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| Photo by luanateutzi |
"Gluttony: the over-indulgence and
over-consumption of anything to the point of waste."
From magazines, to television, to movies, to social media and everything in between, we are bombarded with the corporate machines push to make us desire more of everything. We are constantly being sold, urged to consume beyond our needs, desires, health and morality. In the US, we are one of the world's biggest and most arrogant examples of excess and mass consumption.
Our homes are now enormous energy guzzlers (the median size of a home in the 1950's was approximately 950 square feet compared to 2,386 square feet today) and less people occupy them. The average American family at present owns 2-3 cars. "Until World War II and into the late 1940s, many Americans did not own cars. People lived in cities and towns, and 40 percent did not own cars but used public buses, trolleys and trains (Robin Chase, Does Everyone in America Own a Car?"). We weigh more than ever, as 40 percent of US adults are obese. Obesity is cited as "a contributing factor to approximately 100,000-400,000 deaths in the United States per year (Wikipedia, Obesity in the United States)." Finally bien sur, most of our closets are so amassed with clothes, shoes and handbags that it appears we are auditioning to be featured on an episode of Hoarders: Buried Alive.
Celebrities, socialites and fashion and lifestyle influencers are constantly feeding us the visual candy of their supposedly enviable closets. Yet, what they are really feeding us, or showing us rather, is their own large carbon footprint and apparent contribution to environmental degradation and subsequent climate change. Even those who work diligently trying to assure us by repeating their favorite mantra, "reuse, recycle and repurpose," and celebrating their closets as the ethos of sustainability --- made up of pre-owned, recycled, upcycled, tri-cycled, renewed, ethically sourced, etc. items -- what they are failing to be educated on (or simply ignoring), is that this model died a long time ago and is not sustainable.
Downsizing our clothing, shoes and handbag purchases is the answer. It's now about reducing more than ever and pushing the corporate fashion machines to therefore produce less. "Unfortunately, in reality, even if garments are collected by retailers and brands in-store in an attempt to avoid disposal in landfills, the capabilities to recycle clothing at the scale needed for current production rates do not exist. It is also typically more energy-intensive to recycle existing garments than to produce new ones (Anita Kozlowski, Fast Fashion's "Sustainability" Endeavors Need to Be About More than Fabrics, Recycling.)"
"In terms of the bigger picture of all discarded clothing.....only 10% overall is recycled, only 8% is re-used as second-hand clothing -- but 57% is sent to landfills (commonobjective.co, Fashion and Waste: An Uneasy Relationship)." Again, at present, a truly sustainable model other than common sense moderation, does not exist. Yet the looming, undeniable and deadly consequences of climate change are at hand. We do not need any more celebrities, bored and narcissistic socialites, or fashion school graduates that want to create looks akin to those seen in The Hunger Games creating any more clothing lines -- organic, recycled, ethical or not. They ALL depend on our dwindling water and energy supplies and are contributing to climate change.
You will have a big gluttonous wardrobe full of the newest recycled polyester trends and nowhere to ever wear them -- as the present pandemic, future pandemics which are accelerated by our consumption patterns and climate change, and the continuous uproars in weather -- will end those glittering lifestyles for good. We must go back to small, classic, simple, quality wardrobes. That is the only sustainable option. One of cultivated style.
