- Share This Post
- submit
- 1
-
Sparkle (0)
This month at BlogHers Act Canada, the eco-challenge of the month is Go Green With Style. That is, we want you to make your wardrobe, and your family's wardrobes - and your pets' wardrobes, I suppose, if you're into that sort of thing - as eco-friendly as possible. And then spread the word, and share your strategies, and tell us all about it, etc, etc. How do you make green the new black?
We had to do a bit brainstorming about this one. The obvious things that come to mind are crunchy clothes like hemp t-shirts and organic cotton jammies, but not everybody is into hemp, and organic cotton can be pricey, and in any case - even though we know you're all religiously using recycled shopping bags now - more shopping isn't really the greenest solution to eco-fying one's wardrobe. So what's a green fashionista - or just a mom who wants to keep from filling up landfills with used onesies - to do?
Amy/Assertgirl's solution: freecycle.
Yesterday I pointed out to my step-mom the fact that the outfit I was wearing was free. "How did you manage that?" she asked.
I was wearing a nice pair of jeans from Randy River and a cotton, long-sleeved top from Roots. Except I hadn't visited either of those stores or spent a dime to acquire these pieces. "Freecycle," was my simple reply.
Over the weekend someone offered up a bag of women's clothing. I jumped on it, and had soon picked up a large garbage bag filled with (mostly) gently used clothing. I went through the bag in my laundry room, putting the items I planned to keep in my washing machine, and folding the rest up and returning the pile to the bag. I was happy to find several nice sweaters, a couple of t-shirts and a pair of jeans that fit me.
When I was finished, I re-offered the rest of the clothes, and they were scooped up quickly by a local dad who said his daughter has been growing like a week. He picked them up the next day.
When I told my step-mom about how this worked, she said, "Plus, you're keeping that stuff out of the landfill!"
EXACTLY.
Me, I've always grooved on vintage clothes, and have the awesometastically funky and totally wearable collection to prove it. (Vintage, of course, just being fancy talk for second-hand; second-hand being another term for keeping stuff out of landfills.) Trouble is, not a single piece - including footwear - fits my pregnant body, so I've been struggling to figure out how do the maternity wardrobe thing without a) wasting money on maternity clothes that I may never wear again (I freecycled and gave to friends most of the mat wear from my last pregnancy), and b) not have to wear the fugly stuff that I find in secondhand maternity wear stores. I've been getting by on organic cotton yoga pants, but I'm craving some variety. Anybody got any green suggestions?
As far as kids go, the above suggestions can be applied just as easily - if not more easily - to children's wear as they can to grown-up clothes. Also: hand-me-downs (which I propose renaming 'green-me-ups')! Keep the onesies and jumpers out of the landfill, and save money!
And if you don't have a community of parents handy with whom to swap kids clothes (and even if you do) you can check out Zwaggle. It's like Freecycle, but for parents, and with a cool online social networking component to boot. It is, in a word, AWESOME.
(FYI: the Parent Bloggers Network is doing a blog blast this Friday to spread the word about Zwaggle and about the eco (and wallet) benefits of swapping and sharing the stuff that parents and kids no longer need. Just do a post this coming Friday about how you're sharing, saving and simplifying. Details here.)
What else? Sewing your own clothes. Knitting. Buying locally.
Any other ideas? How do you keep your wardrobe green? And if you don't - what kind of effort might you make this month? Leave a comment - or, better, write a post and link it to BlogHers Act Canada, so that we can do a round-up of blog responses. Share your green style!
