Sustainable Fashion

The Eco-Movement in GMS recently gave an assembly and a drop-down session on sustainable fashion. It is fascinating how naming can change the concept. Pre-loved garments is a more positive message and makes garments, once belonging to someone else, seem a worthwhile purchase. One impressive statistic is, “Over 87 million pre-loved items were purchased from January -September 2021”. By buying and wearing pre-loved items we are all playing our part towards sustainability.

For every garment saved from landfill, we are saving the planet from an overload of discarded items. Ghana, India and Chile were three places students were shown to have mountains of clothes piled high. So much is burnt: “Burberry Group disclosed that it burnt £28.6 million of stock.” Research by Barnado’s Charity identified that, “On average a person wears an item of clothing 7 times before throwing it away.”

The Eco- Movement, in our school, is raising awareness of the threat that this level of waste is doing to our planet.  “Affordable, Accessible On Trend” clothes are having a bad environmental impact.

The call goes out to all of us to, “Upcycle, recycle, repurpose and/or rework” our clothing: do everything to avoid just throwing it in the bin.

Of course, sustainable fashion means repurposing former plastic bags to carry new pre-loved clothes home in. We want to avoid there being “more plastic in the sea than fish in 2050.”

GMS thanks Miss Addy and her team for preparing the assembly and working hard to keep our GMS members sustainably savvy.