Mary Kenny
Yes, we are all very concerned about climate change, as the UN (and Mary Robinson) directs us. But what is each of us going to do about it?
One practical suggestion is that we should stop buying cheap clothes – and then throwing them away, since cheap attire, by definition, isn’t designed to endure.
A British parliamentary body – the Environmental Audit Committee – has reported that people in Britain buy twice as many new clothes as they did a decade ago: purchasing 60lb (or 27kg) of cheap wearables every year. I imagine the statistics would be fairly similar in Ireland, where budget stores sell reams of low-priced garments annually.
In one way, I’ve always thought that cheap clothes as available through these chain stores were a good thing. They enabled people on low incomes to acquire quite decent gear. Compare and contrast with the photographs of yesteryear, when young boys were seen barefoot in the streets of Dublin, and grannies always wore shawls because, frankly, they had little else to wear.
Simplicity
George Bernard Shaw campaigned for simplicity of dress, whereby the poor could access sensible clothes at reasonable prices. He thought socialism would bring about this revolution, but as it turned out, it was global capitalism that delivered. See the labels on what many of us wear: Made in Pakistan, Made in Bangladesh, Made in the Philippines, Made in China. All bringing employment to lesser-developed economies.
But now comes the down-side. All these cheap jeans and low-priced tee-shirts, all these skimpy frocks and inexpensive jackets get chucked away at a rate of knots, and according to the Environmental Audit Committee, are clogging up the planet. Even where they get passed on to charity shops, there is a degree of overload, and eventually even the charity shops take loads of the stuff to the rubbish dump.
Deliberately ripped jeans – the current fad, which I think amounts to mocking those who once wore rags – apparently take more energy to make. Another offence against the environment.
Budget clothes often have a built-in obsolescence. They are not made to last. They are made to appeal to endless novelty. Moreover, we have an “easy come, easy go” attitude to stuff that doesn’t cost much. Online shopping has increased this appetite for disposable consumerism: we click and buy in a trice.
So it’s suggested that one thing we could do for the planet is to purchase better clothes, keep them, maintain them properly and re-use them.
Irish-made fabrics in tweed, linen and wool products – totally organic – are just the ticket for such environmental virtue. I recommend the Avoca products, the lovely woven jackets and capes from John Hanly and Jimmy Hourihan, and the range of Irish-made garments in my favourite Dublin shop, Cleo’s of Kildare Street.
Are better quality clothes more expensive? Yes, usually. But our mothers and aunts used to say “good clothes are cheaper in the long run” – because they last.
Yet can our throwaway culture be that easily reversed? We have grown so accustomed to it now, it might be a major challenge to do so.
And what are the implications for those poorer countries which now depend on producing cheap clothes? No easy answers to this question either.
Here’s one altar server who’s going places!
Last Sunday, at the end of the Mass homily, the parish priest asked the congregation to “count their blessings” for a full minute.
We sat contemplatively and did so. Then he invited one of the altar-servers to name his blessings. The young boy stepped forward and recited them. “Thank you for a lovely mother and father, brother and sister, a home, enough to eat and a good school.
“Thank you,” he went on, “for our wonderful parish priest, our excellent bishop and our great Pope.”
The young lad might have gone on to thank the Almighty for blessing him with an exceptional gift for diplomacy!
Succinct poetry is all that’s needed
It’s the trend nowadays for young women to disparage men in general and to characterise all males as sexual harassers, rapists, assaulters and oppressive agents for ‘the patriarchy’.
Well, the poet and wit Dorothy Parker speaks rather more for my experience than some of the over-the-top #MeToo movement. Dotty’s sardonic observation about men’s attentions went thus:
“Some men break your heart in two;
Some men fawn and flatter.
Some men never look at you –
And that cleans up the matter.”
I’d say that just about nails it!