Fast Fashion: The Companies👚

Before I start on the post, I want to mention that I missed last week's post (after over 2 years of never missing one!) because I was doing a city break where I decided to skip a week because we were out and about on our holiday.   My posts may be fortnightly, depending on how busy I am.

Also, I'd like to say Happy Easter! Feel free to read my Happy Easter post (that was over a year ago!), where I talk about how to tell whether your easter egg packaging is recyclable or not and give a few statistics. 

Anyway, back to the actual post. This is basically a part two to the Stop Fast Fashion post which gave an overview to the situation - in this post I'll talk about companies that you may be familiar with which are contributing (or trying to prevent) fast fashion. The Guardian recently released an article about Shein and what they're doing, and this is what my post will be based off of. 

Shein has very recently come to the forefront of the market, but already have controversial practices, even when you take away the environmental aspects. For example, they are accused of ripping off smaller brands, the times where they put a swastika necklace on their website, or  selling a Muslim prayer mat as a decorative rug (before quickly removing them and apologising) or their suppliers terrible, sweatshop working conditions. 

Anyway, demand for their products means they produce 10,000 new products a day, which is astonishing. The process of "testing and repeating" is a method that Shein use which is basically where they produce a small batch and send it out - if it does well they basically mass-produce it, and if it does badly, they forget about it... Shein send products out to 250 countries which produces such bad product miles, without thinking about returns. Because it costs more to put a returned item back into circulation than to just throw it away, returns mostly end up in landfill.  It is one of the worse examples of fast fashion.  

However there are lots of companies who are trying to help. For example, H&M now have H&M Conscious, where they use more environmentally-friendly materials to make their clothes, and stores where you can recycle unwanted garments.   And if you bring a bag of used clothes to an H&M store they will give you a thank you voucher that gives you money off your next purchase, which is great.  Read more about that here. 

The difficulty with specifically eco-friendly fashion is that it's incredibly expensive. So, if it is something you'd be unable to afford, I'd recommend just shopping greener: in charity shops, websites where you can swap/buy clothes or making sure you don't get rid of something in a bad way.

Thank you for reading this week's post. I hope you had a good Easter, and a good upcoming week!

Violet

         xxx

How to Save Energy (and money)!

Saving fuel is vital, but especially recently where energy bills have skyrocketed. This has affected everyone, for some people worse than others. So I thought I'd do a post on saving energy, which will not only help the environment, but will also save money. (These are in no particular order).

1. Draught-proof your doors and windows. Making sure everything is (professionally) draught-proofed.  It costs around £250, however it can save up to £45 pounds year on year, and the CO2 saving is 105kg. It means saving energy because you're not heating your house and allowing the heat to escape. You can lose 25% of your heating from the roof.
2. Saving your washing.  Make sure your cycles are as full as they can be, and reduce the temperatures, like to 30°C, instead of using higher ones.  Also, instead of using a dryer, air drying your clothes is much better both ways. One less cycle a week can save £8 and 12kg of CO2 a year.
3. If you're changing any lightbulbs, swap them to energy-saving LED ones, which last 10 times longer than halogen lightbulbs and are cheaper by £7 a year.
4. Linked to number 2, when you next need to buy a new one you should buy energy saving household appliances, because you could save up to £300 a year.
5. Taking a shower instead of a bath can really help reduce water bills. In my blog How to be Eco Friendly in the Bathroom, I touched on how much better a shower is to a bath when thinking about the amount of water you use. A bath can hold up to 80 litres of water, whereas an efficient shower will use 9 litres per minute (which is good compared to the old showerheads, which use, d to use up to 10 litres more).  If you take a 2-3 minute shower, or turn the water off while you're washing your hair or your body, that's a lot of water (and energy used to heat the water) saved! 

I hope these helped you and that you'll be able to use them. Having a smart meter can help you save to as it shows you exactly how much energy you use each day. Thank you!

Violet

         xxx