Apr
20
Textile Tragedies
Over the weekend I had the immense pleasure of attending the Melbourne Social Forum. It was a super inspiring weekend and I made some amazing connections with lots of people. I was there under the banner of the Craft Cartel to both run a workshop and a stall.
I had a super awesome time with the stall. Not really ’cause I sold heaps of stuff but it was a great opportunity to meet some customers face to face. And nice to sell some things I’ve had for a while. And some new things! Like my police tape wallet I made last week. Sold it to this nice young lad who’d been feeling real guilty about buying a $1.50 wallet obviously made in a sweatshop, especially since it started falling apart real quick. Not only did I help him with a new wallet made out of Victoria Police TRASH (naughty litter bugs) but I showed him how to easily repair it if it starts to show signs of wear. I’m thinking I’ll make a couple more of these and put them online for sale.
What was most fun for me running this stall was having the opportunity to talk to people about the sustainability issues around textile production. It seems that with an increasing environmental awareness there’s plenty of people who know they should be conscious of water, energy, fuel, and paper consumption but there is little awareness about the massive waste that’s occuring with textiles.
What I found was that people understand that they should be aware of the materials that new clothes are made of. There’s a good awareness of the environmental impacts of cotton growing and the benefits of wearing bamboo and hemp. But not many people realised that most of the environmental impacts of cotton production isn’t the growing of the cotton (although that is definitely a big issue!) but also in the processes of turning cotton from raw material into cloth, especially coloured cloth!
And that’s just the production of material.
What really concern me is the massively ineficient use of fabric in our society. So many clothes are being worn only a handful of times and then literally ending up in a landfill. It surprised many people to realise that only about 8% of clothes donated for charity actually get resold. Most of it is shredded for things like filling furniture. But a fair heap of it is too dirty and torn or whatever and ends up being turfed.
We need to be so much smarter with our use of fabric. We need to start by buying better quality clothes that are made from good quality sustainable fabrics and made to withstand a fair wear. We need to learn to repair the clothes we have so they last longer. We need to think of other uses for our clothes when we’re finished using them. We need to ensure we donate all wearable clothes in a nice and clean condition to our op shops so they can be sold again.
Because at the moment tons and tons and tons of clothes end up like this every year:
And that creates more of a need for the toxic sweatshop slums spreading throughout the developing world
Does that make you sick? I sure hope so.
So after plenty of conversations to fire me up, I really enjoyed presenting the workshop ‘The Fabric of Resistance’ which was about radical craft history, both contemporary and historical. And looking into the ethics of contemporary craft which really dealt with some of the issues around sustainability and production.
We had an awesome session and were super lucky to have it in a beautiful hand made Mongolian Gur. Which I sadly didn’t get a picture of but I’m tracking one down to put up here. Thanks to everyone who came and made the workshop really successful. And for those who didn’t, here’s the slideshow:
Yes, another world IS possible!
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