My Year of Second-hand

Why we should reduce, reuse and recycle

The one thing we ought to know about fashion trends is that everything inevitably repeats itself.

I walked through a shopping centre in Sydney recently, all five floors of consumer driven, capitalising retailers. Shops separated into categories; clothes, jewelry, shoes, more clothes, more jewelry, more shoes. Sale and clearance signs drawing consumers in like moths to streetlights, ready to put another dent in their credit cards.

Looking at this abundance of shops and this abundance of things I started to wonder how much consumption we as human beings could actually go through. When did we forget to draw a line between a want and a need? And when, if ever, would we begin to investigate the impact of our mass consumerism?

A want, by definition, is the desire to possess something; a need, by definition, is to require something because it is essential. With women’s clothing the cheapest that it’s been in 25 years the desire to spoil yourself with a new outfit can be appealing, but the fact is that these desires just result in an endless cycle of keeping up with trends, in order to wear the same garment that tens of thousands of people around the world are wearing.

Our addiction to consumerism is affecting the world we live in. Cotton requires a global average of 11,000 litres of water per kilogram to produce and nearly 20% of the world’s pesticides are sprayed on cotton crops. To add to this, almost 25% of unusable cotton will eventually end up in landfill. Is the desire to follow so called ‘trends’ so great that we are ignorant to its impact?

It is for these reasons, as well as my own curiosity, that this year I have decided to go second hand, reduce my carbon footprint, and support local and international organisations that have a positive impact in the world. This means that all the clothes that I purchase this year (no this does not include underwear) will be secondhand purchases. A majority of the unwanted clothes that result from our mass consumerism are resold at second-hand stores or passed on to charity organisations. Perfectly good, sometimes brand new, ex-impulse buys that once sat unused in our closets, perhaps worn on one or two separate occasions as an example of keeping up with ‘trends’.

A single Smith Family sorting centre in New South Wales sorts 10,000 tonnes of donated clothing each year, which is just a small example of how much unwanted clothes are in our closets. Next time, instead of heading to a retailer to stock your closet full of more new clothes why not consider scouring your local op shop for a unique, trendy garment. In doing so you are reducing your environmental impact as well as supporting these amazing organisations that support so many Australian families in need. After all, what can be trendier than that?

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