Fast fashion is on the rise and 25-year-old Laura Young is on a mission to help reverse the trend. With a background in environmental science and a regular contributor on Sky News Daily Climate Show, Young is helping raise awareness of the impact that the fashion industry has global on climate change.
As Tearfund’s Programme Manager leading ‘Let’s the Change the Climate,’ Laura is backing their latest campaign ‘The Great Fashion Fast.’ According to Tearfund’s latest survey, 57% of us own new clothes we have never worn, whilst younger generations say they are more likely to keep hold of and reuse clothes that have a sentimental value. The latest challenge reverses the trend by altering our mindset to love our clothes.
From the 1st to the 31st of March, ‘The Great Fashion Fashion Fast’ honours this sentimental value by encouraging us all to stick to a capsule wardrobe. It’s simple: pick ten items of clothing and get people to sponsor you to wear only those things for a fortnight or a whole month. Find out how to take part below:
How do people sign up to Tearfund’s Great Fashion Fast?
Visit Tearfund’s website to sign up. You can take part for the whole month of March, or if that feels like a bit too much of a stretch, you can sign up for just two weeks.
Who can take part in the challenge?
Everyone! The challenge is suitable for all age groups (children doing the challenge independently need parental consent). Families and groups can sign up together and perhaps have fun choosing each other’s 10 items.
What will the money raised be used for?
Every penny of the money raised from The Great Fashion Fast will go towards Tearfund’s global work helping people to lift themselves out of poverty – including, crucially, adapting to the climate crisis, for example, life-saving projects such as building flood-resistant homes; training communities in how to respond and recover when disaster hits; and planting trees to provide a barrier that will help prevent homes and crops from being washed away.
Laura shares how the Tearfund’s challenge will go a long way in helping us become environmentally conscious. ”One of the greatest things about Tear Fund’s challenge, The Great Fashion Fast, is that it makes us all think as individuals about the little changes that we can make to be a bit more sustainable through the fashion that we buy or don’t buy and the way that we kind of extend the life of our wardrobe.”
Young emphasises the statistics that tell the tale of our throwaway clothing habits. “The fashion industry is responsible for harmful co2 emissions – more than international flights and shipping combined. Also, the fact that we own five times more clothes than we did in the 1980s. Hopefully, we’ll see the real positive things that we can do to change by taking on the challenge and picking only 10 items of clothing. It’ll help us really learn more about all the different options that we have as individuals to be more sustainable. For instance, looking at how we can live with more of a capsule wardrobe, also thinking about clothes in a more sentimental way so that we want to keep them for longer.”
Tearfund is a Christian charity with over 50 years of experience in international development. They believe that poverty is not God’s plan, and an end to extreme poverty is possible. Working directly and alongside local partners and churches, they tackle poverty and injustice in underserved communities in more than 50 countries.
To sign up for The Great Fashion Fast, click here. Visit Tearfund and Laura Young’s website to find out more.
