Plastic is big news right now. Attenborough kicked it off last year with Blue Planet II and in the last month the BBC has aired The Secret Life Of Landfill, Liz Bonnin’s heartbreaking Drowning In Plastic and Stacey Dooley’s equally troubling Fashion’s Dirty Secret. At no time in our history have we looked more closely at the issue of plastic use and its disposal.
We are all rightly appalled by the pictures of the great garbage patch, of whales caught in discarded nylon fishing nets and sea life choking on plastic. We’re questioning single-use plastic from straws and coffee lids to water bottles. But what about our plastic clothes? That five-quid polyester dress you buy and wear once is a single-use piece of plastic. In the UK we throw away on average 15 kilos of clothing a year each, over half of it plastic, most of which goes straight to landfill.
But new research tells us that there is another potentially enormous problem with plastic clothes, one that goes largely unseen. When we wash them they shed plastic fibres and this plastic makes its way into our oceans. The best estimates are that a staggering 15 per cent of all ocean plastic is polyester and other synthetic fibres from our clothes. The oldest research on this is just five years old and there are currently just four research teams across Europe looking at this issue, including one in Leeds, where 25 years ago I did a degree in materials science, polymers being a big and exciting part of my studies. Synthetic polymers are wonder materials; when used appropriately, in medicine, food, engineering, for example, they are both life-saving and planet-saving. But their use as a cheap alternative to natural sustainable materials is out of control.
Our fashion choices have huge consequences. The uncomfortable truth is that cheap fashion is pretty much all horrible stuff. We didn’t make stuff out of plastic and make it in countries such as Bangladesh, Vietnam or Cambodia to make it better. We did that to make it cheaper. The mad race to the bottom, to ever-cheaper clothing, drives the use of intensive destructive cotton farming, toxic manufacturing and deeply unethical labour practices, with clothing and textile workers trapped in extreme poverty.
And by making it cheap and marketing it aggressively and constantly, we’ve got people to buy it in greater and greater quantities. We buy clothes with the same thought and care as we might buy a coffee or a sandwich, because they’re about the same price.
The cheap fashion industry won’t, and probably can’t, change. So consumers need to act. Our only sensible policy is to reduce what we buy and buy better things, things that we understand the provenance of, from producers we can trust to have done the science and the engineering to make us great products.
I have been quoted in the press recently criticising Stella McCartney. I admire Stella. I admire her ethics. She has done more than many to make us think about the implications of the fashion choices we make. But the simple truth is that for 18 years, for ethical reasons based around her vegan beliefs, she has been encouraging us to use plastic instead of leather. That now looks like an unwise policy.
Cheap leather is a horrible material. Its production uses an array of foul and toxic materials that cause enormous harm to health and the environment. The cheaper it is the more like the chemicals in the wastewater are to be dumped into the water systems. But the same can be said for PVC or PU, the faux-leather alternative. On top of the toxicity is the fact that nature simply has not adapted to break down these synthetic plastic – if it biodegrades at all it does so very very slowly.
But there is good leather. It can be naturally tanned using sustainable and safe materials. Leather, like other natural materials such as wool, cotton and linen, will biodegrade in the soil and in sea water. But most importantly, the best leather products will last for centuries. We make once, we use forever. But good leather and durable construction is expensive.
I take great pride in my appearance, and I’ve made the occasional GQ's Best Dressed list in the last decade. In that time I’ve probably bought no more than a handful of pairs of shoes, and I haven’t bought a pair for at least five years. Most of my shoes are at least a decade old; I regularly wear a pair of black leather brogues made by Church’s in Northampton that I bought about 25 years ago. The other shoes I wear are by Tricker’s, John Lobb, George Cleverley (all Northampton) and Redwing (made in Red Wing, Minnesota). All are goodyear welted leather (though the redwings have a composite leather polymer sole). Most have been resoled at least once (all of these brands offer a repair service) and all are cherished and cared for.
At today’s prices the shoes I own range in price between £300 and £800, which I know is a lot of money and more than many can easily afford. But I’d confidently say most have been worn well in excess of 500 times. And there’s no reason at all why they won’t be good for at least another 500 wears, if not another 1,500. At 1,000 wears they start to look like pretty good value.
We do not need to buy all this stuff. Being stylish is not about owning a huge wardrobe. David Niven writes in his autobiography that he moved to Hollywood with a suitcase containing just four suits and a handful of shirts. The Prince Of Wales is notorious for patching up his clothes and for wearing pieces that are decades old. Both are considered exemplars of style.
Many of us love fashion and style, but it’s a very brazen person who can be happy wearing clothes we know cause all of this harm. There’s nothing cool about fucking up the planet.
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