Who's doing any education about the baleful effects of the fast-fashion industry on the environment? \u00a0Not schools, it would seem, and not the industry either as they've a vested (pun not intended) interest in keeping shtum.<\/p>\n
Research shows that since the millennium the number of clothes bought in Europe has increased by ~40%, while the average number of times a typical item is worn has reduced by the same amount. \u00a0I read that the average UK consumer now buys about 27kg of clothes a year,<\/span>\u00a0and the overall increase in demand is around 2% per annum. \u00a0Further, a recent survey of women in the UK found that, typically, they wore clothes only seven times. \u00a0This fast fashion business is thirsty work with every\u00a0tonne of clothing made, needing 200 tonnes of water. \u00a0The waste problem is equally dire. \u00a0All such outcomes are externalised. \u00a0Back in April, the Times had a feature<\/a> on what happens to the clothes we no longer want. \u00a0 This was the opening paragraph:<\/p>\n \"A sign reading \u201cdead white man\u2019s clothes\u201d hangs above the entrance to one of Africa\u2019s largest markets. \u00a0Yet many of the garments for sale inside show scant sign of wear and some still bear original price tags: testimony to the throwaway culture of the West<\/em>.\"<\/p>\n Ideally, some say, would there be carbon tax to cover all this? \u00a0Maybe, but where's the educational initiative to explore the issues?<\/p>\n In the good old days (ie, about 25 years ago), somebody would have been producing educational packs, often funded by industry, in which the facts were laid bare, the sponsor got to make their case, and a range of educational activities were listed. \u00a0In other models, neutral funding would be available for packs with a similar focus but perhaps a more nuanced view of the issues. \u00a0This looks like a gap in the market ...<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Who's doing any education about the baleful effects of the fast-fashion industry on the environment? \u00a0Not schools, it would seem, and not the industry either as they've a vested (pun not intended) interest in keeping shtum. Research shows that since...<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":237,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[2,4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7721","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-comment","category-news-and-updates"],"acf":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7721","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/237"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7721"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7721\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7721"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7721"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7721"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}