Have you caught the new season of War on Waste on ABC iview?
The one and only Craig Reucassel is back for Season 3 of the show and we’re once again loving his uniquely humorous approach towards not only exposing the problems in our waste systems, but helping to provide solutions too. If you missed it, he doesn’t disappoint with his clever stunts and if you’re a fellow child of the 80s you’ll love the remake of the Cottees cordial ad!
As well as covering issues with food waste, packaging and recycling, Craig shines the light on fast fashion and the staggering impacts it is having on our environment.
There’s a lot in Episode 3, and we highly recommend watching it, but here a couple of things that really jumped out for us.
First off, did you know that a whopping 227 million kilos of clothes is ending up in Aussie landfill every year?
With clothing cheaper than it has ever been in history, and new styles being brought out in stores every single week - as opposed to the previous model of 2 seasons per year - we’re buying more than ever, and wearing it less than ever.
And unfortunately, a huge amount of this clothing going straight to landfill is made from plastic.
Yep, that’s right, as Craig so wittingly demonstrates by wearing his plastic dress at last week's Logies (image credit – Yahoo Lifestyle), we are literally walking around wearing plastic.
Nearly two thirds of our clothes are made from plastic like polyester. And just like hard plastics, this doesn’t break down when it hits landfill.
So here’s the staggering fall out from this: 18,000 litres of oil is sent straight to landfill every hour in Australia, just in the form of synthetic clothing. That’s 8,700 oil tankers every year! Just in Australia. This blew our minds.
So what are the implications of this? Well fast fashion is a complicated issue, and it can be easy to become confused and overwhelmed as to what we can do to help. We plan to break down some of this in future blog posts so stay tuned, but for now, we think that Andie Halas OAM, Founder of Thread Together, sums it up pretty well.
“The best thing you can do with garments that have already been produced is to keep them in their original state…”
Kate🌵
PS If you're inspired to get started now, check out the War on Waste action toolkit here
