Textile waste: why what you wear matters

Take a moment to consider how much time you’ve spent thinking about what you wear. The conversations you’ve devoted to discussing the topic with your friends. The hundreds of magazine pages you’ve flipped through seeking sartorial inspiration. The pre-work mornings you’ve lost to outfit indecision. When did the necessary task of getting dressed turn into hours of staring blankly into your stuffed-to-the-brim closet feeling like you’ve got nothing to put on?

Today’s culture of overconsumption perpetuates an insatiable appetite for the new—and, sometimes, a disregard for anything that’s not. Yes, you might have spent a long time thinking about your closet, but you’ve likely spent far less time considering the environmental impact of it. But what you wear matters and textile waste is a bigger issue than you might know.

That’s why Metro Vancouver has launched the Think Thrice About Your Clothes campaign in an attempt to minimize textile waste and encourage residents to reduce, repair, and reuse their clothing, instead of throwing it out. Talk about a hat trick. Or rather, a hat-scarf-shirt-pants-socks trick.

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