Retailers and producers love to boast of their green credentials and their love of the planet and they fall over themselves to highlight their teeny weeny carbon footprint, but they know full well that the most environmentally friendly and sustainable approach of all is for people to ignore them entirely.
They know that everything they make and sell leaves a carbon footprint while the things we already own or the things we can buy or get second-hand or the things we can repurpose and use for longer than we otherwise might, do no further harm to the planet and are therefore the better option.
It is also almost always the cheaper option.
For most of the last half century our consumption patterns have been linear – we buy something, we use it and we bin it. And then we buy more stuff, lining the pockets of businesses along the way.
The impact this linear approach on the planet has been devastating and you need to look no further than the fashion and textiles industry to see that.
Textile production generates 10 per cent of the world’s greenhouse gases, more than air travel and shipping combined, and uses more water than a country the size of Ireland
Figures from the European Environment Agency suggest that the production of textiles is the fourth-largest cause of environmental pressure globally after food, while only oil is a worse offender than textiles when it comes to polluting the planet, according to the UN.
Textile production generates 10 per cent of the world’s greenhouse gases, more than air travel and shipping combined, and uses more water than a country the size of Ireland, with much of the unused water polluted with dyes and chemicals.
As much as 100 million tonnes of textile waste is created globally each year, a number so high as to be meaningless. It has more meaning if you know that 120,000 items of clothing will be burned or binned in the time it takes you to read this article. And once you finish this article the burning and the binning will keep going until someone shouts stop.
Shouting stop
More and more people and businesses are shouting stop – or at least gently whispering it.
Penneys – a demigod of fast fashion for many – has recently started selling second-hand clothes in a small corner of its Mary Street store, a tiny nod in the direction of the circular economy, while last week Marks & Spencer extended its back-to-school ‘schwopping box” scheme in all its stores.
[ Tacklling global warming with the circular economyOpens in new window ]
[ Sustainability means an end to take, make and wasteOpens in new window ]
It will see the retailers invite shoppers to drop off wearable uniforms which it will then pass on to Oxfam to be sold. Onilne retailer eBay has also joined the scheme and will sell the second-hand uniforms online.
But clothes are just one part of the problem and only a portion of the waste we leave behind. That is where the circular economy comes in.
It is gaining traction and while it won’t stop the planet burning it might reduce the amount of fuel we are pouring on the fires.
In essence, the circular economy sees consumers completely reimagining their relationship with stuff and placing more emphasis on sharing, leasing, reusing, repairing, refurbishing and recycling everything in order to stretch out its life cycle for as a long as possible.
Second-hand is key to the circular economy, and charity shops are central to the drive to damage the planet less.
A survey from the Charities Regulator published earlier this summer suggests that 54 per cent of us have bought something from a charity shop in the past 12 months, with the numbers donating to charity shops climbing from 43 per cent in 2020 to 57 per cent in 2023.
Increasing appetite
This is music to the ears of Emma Kavanagh of Community Resources Network Ireland (CRNI). It is the umbrella group for community-based reuse, repair, and recycling organisations across Ireland. North and South.
It recently conducted research which points to an increasing appetite among Irish people to do the right thing when it comes to consumption.
As many as 85 per cent of adults have bought or been given reused goods in recent times, climbing to 90 per cent among Gen Zs.
It is not all rosy in the circular garden, mind you, as 40 per cent of respondents expressed concern over the hygiene of second hand items and 30 per cent suggested questionable reliability would be a deterrent
Over half of those polled said better value and supporting charities or local business were the key drivers for buying second hand, with two thirds of Gen Zs said that better value beat them all.
It is not all rosy in the circular garden, mind you, as 40 per cent of respondents expressed concern over the hygiene of second hand items and 30 per cent suggested questionable reliability would be a deterrent.
“There’s been huge interest in the circular economy in the last number of years,” Kavanagh says, but points to “two big social barriers” to transitioning to the circular economy.
“First of all, there is lack of public awareness about it and also a “lack of consumer confidence in circular economy products and services”.
On the flip side, she highlights “a huge growing appetite” with 85 per cent of people having either bought or been gifted a second-hand item.
‘Good choices’
“People go to second-hand markets for lots of different reasons. It can be because they are economically accessible for people who only have a certain amount of money to spend and want it to go as far as it can, or they might be attracted because it is charity retail. I also think people love to go second-hand shopping for the stories, there’s so much storytelling that’s attached to the market.”
Ultimately, she says, consumers “want to be able to make good choices and if we’re going to create a circular economy we need to enable consumers to make good choices and our member organisations are really doing that, their core objective is to benefit the entire community and offer social environmental and economic value.”
The CRNI has around 50 members across the country including mattress recyclers, paint reusers and “folks who are repurposing lots of things that otherwise end up in landfill that is used in education”.
It recently awarded seven of its members a ReMark – a badge of honour they can use to show off their credentials to consumers.
[ Planet screams high time to embrace circular economyOpens in new window ]
“We want the mark to be recognisable so people are aware of the social enterprises in their area and have confidence that they know that those goods and services are of high quality whether it’s reused upcycled and repurposed.”
Organisations with ReMark quality mark
Seven organisations across the country were given the CRNI’s fledgling ReMark quality mark for their “outstanding commitment to sustainability and circular practices”.
The Dublin Simon Charity Shops are stocked with “high-quality goods, both new and reused”, with revenue used to fund the charity’s work supporting those who are homeless or at risk of homelessness in Dublin and neighbouring counties. The citation said that with “a strong sustainability ethos, Simon continuously seeks to reduce waste through recycling and reuse channels and are proud to be active members of the circular economy”.
