sustainable style

How to reduce your fashion waste and environmental impact by Nina Gbor

Eco Styles Talisa Sharma Circular Fashion 1

Photo by Tamara Bellis

Over recent years the fashion industry has changed drastically; fast-fashion is now leading the growth in clothing consumption with clothing production doubling between 2000 and 2015 whilst the lifetime of the garments is decreasing. Mass produced clothing focusing on fast inventory turnarounds to capture everchanging trends. Let’s talk about figuring out the carbon footprint of your clothing consumption and a few tips for lowering it.  

The circular economy model stems from the idea of keeping resources in a loop to optimise their use and value. The clothing industry is globally one of the most dominant industries and highest value industries due to its product value, employment and market size, and it has doubled in production size in the last two decades. Each year, 150 billion fashion items are produced globally, making the textile sector a considerable polluter with a detrimentally significant carbon footprint that many consumers are unaware of. The carbon footprint of the clothing industry is something that must not be ignored and with the increase in fashion overproduction and overconsumption, it’s necessary to stay informed on ways to curate a sustainable wardrobe that can also be very stylish. Something as simple as "extending the life of clothes by an extra nine months of active use would reduce carbon, water, and waste footprints by around 20-30% each".

What makes up the clothing carbon footprint?

Eco Styles Talisa Sharma fashion carbon footprint 1

Photo by George Evans

Extraction and manufacturing 

The most significant contributor to the clothing carbon footprint is from the production of clothing fibres, their production requires a substantial amount of water, energy, fertilisers, and land use. As well as this, there is the manufacturing process; consisting of the weaving, dyeing, cutting, and sewing which all use large amounts of energy, chemicals, and also the disposal of the fabric offcuts. With many companies having a global presence and reach, another significant contributor is transportation - the raw materials and the final clothing products often travel extensive distances all around the world. Packaging of the products also contributes to the industry's carbon emissions. 

Consumption impacts

Once the consumer has received their items there is then the energy usage of washing, drying and ironing the clothes. Lastly, when people eventually dispose of the clothing that they no longer want, around 87% globally, goes into landfills despite the clothing still having 70% of its useful life left. Clothing made from synthetics such as Polyester “accumulate in landfills because conventional PET is non biodegradable” which can release harmful additives and microfibres which pollute the land, water and air.

Calculating your carbon footprint 

This might seem daunting but there are many ways you can mitigate your impact and reduce your clothing footprint. To make a start there are many online resources that you can use to calculate your clothing carbon footprint, I would recommend Thredup. It asks you various questions about your clothing consumption and habits and then provides you with tailored suggestions on ways you can reduce your fashion footprint. 

What else can you do?  

  • Upcycle your clothes - this includes repurposing clothes such as transforming unwanted clothes into something else and clothes customisation. 

  • Support circular fashion - utilise brands that offer schemes where they accept old clothes back and buy second hand items to keep existing clothes in circulation. Ensure that brands with take back schemes are reusing or recycling the clothing in the right ways and not burning them or sending the clothes to landfill. 

  • Donate or sell your unwanted clothes - donating and selling your clothes gives them a second life and reduces the demand for brand new items.

  • Buy less clothes - when you are wanting to buy a new item question how much you need this or how often you will wear it.

  • Trade clothes - swap clothes with friends and family and host and attend clothes swaps. Clothes Swap & Style have free monthly clothes swap events in Sydney, Australia. You can get free tips from them on how to host your own clothes swap.

  • Repair your clothes - rather than replacing damaged clothes with minor problems, you can repair them, this extends the life of your garments.

  • Rent or borrow clothes - instead of buying new clothes for one off special events you can rent them, it is a fraction of the cost and helps optimise the usage of an item of clothing.

  • Educate yourself and others - share your knowledge with friends and family and stay connected with developments in circular fashion. Support sustainable brands - when you need new clothing, support the companies that prioritise sustainability and are making clothes designed for long term wear. You can know if a brand is not greenwashing when they are not transparent about how many garments they manufacture each year and refuse to disclose their information about their supply chain. 

  • Avoid fast fashion - Instead you could try shopping for preloved clothing. Fast fashion produces clothing at artificially low costs using unsustainable factors such as modern slavery, planned obsolescence and poor-quality materials. Their low quality encourages short-term wear. These clothing items have also been proven to have toxic chemicals such as pesticides and flame retardants in the manufacturing process which can seriously impact your health as prolonged contact with the skin can absorb the chemicals into your body.

