Welcome to another Trash Talking Friday, the only trash talk that has wrestled a bear to the ground, chilled with the great white shark in the middle of its feeding frenzy and whose rocket Bezos borrowed to travel to space!
Each week, I send you Ideas to ponder about. Ideas that have the potential to change your life, and hopefully help you become a better human being by understanding yourself.
This week, in the Trash Talking newsletter I talk about textile and footwear waste, how we can use certain principals to move towards circular consumption and a sustainable way of living. Note: This is a two-part newsletter. Next week I will share concrete examples of simple practices that you can inculcate daily to move towards a more environmental and financially sustainable life.
Let‘s get into it!
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Textile & foot ware waste: A guide to circularity & re-use
MRR (Maintain, Repair & Reuse) is the process that I have used for over two decades to look after all my belongings, after all it feels great earning money, (A penny saved is a penny earned) while at the same time doing your bit for our environment. The process of MRR can be applied to almost everything you buy, from electronics, cars, shoes, clothes, etc, but is mostly applied to high values items. Face it, you cannot go out and buy a new car, home, laptop, phone, bike, every month, every six months, or every year, unless you are like the bold headed uncle who recently flew into space on his penis shaped rocket.
Somehow this principal is conveniently forgotten when it comes to clothes and shoes. The fast fashion industry using principals of planned obsolesce and priming has over many years rewired our consumption habits from repairing, reusing, sharing, gifting to continuously buying and disposing. My father is military man, a retired Air Force Fighter pilot and as far back as I can recall, I remember him owning a few pair of shoes that he polished every morning and kept in immaculate condition, they lasted him a good decade. I was sent off two a catholic boarding school at a young age and for those of you who might have experienced life in a boarding school, it instils a certain level of discipline and accountability in you. Your bed had to be made, your shoes polished, a double knotted tie knot was compulsory and your shirt and pants ironed. Fast forward to one my many jobs of selling high end suits at Tip Top tailors a chain of retail store in Canada (over two decades ago), where I was first exposes to the unique concept of renting out tuxedos for various occasions, while attending college where my professor of economics would collect aluminium cans dumped by students after school to get a refund on them and would start off the semester narrating a story about his reversible belt and how small things done at regular intervals will help save you tremendous amounts of money over a period of time.
Why am I am telling you all of this? Because our experiences, what we see at home, what we learn in school define who we are. You are either taught to be sustainable (environmentally and financially) or you circumstance either force you to make sustainable choices. With that said, let‘s see what we can all do to limit our individual impact on the environment by deploying the principals of MRR and the circular economy to the clothes in our closet and the shoes in our draws.
Educating & Setting an Example: Not enough can be said about educating our children and our sphere of influence when it comes to changing mindsets. Children at home, school or at a social setting learn more by seeing their parents and peers. Young adults these days are influenced more by social media influencers and their peer than by anything else and adults, parents and the elderly though fixed in their ways are overwhelmingly influenced by their children and young adults. You may not realise it, but it‘s all interconnected to a principal that I like to refer to as “Individual responsibility, for collective good” of our society and environment at large. So, let‘s start by setting the right example for our children and the younger generations by showing them the path by practising it ourselves. Imagine the possibilities if everyone took responsibility and accountability for teaching sustainable action to their sphere of influence!
Changing the narrative: That shit is cool and dope bro! That‘s what we need to start hearing more of more often when someone wears the same jeans for three days straight, owns a few pairs or shows, keep them looking brand new and rotates wearing them every few days, or when you wear the same outfit over the years to different social outings or you rent a dress, suit or bag for a party or buy second-hand clothes or use a upcycled bag made from discarded clothes. You get the point right! It‘s cool to re-ware, it‘s cool to reuse, it‘s cool to save, it cool to be sustainable and along with increasing your social quotient, it helps your finances too. The narrative has to change and, in this case, we have to go back in time, in order for us to move forward. Precise examples of how we can change the narrative will be shared in next week‘s newsletter.
MRR (Maintain, Repair & Re-Use): As mentioned in the beginning of this article, the MRR process is a critical part of any sustainable practise. When you look after your things they last longer, they continue to look fresh or relatively fresh, when they break or tear, you repair and re-use. Videos and examples of how I personally deploy this principal in terms of looking after my clothes and shoes will be shared in the second part of this newsletter next week.
Request: I am sure that many of you are deploying various methods and practises of your own in regards to reducing your waste footprint. I would request you to kindly share your stories and journey with me so that others may learn from your experience. Once a week, with your permission, I will share these individual stories for all to read through the medium of this newsletter and our social media channels.
Have a fabulously sustainable weekend & see you in your inbox next Friday!