ad-free
Channel / Source:
TEDx Talks
Published: 2014-04-30
Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cduGLWhm1LM
it has taken me thirty five years to realize that you all what you wear I just wonder what are you wearing today take a look at put on this morning how many of us consciously this morning got dressed knowing what you are wearing maybe you were too busy this morning because life is very busy or maybe you are such a hot cool fashion Easter this morning
you stepped into the clothes that the magazines out the blokes telus is on trend or maybe you were just really hung over this morning and you were Koppen you just push home whatever was lying crumpled on the floor from last night but I'm telling you every single time but you pull your head three you'll talk will you stick your leg through your genes that you are
possible if you are an accomplice of one of the world's most polluting industries that is killing the planet and people and it really doesn't need to be like that because you have an incredible power to reduce the pollution in the fashion industry now I should know this for the last seven years I've been in a huge battle against pollution in the fashion industry and there's a
reason why I say possible because anything that's big and worth winning is a battle and I can tell you I've got a lot of skulls from my bustle and these apostles gauze and professionals because because I am the most unlikely person that you would ever expect to be working against pollution in the fashion industry because I have no experience in the fashion industry let me just
tell you a little bit about myself so I used to be a dentist working in London filling and drilling into a crown of bridges and I hate it because I hated harassing people so I've read frames because dentists do hurt people never believe that this is we gotta there I retrained is that as a journalist in London and nine years ago I move to Hong Kong
and when I first moved to Hong Kong I was a freelance journalist and I was writing about all sorts of topics all sorts of publications I rates about topics like my sex life which nine years ago was much better than it is today three kids and I also used to write a lot about the environment now only environment this is something that really matter to me
as a journalist I also lots of good questions I said why is China so polluted why does China have such an environmental crisis at the movement we know that sixteen also the world's top twenty most polluted cities are here in China and we also know that the fashion and textile industries horrific Lee policing so as a journalist I also love the questions and then I discovered
is you probably will know that China produces the world's clothes and textiles and I'm assuming moved when I discovered all this information and when I discovered that not really enough was being done to make the fashion industry less polluting I jumped in and I launched redress in two thousand and seven and all mission is to reduce waste in the fashion industry if we just take a
moment to think about the fashion industry very few of you very few consumers around the world realized just how big the fashion industry it has an estimated annual income and revenue of one point seven trillion U. S. dollars and every single person in this room and around the world pulse of it because we all consumers and I'm assuming that most people wetlands essentially so we are
all United by the fabric on our back into this wonderful but also horrific industry I was on an airplane recently flying back to the UK and I was watching a documentary about the fashion industry and in that document you those interview without a win soul who is the editor of US vogue she's the queen of the fashion industry Gina's everything and in this documentary she said
function is a reflection of our times another was sitting there eating my peanuts a thirty five thousand feet I started to cry because I think that is so depressing because if fashion is a reflection of our times then we're living in a terrible terrible time and we all the fabric of the fashion industry and this reflects on us and I was really moved by her by
her interview because if you look at the darker side of the fashion industry you will know that discover that clues all one of the most polluting consumer goods out there just my jeans used a huge amount of natural resources my jeans used a three thousand six hundred and twenty five liters in that production my jeans used three kilos of chemicals so horribly toxic my jeans used
four hundred mega joules of energy which is the same as leaving a light bulb on full one hundred sixteen days approximately and my jeans used about thirteen square meters of land just to grow the cotton and apparently on terrible at math but on we kind of worked out that I think it's fun to be to the E. this amount of stage that's how much land was
required from my parents jeans now it's also very pleasing because it's estimated that twenty percent of the world's industrial warts of pollution is caused by the textile industry and in China it's estimated that seventy five percent of all diseases on links to water pollution so I was really horrified by all of this and these findings really fueled the early parts of my personal and in those
early years I battled against the fashion industry my focus was the industry I spent five years bustling with designers brands retailers manufacturers suppliers putting my heart and soul into making the actual production of clothes less polluting but then nothing major happened to me two years ago and it changed the way I dress the EFA because I took a TV crew up into China and I took
them are to make a news report on some really good clothes that we have been involved in now which went to the factories in these factories were doing a bit more recycling here and this was it using water pollution that Arent little but that's called a little bit of energy and greenhouse gases and I was so proud because this is something which championed and we were
filming and I was really thinking you noble I have actually bomb this select couldn't believe I feel we've finally actually on the cusp of creating clothes that are a little bit less polluting and I was so happy box at the end of shoot with the TV crew we went to one of Hong Kong's landfills we with them all morning it gave me about three hours to
watch this ugly situation in front of my eyes when we arrived in the morning there was actually a cue like a traffic jam of rubbish trucks the queuing up into come into the landfill which is basically a mountain of rubbish this photo was taken a little bit later otherwise you would receive a queue of trucks coming in off the morning pickup and I was horrified and