  • Restyle your clothes - this is using your creativity to wear one item of clothing in a variety of different ways through layering and accessorising, for different types of occasions which is demonstrated in this article.

Eco Styles Restyling Circular fashion Talisa Sharma 1

Photo by Tamara Bellis


Article by Talisa Sharma. Talisa has a passion for business and enjoys educating and promoting sustainability and carbon friendly initiatives.

Secondhand September: the co-dependency of fast fashion and secondhand fashion by Nina Gbor

It's Secondhand September again this year which feels a little redundant for me because almost everyday has been a "secondhand September" day for me since I was a kid! As a matter of fact, about 99% of my extensive, eclectic wardrobe is secondhand.

Nevermind though because now that the world is finally catching on to the glory of preloved clothing, we have to keep the momentum going! Secondhand September gets bigger every year. So here's my all secondhand and thrifted ensemble: a colourful long coat, a pink dress, a pink bag, red sunglasses and ivory-coloured boots!

According to thredUP's 2022 Resale Report:

  • 70% of consumers say it’s easier to shop secondhand now than it was 5 years ago.

  • Resale is expected to grow 16 times faster than the broader retail clothing sector by 2026.

  • The global secondhand apparel market will grow 127% by 2026 – 3X faster than the global apparel market overall!

On paper this is great news because secondhand is more 'sustainable' than new (fast) fashion. However for something to be secondhand, it has to be new first. Over 100 billion garments are still being manufactured each year and approximately 84% of it is still going to landfill in spite of the rise in secondhand fashion sales.

It's so cool to see so many people who would never wear preloved hoping onto this wagon. However, it's not sustainable, even for a thriving 'sustainable' secondhand market if over 100 billion garments are still being manufactured to cater for the secondhand market.

Retail brands being aware of the popularity of preloved, use the secondhand selling trend to justify their overproduction. As in, they can keep over producing because their customers will resell.

We have to get off this (secondhand) fashion TRENDmill (a phrase I made up) by quitting overconsumption of retail fashion in the first place. There's already an abundance of clothes on the planet including vintage! But we need to remember the garment workers who make these garments and insist that brands pay garment workers liveable wages with decent quality of work life, so that workers are not left out in the cold when we stop overconsuming fashion.

The first step is demanding full transparency of brands' supply chain through laws. Then adding laws that ensure liveable wages, equity, redundancy packages and additional support for workers. Big brands can afford it.

Styling an ethically made pink handloom scarf by Nina Gbor

In all my years of being a style enthusiast, I’ve acquired many scarves from thrift and vintage stores, but I never took the time to learn how to style them. Until I received this beautiful pink cheeky rose naturally dyed handloom scarf from Fabric of Humanity.

Fabric of Humanity is a social enterprise that works with skilled artisans in rural India that use hand-looming and natural dyes. Their scarves are woven, hypoallergenic and compostable. I love the fact that they are challenging the power systems that cripple the opportunities and human rights of people to live prosperous lives. They ensure artisans are supported, empowered and paid liveable wages. Not only is this the right way of running a business with makers in the global South, but it’s also a way to to boost local economies in poorer communities by paying workers enough to enable the possibility of climbing out of poverty and the opportunity to thrive. It gives possibilities for better access to education for workers and their children and also healthcare. These are some of the fundamental ways that influence socio-economic development in communities in the global South. Supporting social enterprises like Fabric of Humanity goes so much further for peoples’ lives than shopping with conventional fashion brands.

This is the scarf that inspired me to raise my style games where scarves are concerned. It’s so pretty that I wanted to restyle it in several ways, with a couple of pink outfits. I used a 1980s retro-vintage pink dress, preloved pink coat, preloved pink jumper and preloved pink clutch purse. Why? Because having many different ways of wearing an accessory like this scarf inspires you to use your clothes more frequently which means you get more wear out of each item. You end up realising you don’t need to buy more clothes for different events and occasions in your life. Just restyle, mix and match pieces in your closet and play dress up in your own wardrobe! Ultimately if the majority of all of the fashion-loving world does this, we’ll have far less textile waste going to landfill.