ReCreate is a Dublin-based social enterprise based around the concept of “creative reuse”. It encourages the public to reuse materials that would normally be sent to landfill or recycling, in all kinds of creative and inventive ways, giving them a new lease of life. Over the past decade it has redirected over 1,000 tonnes of material from landfill.
Native Events specialises in sustainable solutions for festivals, events, and arts and culture organisations, It is “dedicated to helping reduce environmental impact, promote circular economy principles, and create memorable experiences that prioritise sustainability, climate action, nature, and biodiversity”.
An Mheitheal Rothar is a Galway based community bike workshop which sells recycled bikes, parts, and accessories, and provides paid repairs, training, and services. The organisation takes discarded or donated bikes and uses them to provide valuable training in cycle mechanics for trainees, while creating second-hand bikes for sale to the public. It also holds regular DIY workshops where anyone can be supported to learn to fix their own bike.
IRD Duhallow Furniture Revamp is a Cork-based furniture recycling and reuse initiative that provides sheltered training and employment opportunities and helps the environment by reducing landfill, and provides quality up-cycled furniture at low cost to low-income or marginalised families and individuals.
Deaf Enterprises is a Cork-based profit-for-purpose social enterprise that employs people primarily from the deaf and hard-of-hearing community, providing furniture upholstery, French polishing and bike repair services to consumers and businesses.
Hands That Talk strives for “social inclusion for the deaf, offering recreational and accredited courses including Sign Language”.
How the ReMark organisations work
Katie O’Donoghue works with Dublin Simon and says the ReMark award is “a real affirmation of what we’re doing [and] it’s nice to show our customers that we’re really committed to keeping our quality and our standards up across every aspect of our business, in the goods and our policies and procedures.”
She says it “reaffirms that we’re doing the right things and that we’re going in the right direction and that what we’re doing is good for the environment and our customers as well.”
She notes there is more interest than ever in what the shops are doing. “We can see it in the demand and the footfall. We are seeing kind of very much a different consumer on top of the consumer that we used to have.
We are seeing people who are very environmentally focused and to some extent it’s also a little bit more in vogue than it would have been maybe 10 or 15 years ago. You can see that in the amount of vintage shops and markets and things popping up around the place.”
The two Dublin shops are on Thomas Street and Camden Street. “That’s where we’ve been for the last 25 years and we have a lot of local people but now there are more students and definitely younger consumers.”
The shops go through all of the items that are donated and “make sure it’s clean [and] it’s in working order. We get designer items coming in and good-quality homewares and kitchenware. We also have things like electric mixers and televisions and we test the electrical items for safety.
“We’re really committed to being part of the circular economy and we want to reduce our waste as much as possible, so for the things that we can’t sell or are broken we try to find other avenues for them, so metal items or electrical items that aren’t working are recycled through another social enterprise.”
Megan Best set up Native Events in 2017. “My business partner and I had been travelling abroad for many years and looking at what festivals and events were doing in terms of moving towards more sustainable practices, and the idea was to start bringing all of those innovations and initiatives back into Ireland and provide infrastructure and mentorship to festival organisers and event organisers and cultural practitioners on this island.”
She cites the example of a festival she was working on several years ago. We were trying to bring in renewable energy into the energy mix to start to reduce carbon emissions and we ended up bringing a lot of solar panels and renewable equipment and batteries over from the UK, which is a total oxymoron really in terms of carbon emissions and we did it in order to demonstrate that it can be done and to start to push the dial.”
She says that one of the “first things that we did was invest in our own solar equipment and we built our own batteries, we built our own energy monitors so that we could start to try to rise to that challenge.”
Native Events also works on the elimination of single-use plastics at events and developing guidelines, resources and tools for event organisers and cultural practitioners.
“There is a rising awareness and appetite for change in our society and there is a real recognition of the need to change in the great decarbonisation that faces us. There is a kind of a fear around making a change around budgets and bottom lines but there are also a good few festival and event organisers and cultural practitioners across this island who are ready, willing and able to start making that change.”
Emma Connors works with ReCreate, a group that seeks to divert materials that would end up in landfill and repurpose it for creative art supplies.
It uses “everything from plastic wiring, textiles, rubber and wood” and has a supplier network of about 400 companies across Ireland.
“We collect materials from them and then they all come back to our warehouse here in Ballymount in Dublin. We have a membership base across Ireland of schools and universities and craft groups who pay an annual membership to access these materials for creative reasons.
She says that the group is “trying to keep these materials in circulation for as long as possible, so try to teach more the art of assembling, dismantling or using them over and over again”.
It has been doing its job for a decade and in the early years it. was “a little bit of arts and crafts with a bit of plastic and then it was in the bin. What we’re seeing now is people looking at this waste material as something you can use to make something really aesthetically beautiful.”
She points to a Dublin bridal store which was closing and had about 700 wedding dresses but didn’t know what to do with them. “They landed here at ReCreate. The old way of doing creative reuse would have seen them used for Halloween and covered in blood Now some of our artists have deconstructed some of those wedding dresses and made beautiful light structures and turned parts the dresses into table linen.”
She says the “message that we’re trying to get out is that some material has value but also it can be really economical and that you can make fantastic stuff on a shoestring. You can have creativity on a shoestring and you don’t need to be continually out buying stuff.”
