Regent's 5 Easy Green Pointers to remember when refreshing your wardrobe
The appetite for eco-friendly and sustainable fashion is, thankfully, growing, alongside awareness that the industry is one of the worst in the world in terms of carbon footprint and damage to the environment. It can be a confusing and daunting ride through this changing world, and hard to hold all the info in your head when considering buying an item of clothing. Here, we lay out a few of the key elements relating to the clothing industry and sustainability, and talk you through some easy-to-follow tips for staying eco-conscious when you want to freshen up your wardrobe.
By now, most people know about the toll the fashion industry takes on our planet. With facts such as that the fashion industry is responsible for 10% of all annual global carbon emissions – more than all international flights and maritime shipping combined – or that every year the industry uses 93 billion cubic meters of water – enough to meet the consumption needs of five million people – its easy to understand how things have gotten out of hand, and that we’ve got to start changing our habits.
The term ‘fast fashion’ refers to the kind of consumption we’ve probably all been guilty of: buying a cheap set of t-shirts, underwear or socks that are poorly made and which you use for a short time before they fall apart or you fall out of love with them. Step this up to a pair of jeans: it can be so easy to be attracted to a cheap price tag and to ignore the fact that the cost is always being paid elsewhere, either by the criminally cheap labour afforded to desperate workers or the cost paid by the planet itself. It takes 3,781 litres of water to make one pair of jeans. You can start to see how fast fashion costs the planet dearly and benefits no one.
With so much info around to bear in mind, so many moving parts to consider when looking at buying even the simplest garment, we’ve compiled some key pointers to keep in mind when considering your latest wardrobe purchase. See below for the basics: we hope they help you to keep it green and hold your planet’s best interests at heart.
1. Buy Recycled
Reducing the miles a garment has travelled is an obvious but not often thought of way to manage your fashion carbon footprint. Avoiding long-haul shipping or flying is crucial, so buying British made is just as important for your clothes as it is your fruit and veg. Luckily, these fair isles have some of the most wondrous heritage brands offering astounding garments that have been made stitch for stitch on English soil. Baracuta, Gloverall, Peregrine, Cheaney and, of course, Regent are all brands that offer goods sourced and fabricated right here in the UK. So you can buy local and independent, buy once, buy right and collapse the distance and carbon footprint all at once.
It’s an awful, hollow feeling you get after you’ve bought something cheap, and nothing compared to investing in something you love and want to treasure for as long as possible. That hollow feeling is anathema for us at Regent: every single thing that passes through our shop is there for its timelessness and the quality of its build. The clothes we offer and the brands we stock are there to last, both in terms of style and sustainability. It’s long been our aim to make Regent a one-stop shop to meet all your fashion needs, and we’re proud to’ve worked on making it the case that what you buy with us has been sustainably produced, and/or is an investment for a lifetime. Buy it once, buy it right, look and feel great and help counter the damaging of the planet.
For some great writing and further info on fast fashion and ways to counter your carbon footprint, check out these articles:
https://unearthed.greenpeace.org/2019/09/12/fast-facts-about-fast-fashion/
https://www.vogue.co.uk/article/has-fashion-finally-got-sustainable-2019
https://www.worldbank.org/en/news/feature/2019/09/23/costo-moda-medio-ambiente