I realized right here at this moment in the in the landfill that book ever the fashion industry does to try to make our clothes a little bit less polluting but it is absolutely nothing if ask consumers buy so many clothes and chalk so many clothes away and so if you look at it office consumers and I'm one of them right I think we've gone absolutely crazy
today we started buying Sir many close eighty billion new garments made from virgin resources are created every year western consumers of sorts to by sixty percent more clothes today than they did ten years ago and even thought time we haven't started sniff miraculously spending more for household income and close Mulder tool I started to buy lots more and would not even spending more on it the
reason for that is because clothes have become very very cheap and when you get cheap you generally get bad quality Sir what is actually happened is today we all all dressed in rags it's your and because we are dressed in rags these clothes don't lost so long and so we tend to talk them out in Hong Kong it is estimated that every single day two hundred
and seventeen tons of textiles go into our landfill now I don't know what to hundred seventeen tons looks like and so we did some very conservative numbers on this and we estimate that every one hour in Hong Kong we send ten thousand garments into our landfill ten thousand of these really really polluting garments in the US if you look at the U. S. landfill over the
last eleven years in the U. S. their landfills have seen a forty eight percent increase in the amount of textiles going into the landfills meanwhile there overall textile but that overruled landfill waste has come down by one percent and so I decided right here that I was only gonna wear clothes that other people had dumped for one year the reason I wanted to do that was
because I wanted to put the problem on my back I wanted to know why a people throwing away so many clothes and I also wanted to demonstrate that the players the people threw away a fantastic quality say this was my wardrobe for one year did not go to the landfill insults my clothes because I probably would've got killed by one of those trucks so instead I
went to this used clothes second hand don't play thing recycling warehouse upon the border on and in here are all the clothes that consumers dumped into the bins that given to recycling I would go there once a month spent a long day sweating and getting very dirty getting bitten by mosquitoes and I would come out with my clothes for the month and I was off and
away having a lot of fun doing this actually every single day attack phase of what I was wearing every single day of will something different and I use to post all of the images on social media Instagram full of my Johnny and I got a ridiculous amounts of media the media around the world loved the story it's a very very high impact project but I learnt
a few things from this experience because I was polluted people's rubbish for the whole year unanswerable about plays number one I know why people love clothes because clothes do you have a big power to change the way that we feel and the way that we act like Novak five will say many last year and so I understand why we want to show up I understand why
you old love fashion number two I realized that we really do need to take care of clothes because so often I would find really expensive beautiful quality clothes that had been dumped by somebody else just because a person was missing all because it had a mind a stain and I really realized it didn't have anything to the construct lives finally I learnt that you really need
to have an emotional bond with your clothes you deter law off your clothes and I realized that through when I found these clothes and I would you know stomach surrounded I find something interesting about all we can offer it bring it back to life that I really love that piece of plaything and it is important as consumers to fall in love with your clothes and so
I realized for the first time in thirty five years but I am was I when I was so happy doing this project because I was dressed on the outside exactly how I feel on the inside because only inside of me I really care about the planet I really care about the people this project three big able to wet the most sustainable clothes in the whole wide
world because of the century getting the mouth of a pin this allowed me to dress on the outside how I feel on the inside and that is why I'm here today to tell you that you all what do you wear you have just as much power as I have to reduce pollution in the fashion industry you all all soldiers that can fight against waste pollution caused
by the fashion industry and this is actually backed up by research because scientists have done what they call the life cycle analysis if they look at a garment to say Mike for jeans again and they can calculate how much negativity and how much pollution comes off when the cost is being grown Abbas the genes are being made and then they can look at how much pollution
is created off to you leave the shop with your genes in your back and would you take it home IQ bullshit a bleach and tumble dry dry cleaner and Chuck it away whatever else you might do to and they have found fifty eight percent of the negative impacts that come out of a piece of clothing is caused by a I think that's been perfectly great news
I'm so happy about that because it actually means that we have more power than the industry to change the amount of pollution that's coming out of our clothes this is brilliant news we should definitely celebrating but if you think all my god my wardrobe how McKenna make my wardrobe become sustainable do I have to might want him and tucked away in Bostick how long you definitely
do not need to do that you need to be more conscious about your plaything and that means number one Roger consumption it's very simple but you should buy less and by Bessa never by poorly made close cool ways by well made durable close because the durability off your clothes is the most important factor in determining its sustainability and of course always look for sustainable brands second
hikers of course the second thing is you need to care for the clothes that you have that means repair them and wash them very well and finally if whatever reason you really want to get rid of some clothes recycle them because textiles almost one hundred percent recyclable so never never never please put them in the bin don't put them in the bin and never let them
and cilantro now I'm a really optimistic person and I really think you are good people like me I think you care about the planet and I think but you care about the people that are involved in making your clothes and so that's why I'm here to remind and to encourage you to believe that if we are what we wear that we can actually reduce pollution coming
