By AFP - Agence France Presse
No new clothes: South Korean climate activist targets hyper-consumption
By Claire Lee and Cat Barton
South Korean climate activist Lee So-yeon, a recovering shopaholic, used to buy new clothes almost daily, until a US$1.50 winter coat triggered an awakening that made her stop shopping altogether.
While looking at the extremely cheap quilted coat in an H&M store in the United States, where she was working at the time, Lee wondered how a piece of clothing could be sold so cheaply.
The 30-year-old delved deep into the production methods of fast fashion and was horrified by the human, social, and environmental impact that hyper-consumerism is having on the planet - and on the mental health of the women who make and buy cheap clothes.
“I used to buy a new outfit every (working) day of the week,” Lee told AFP, adding that each item from high street retailers usually cost less than a dollar.
But the reason the clothes are so cheap, Lee discovered, is because the women who sew for the companies are paid little, while the business model itself is causing significant environmental damage.
Lee stopped buying new clothes - and hasn't bought a single piece of fast fashion since her epiphany about six years ago.
Her much more compact closet consists of used items she has received from friends and family, including a vintage leather jacket that belonged to her mother.
Unlike fast fashion items, which are usually designed to be thrown away after just a few uses, each piece is irreplaceable because it carries a unique story and history, she said.
“Ultimately, the most eco-friendly clothes are those that are already in your closet,” said Lee.
Lee now organizes clothing swaps with her friends and family and has written a book to promote the idea of valuing clothes for the “story behind them” rather than chasing ephemeral trends.
She is part of a small but growing global movement that seeks to promote second-hand clothes and help people, especially women, break out of the cycle of excessive consumption.
The Lucky Sweater app offers a platform for users to swap items from their closets with each other, with a focus on sustainable brands, founder Tanya Dastyar told AFP.
“We're programmed to believe that the only way to express my fashion or show that I'm beautiful or fashionable... is new clothes,” Dastyar said.
“But you can still be fashionable, feel good, and look great without having to do that,” she said, adding that while swapping clothes doesn't have the same quick dopamine effect as a fast-fashion purchase, it's much more rewarding over time.
The growing acceptance of the app indicates that people are eager to change their relationship with clothes and consumerism, she said.
People realize: “I don't have to follow trends and I can just dress in a way that I feel comfortable in,” she said. “Is this a mass market thing? No. But do I feel it could be a movement? Yes.”
For Lee, breaking the cycle of consuming cheap clothes has helped her improve her mental health.
As a teenager, she worried about what to wear on school trips - when the uniform wasn't required - at least a month in advance and went shopping to alleviate her fears.
“I felt a lot of pressure about how others would see me,” she told AFP.
But learning about the Rana Plaza tragedy in Bangladesh in 2013 - one of the world's worst industrial disasters that killed more than 1,130 garment factory workers, mostly young women - was a turning point.
The factory workers died making clothes for “women like me”, said Lee.
The global fashion industry is one of the most polluting, accounting for up to 10% of greenhouse gas emissions, according to World Bank estimates.
Most modern clothing is made from synthetic materials such as nylon and polyester, which are essentially plastics and do not biodegrade in landfills, according to industry data.
Keeping clothes out of landfills can help, but in South Korea, many still avoid used clothing, said Kim Dong-hyun, who runs a used clothing export factory.
“People generally don't look kindly on someone who wears used clothes because they are seen as unwanted items,” Kim told AFP, noting that he has already found dirty diapers and food scraps in the collection boxes.
South Korea is the fifth largest exporter of used clothing in the world - and activists say that many pieces are essentially discarded in developing countries, which can't process them.
At Kim's second-hand clothing factory in Paju, on the outskirts of Seoul, a mechanical claw categorized the piles of used clothes to be exported abroad.
“Many people just treat the clothes collection box as a garbage can,” said Kim.
cdl/ceb/dhw
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