Love your Clothes are teaming up with Cardiff Fashion Week to convince the city to love its clothes. From the 24-29 October, a series of events and workshops across the city will aim to encourage consumers to buy smarter, extend the life of their clothing, and keep it out of the bin.
Up-cycle your clothes and fall in love with them again (Photo courtesy of WRAP)
Jamie Perry from Love your Clothes said: “Every year in the UK 350,000 tonnes of clothing goes to landfill. This doesn’t need to be the case, and if we all can come together in Cardiff for just one week we can make a lasting impact – for the environment and a local charity.”
Cardiff has been set a challenge to collect five tonnes of pre loved clothes for the charities YMCA and Age Cymru. Lisa Wells project manager at YMCA said: “We are very excited to be part of the Love Your Clothes campaign this year as we are passionate about saving textiles from landfill.”
Launched in 2014, it’s part of the Sustainable Clothing Action Plan, (SCAP), which is coordinated by the Waste and Resources Action Programme (WRAP). According to WRAP, the clothing industry contributes the fifth biggest environmental footprint of any industry in the UK. In the long term events like this can contribute to a 5 to 10% reduction in the waste used in the clothing manufacturing process, extending the average life of clothes by up to three months.
According to Rebecca Clark, director at Green City, who support the event said: “Fast fashion and cheap clothing stores just encourage us to do this and don’t give consumers any real understanding of the value and effort, and sometimes even child labour that goes into producing our clothing.” She added, “Mending and upcycling helps us to up-skill, and be more proactive and individual in our fashion choices.”