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The Mirror’s environment editor set herself a task of not buying any new clothes for 12 months to reduce her carbon footprint and saved herself hundreds of pounds
What do you do when your favourite jumper has a hole in it or your toaster stops working? It is all too easy to throw away broken products, especially if it is cheap to replace or difficult to fix.
But not only does this contribute to an environmental disaster, with the UK set to top the table for the world’s largest producer of electrical and electronic equipment waste, you are also chucking away potential savings in the hundreds. Many items can be easily fixed but knowing how to do this can be tricky.
Currys’ repair lab is now the biggest in Europe. I visited it to find out more about how broken technology can be saved from the mountain of waste. Almost three million products pass through these doors each year to be repaired, refurbished or recycled. Customers are given a £5 store voucher when they bring in any old tech to be reused or recycled, through the firm’s Cash for Trash scheme. Currys either strips out the reusable parts, dusts off and resells the item or donates it to a charity. It also sells refurbished tech items with discounts up to £300 on phones, washing machines and other white goods.
It is not just major retailers who are helping to stop items ending up in landfill. The Prestonville Repair Cafe in Brighton is one example of a community helping its residents by “reducing, repairing and reusing”. Once a month, a group of volunteers meets to fix items from broken umbrellas to food mixers that have gone on the blink. There are hundreds more such as this around the country.
Despite my best efforts to be greener, ashamedly over the years I’ve unwittingly been contributing to an environmental disaster that has a bigger carbon footprint than aviation and shipping combined – fast fashion. Like most women, and many men, my wardrobe was bursting full of clothes, shoes and handbags. A few items still had the price tag on. To tackle the problem I set myself a target of not buying any new clothes apart from socks, tights and underwear for a year. I lasted 18 months.
I switched to shopping in second-hand and vintage stores, picking up well-made items such as a gorgeous 1960s wool tartan dress for just £15. I’ve also bought dresses from Sugarhill Brighton for £5 from Vinted and second-hand Levi’s shorts and skirts for £10.
Oxfam’s Online Shop is one of fashion’s best-kept secrets, a place where you can buy designer brands and the best of high street names for a fraction of the price. I bought a black and gold sequin top from &Other Stories for just £7. On the high street, try charity shops including British Heart Foundation stores for bargains.
In that period I had the tricky task of buying a wedding dress but I ended up with a beautiful 1970s ivory frock for the fraction of the price of a new one from Brighton Vintage Wedding Dresses. My husband Nigel also sourced an immaculate secondhand velvet jacket for £10 from eBay, while my ring was made from recycled gold and diamonds from Brighton-based designer Stef Warde, who specialises in remodelling and recycling items.
It was not always easy and there have been a couple of new purchases (sorry). I left it until the day before a friend’s wedding to try on the items I’d rented from a dress-hire service, which didn’t fit. A panic-buy followed. But rental websites are perfect for dressy events if you know your size or have time to change.
At the top end of the market is a £9.99-a-month membership to My Wardrobe HQ. Others like girlmeetsdress.com let you hire one to three dresses from £19 each. I’ve also taken to selling my old clothes, shoes and bags on eBay, Vinted and Depop using the cash I make (£5-£25 per item) for holiday spending money.
Josephine Philips set up app Sojo, the Deliveroo of clothing alterations. She started the service after trying to shop for a sustainable wardrobe in secondhand and charity shops but was finding things that weren’t her size. It has been downloaded thousands of times since launching in January 2021 and now has a desk in Selfridges on Oxford Street, London, where items from any retailer can be fixed. For the time being, pick-ups are limited to parts of the capital but there are plans to expand to the rest of the UK.
Alterations can be costly so I signed up for a three-week evening class on how to learn to use a sewing machine, inspired by tailors I met at Kantamanto market in Accra, Ghana, the biggest secondhand and upcycling market in the world.
Make do and mend helped Britain get through Second World War rationing but it is a mindset that we should all now adopt to help us save money, recycle precious materials and stop millions of items from rotting in landfill sites.
