectful to the clothing itself. I felt disconcerted, disillusioned and incredibly nervous to do the math after that. All because I knew there was more that could be done, without it seeming like a daunting task. The first step was indubitably to adopt eco-friendly habits, but the next step was to spread awareness and influence others to do the same.
There is at least 15% of textile waste from the original amount of fabric to make a garment. Be it the inefficient placement of the cutting patterns, or the illogical reasoning behind the design of the draft, there is a fault to find in every step of the production cycle. From my own experience with making garments with a printed textile, the requirement of print matching always trumps the efficiency maximisation of fabric. Unfair, however still an opportunity to creatively think of solutions to a global problem.
Zero waste is an effort that is applicable to various stages of the production cycle. From pre-industrial to post-consumer, the goal is to minimise waste until there is none left, regardless of methods and timeline. Making pin-cushions out of scraps, or binding notebooks with the excess fabric, all creative ways to eliminate waste. My 'aha' moment was when it dawned on me that 'zero waste' was this umbrella term that clearly defined all the things I'd been doing and compiled them into one holistic category.
Perhaps, the reason why the name 'zero waste' was an abstract concept to my family, and to me especially because of the emphasis on waste. Ours was a story less about wastage, but more on conservation. The focus has been on the sustenance of our resources, as it mattered to use them to their full potential and pushing ourselves to do a little bit better than yesterday.
There are certain attributes I credit to my upbringing, which I am unable to explain to those not brought up the same way. Such as the reason behind why I save old wrapping paper and packaging, or why I am not opposed to wearing an old ratty t-shirt to the gym instead of throwing it out. Through studying fashion, I've been able to take it a step further and start my projects thinking about the '15% of fabric wasted' statistic. I design for efficiency and cost-effectiveness, enjoy repurposing fabric/trims and upcycle them to give them a new life. It has become a principle I follow, not simply a trend I have succumbed to. Zero-waste, to me, is complete consumption.
The trend of sustainability might be helping individuals come together, joined by their common interest to stay relevant, regardless it forces individuals to do good (unless you think H&M and Zara's "conscious" collections are enough, will write another post on this). So, whether you practice a zero-waste lifestyle to damage the planet less or improve your social life, there is still hope for this mindset to catch on within the rest of the world, turning a trend to a genuine stimulus.
*I do not remember where I took this reference from, so added a more recent statistic instead.
Now, as I reread (and lightly fix grammar for) this piece, it reminds me how much technical information I've picked up by studying fashion from ideation to execution. How cautious we have to be when we choose certain fabrics, colours, inspirations - not just aesthetically but environmentally, culturally and on other various tangents. Side note - I might not be creating collections as I thought I would on joining fashion school, but I think this knowledge sets a strong foundation for my interest in research on this vast industry and practices.
Disclaimer! Cover image and post images are from Unsplash.