How to Green Your Wardrobe

Five Ways to Reduce Your Fashion Footprint

When there is stuff like the oil running out and climate change happening all around us, worrying about what to wear may seem rather glib. But with a value of some £40 billion to the UK economy, the fashion industry has as much a part to play as anything else. Around 25 per cent of the world's insecticides and ten per cent of pesticides are used to grow cotton and the World Health Organisation say 20,000 people die every year from pesticide poisoning as a result. According to campaign group Labour Behind the Labour, Kate Moss gets paid a whopping £3 million to put her name to a range of clothes, while the Mauritian factory worker who supplies that brand would have to work for 4,000 years to earn that much. Now that's a long day at the office.

Want to ease up on your fashion footprint but don't know where to start? Try Nigel's basics to get your going.

1. What have you already got?
Brighton-based ethical stylist Lou Taylor says that 80 per cent of women only wear 20 per cent of their clothes. What a waste! Before you head out to the shops to pick up something new, head in to the back of your wardrobe and see what lurks in there. Most likely you will discover some long forgotten treats - and some very embarrassing fashion mistakes, but that's okay, we'll come to them later. Now here is an exercise for you: lay out all your tops and bottoms in different piles. Then mix and match each top with each bottom. So simple, and you might just find you have a lot more outfits than you first thought.

2. Swapping is the new shopping
Once you have done the above, get together all those embarrassing mistakes along with all the stuff you decide you just don't wear any more and get yourself down to a clothes swapping party. The idea is simple: one person's fashion boo boo is another's sartorial heaven, so chuck all your old threads in a pile and get swapping - free clothes for all and no waste for landfill. See if there are any parties in your area at www.swishing.org, and if not, why not throw your own? All you need is a bit of space, a handful of friends with bags of old clothes and, if you fancy, a bottle of wine. Of course, you can have a look at our very own regifting forums to see if there are any goodies for the taking there: www.nigelsecostore.com/forum

3. Shop with a conscience
When you do hit the shops, it is worth remembering that all clothes are not equal. In the high street, there are still many problems with big chains using sweatshops or environmentally unfriendly practices. Have a look at www.ethicalconsumer.org and www.labourbehindthelabel.org to find out the latest news on who is doing their bit and who is not. Away from the shopping mall, charity, second-hand and vintage clothing stores are fantastic places to pick up bargains without putting any more pressure on our overburdened resources.

4. Go organic and try different fabrics
Cotton is incredibly difficult to grow (see the statistics up the top there) and the constant demand for it in our t-shirts and jeans and, well, everything, is doing Bad Things to the soil, water and people involved in its production. So it's time to go organic and diversify. There are a whole load of other fabrics out there just waiting to be tried out. Bamboo is a great place to start. It thrives without the use of pesticides or insecticides is the fastest growing plant on the planet - it has been clocked shooting up 121cm in a 24 hour period! Bamboo yarn feels like silk but is naturally anti bacterial, highly breathable and great for sensitive skin. Have a look at our range of organic cotton and bamboo clothing here: www.nigelsecostore.com/acatalog/Eco_clothing.html

5. Repair, reuse, remake
Over the last few years we have become very spoilt by the fashion industry, which has been churning out ever cheaper clothes for us. Great for our wallets, but not so good when we end up chucking our old clothes out just because they get a small tear in them, or even a stain we can't get out. Just because it's broke, doesn't mean it can't be fixed. Don't know how to darn a sock? It's easy, find out how here , or ask your grandma - or even Google - for handy hints on getting our stains, fixing tears and how to remake old clothes in to something new and funky. Alternatively, you could even make your own clothes and if you don't know where to start, Sew It Yourself Kits by Gossypium is a fantastic way to get going.

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