 ♥ Nina Gbor

Instagram: @eco.styles

Exposing fashion's Jedi mind trick by Nina Gbor

Eco Styles Nina Gbor get off the fashion trendmill 1

It's many years ago that I started working in ethical & sustainable fashion. I feel like I really hit my stride this year with defining my career.

Today I'm going back to basics. Back to my first and original eco styling messaging and ethos of getting off the fashion trendmill. It means personal style (individual preference, lifestyle) alone should be the premise for choosing our clothes and NOT TRENDS. The concept is psychological, environmental, spiritual and also rooted in social justice, self-awareness and confidence.

This ensures you're likely to love, keep and wear your clothes for much longer. As opposed to following the wear once-disposable throwaway culture that has resulted in Aussies sending 6000 kg of textile waste to landfill every 10 minutes!

Invest in timeless pieces that are ethical, sustainable and ones that you know you'll wear for a very long time to come. Pieces that give you joy when you wear them.

Throughout our lives, fashion has taught us that we're not enough. And that we need to stay current with the latest trends. This brainwashing is the JEDI MIND TRICK that has grown and kept their profits super high for years. That’s because it keeps us in a hamster wheel loop of buying consistently to fill that void of not feeling enough. To get out of this loop, we need to step out of the fashion trendmill.

Meanwhile, fashion trends are the root cause of many of fashion's evils. They do nothing good for the self-esteem, body image and psychology of the consumer. They fuel waste and overconsumption. The fast trend culture also influences the exploitation of garment workers. While many of us don't wear trends, the notion of constant consumption is a CULTURAL TREND we need to address.

This will require shifting our individual and collective psychology, relationship and behaviour around clothing consumption. It's not just about whether or not you have a lot of clothes. It’s about acquiring clothes with a specific plan of keeping and using them long term. And ultimately, how we will dispose of them at the end of their life cycle.

fashion overconsumption restyle sustainable fashion 2

STYLING

The flower on this preloved skirt inspires love feelings. Inspired by its beauty and elegance, I paired it with plain black tops so that the focus remains on the hypnotic beauty of the flower.

To restyle an elegant skirt like this one into something more casual, I’d wear it with a t-shirt and a pair of sneakers like the ones below. I’d also wear less blingy jewellery or no jewellery at all.

etiko red vegan sneakers nina eco fashion

Outfit sourced from:

Preloved black top - Salvos Op Shop (thrift store)

Preloved floral skirt - Marketplace

Red, vegan sneakers - Etiko


♥ Nina Gbor

Instagram: @eco.styles

When you pivot in the right direction, good things can happen by Nina Gbor

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Recent happenings have shown me that when you move towards a bigger purpose, life can take your mission a little further than you anticipated…

With a few of my recent articles on topics like how we can mitigate the impacts of climate change on women and banning secondhand clothing, I’ve been pivoting into my background in international development. I still love my work in style and sustainable fashion. The deeper I go, the more I see intersections between the social and environmental issues of sustainable fashion and issues of international development. Widening the scope of our conversations towards development means broadening horizons that will hopefully bring more holistic solutions to issues.  

What I’ve learned from this new experience is that when you take steps in the right direction, life can throw opportunities at you that put your goals on steroids. So it’s essential to keep seeking growth and new ways to bring positive change in the world. Because you might meet others that carry the same volition. And this might be how we can all make things better. By following the internal compass that leads us to a greater purpose, then joining forces and growing communities aimed at changing the status quo.

Now this does not mean you’ll stop seeing my stylish outfits (like this one). Style as far as I can tell will always be part of my wheelhouse.

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STYLING

I’m wearing another colourful preloved ensemble but this time I put on PANTS! My wardrobe is all skirts and dresses, so pants are a rarity! Styled them with a random, cute, t-shirt I found in an op shop which I guess is a tourist souvenir from Hua Hin Province in Thailand. In the previous photo I topped the look with a blue vintage Shanghai China silk ‘Peony’ coat.  

Outfit sourced from:

Blue Vintage Shanghai Silk Peony Coat – Hand-me-down

Arty Pants - Suitcase Rummage Vintage & Preloved Market

Colourful T-shirtSalvos Stores Op Shop

♥ Nina Gbor