{"id":2401,"date":"2017-04-28T07:37:41","date_gmt":"2017-04-28T07:37:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/frugalfashionshopper.co.uk\/?p=2401"},"modified":"2017-05-02T10:05:33","modified_gmt":"2017-05-02T10:05:33","slug":"ethical-clothes-shopping-is-it-possible","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/frugalfashionshopper.co.uk\/wp\/ethical-clothes-shopping-is-it-possible\/","title":{"rendered":"Ethical clothes shopping \u2013 is it possible?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Are we costing the earth with our love of clothes?\u00a0 Because 235 million items of unwanted items of clothing will, apparently, end up in a UK landfill this Spring (says a study commissioned by Sainsbury\u2019s<\/a>).<\/p>\n

Wow! That seems an awful lot. \u00a0Ever the researcher I wonder how they extrapolated those figures?\u00a0 But even so, if this is true, this is shocking!<\/p>\n

I mean, I\u2019ve got rid of a humungeous amount of clothing \u2013 all to charity shops.\u00a0 And I did think of it as a bit of a spring clean, but then again, for me it\u2019s also the need to have fewer things in the smaller space that I\u2019ll be living in. But, supposedly, consumers will get rid of 680 million pieces of clothing as they spring-clean their closets and wardrobes and the majority, astonishingly, don\u2019t recycle, as \u00be of consumers admit to just binning their clothes rather than recycling them or giving them to charity.<\/p>\n

Oh please, people, I hope that\u2019s not true.\u00a0 It doesn\u2019t take a lot of effort to simply pop your unwanted clothes into a bag and take them to the local charity shop. Because, personally, I see charity shop shopping as an ethical endeavour \u2013 and although they\u2019re there to raise money, you, the shopper, are giving and then re-using clothes that would have gone to landfill, so why wouldn\u2019t you do this?<\/p>\n

Actually, I still meet or hear of people who say that charity shop shopping isn\u2019t for them.\u00a0 \u2018I can never find anything\u2019, they say.\u00a0 \u00a0But do they look? \u00a0\u00a0Or, \u2018I can\u2019t find anything my size.\u2019 Meaning a larger size.\u00a0 But, increasingly, these shops do have large sizes.\u00a0 And then, I think, there\u2019s still some reservation, some diffidence about charity shops, that they are still seen as rather unpleasant places, that only have grubby, scruffy, out-of-date and very worn clothes.\u00a0 On the contrary, in the UK, that is so not the case. Charity shops here are mostly delightful, boutique-like shops with plenty of stylish (and often unworn) clothes.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve just started posting photographs on Instagram.\u00a0 Do you? If you do, do go have a look at my account (the Instagram icon and link is on the side-bar). \u00a0In my profile I say that I love fashion but intend to do more street photography, which if you\u2019re a fashion blogger means taking pics of people wearing great clothes. But so far (only been on Instagram a couple of weeks) I appear to have taken this literally as there are lots of photos of streets!!\u00a0 Including these, where I show you a typical walk I take, in a typical English country town, with a typical English High Street, with a typical English charity shop.<\/p>\n

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And then this.<\/p>\n

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And here’s the High Street – note the bikes.<\/p>\n

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And this, below, is a typical English charity shop.<\/p>\n

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Who wouldn’t want to go into that shop? What’s not to like!<\/p>\n

Did you know it’s\u00a0Fashion Revolution Week<\/a>?<\/u>\u00a0 Alyson Walsh writes more about this here<\/u>.<\/a> It\u2019s all about, whenever you buy an item of clothing asking yourself the question, \u2018who made my clothes?\u2019 And the answer to that will always be a factory worker in, probably, not a particularly brilliant situation. If you watch the DVD, The True Cost<\/a>, you see factory owners (who want their workers to work in good conditions) so pressurised by the High Street labels to produce the goods faster and faster for less and less, that they cannot be anything other than slave drivers.\u00a0 I\u2019m not excusing these factory owners but, be aware that nearly all labels make demands that impact negatively on the conditions of garment workers. There is, of course, a movement to produce sustainable clothing by garment workers working in better conditions, and I totally endorse that.\u00a0 Do, for instance, have a look at the People Tree website<\/a>. But, the prices.\u00a0 I cannot afford these.\u00a0 So, for me, we\u2019re back to charity shops.<\/p>\n

But wherever we buy our clothes we should be more discerning. \u00a0Because, really, perhaps we could buy fewer clothes? \u00a0We could also think how often we are likely to wear these clothes. \u00a0Once, twice, three times? \u00a0Or 30? And, if at all possible, we ought to remember the worker who made these clothes.<\/p>\n

It is important, I think, to be aware, and be considerate, conscientious fashion shoppers.<\/p>\n

With love<\/p>\n

Penny, the frugalfashionshopper<\/em><\/p>\n

P.S. And sharing with Catherine of Not Dressed as Lamb and her #SaturdayShareLinkup when it goes live \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n\"instagram\"<\/a>\"instagram\"<\/a><\/span>
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Are we costing the earth with our love of clothes?\u00a0 Because 235 million items of unwanted items of clothing will, apparently, end up in a UK landfill this Spring (says a study commissioned by Sainsbury\u2019s). Wow! That seems an awful<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2408,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[129],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2401","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-fashion-ethics"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/frugalfashionshopper.co.uk\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/04\/featured-Lewes.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/frugalfashionshopper.co.uk\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2401","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/frugalfashionshopper.co.uk\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/frugalfashionshopper.co.uk\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/frugalfashionshopper.co.uk\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/frugalfashionshopper.co.uk\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2401"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/frugalfashionshopper.co.uk\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2401\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2412,"href":"https:\/\/frugalfashionshopper.co.uk\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2401\/revisions\/2412"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/frugalfashionshopper.co.uk\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2408"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/frugalfashionshopper.co.uk\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2401"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/frugalfashionshopper.co.uk\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2401"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/frugalfashionshopper.co.uk\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2401"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}