Ever wondered how you ‘consume’ fashion? When was the last time you discarded a T-shirt or dress or sari or even a bedsheet, old cushion covers, footrugs? What did you do with them?
Ever wondered how do those who live and breathe the malodourous air near a landfill — the huge mountainous mound of the city’s waste that gets dumped every day — survive from day to day in that nauseating stench?
I don’t have numbers on how many million tonnes comprise clothing, but what I can suggest is we, the citizens, need to wake up to this pollution. It is for the consumer to demand that policies be made to ensure proper collection, recycling, disposal of this waste; it is for you the consumer to exhort policymakers into action.
For instance, in Australia, the country’s environment minister, Tanya Pilbersek, has read out the riot act to the fashion industry to clean up its act. She has launched an industry-led voluntary scheme to slash the mountain of clothing that winds up in landfill each year - about 10kg per person, on average. And, if this is not complied with she has warned that the government will impose a mandatory one.
Under the scheme, clothing importers and those who make garments in Australia will be asked to pay a levy of four cents per item, and the money will be spent on solutions to reduce the landfill burden through re-use, repair, re-manufacturing and recycling.
India needs to follow suit.
We, the consumers, also urgently need to wake up on how and where we dispose our clothing. Australia has again come up with a policy that determines that by 2030, how Australians acquire, use and dispose of their clothing will be very different.
The wardrobe of the future will represent responsible stewardship and citizenship from clothing design and production, through to consumption and recirculation, with the aim to ensure that wardrobes will contain fewer clothes, most made to last from renewable fibre; many items will be enjoying a second life, or will have found their way into the wardrobe from new sources like rental, and lastly, it will be standard practice for less durable items (such as underwear) to be made from recycled materials.
Are we ready to be the change?
