Here is Tereshina Roberts, talking to our guild on Saturday. It was an excellent turn out with 26 of us looking forward to this long awaited talk. Tereshina is passionate about this subject and she certainly made everyone of us think hard about how we can live more sustainably. Some of it was very hard to listen to - but Tereshina was able to give us some positives about the best way forward.
First a little bit of background about Tereshina, She was born in Brazil and both her grandfathers were tailors. At that time most of her clothes were made by local seamstresses. She moved to Malawi after meeting the man who would become her husband in the Amazon. In Malawi there were no clothes shops (yes really!) and everyone made their own clothes. So Tereshina began to make her own clothes in a country where women wore dresses and Tereshina only had trousers when she arrived. Here in UK our consumption of clothes is very high. Tereshina was able to explain that we love a bargain as our brains are wired to make us feel good if we feel we are getting a good bargain. So this contributes to the high consumption. She explained very much better than I can how this works. (I also apologise for anything in this account that is not accurate - it will be my fault, not hers). She was able to back up all her statements with figures and reports. Another reason for this high consumption is the very cheap price of clothes. Many clothes are made in sweatshops in parts of China where the workers are low paid and she explained that this is modern day slavery. If the price of clothes made in sweatshops was increased by just 1% it would mean that the workers could earn a decent wage. To tackle climate change we need to reduce this consumption to 10% of what we use now. This is obviously a huge reduction. 60% of clothes are now made from artificial fibres. The process to make much of this is energy intensive, using loads of water and harmful chemicals. Polyester makes up a large percentage of this and although it is durable and very easy to wash and care for, it sheds microfibres which can end up in our water. Recycled polyester sounds good but it is often poor quality and sheds even more microfibres. Viscose is a fabric that feels like silk but is made from cellulose which comes from forests. In the process of making it, 70% of the wood is wasted! It is also a very polluting process and that is why we don't like it being made here, so we prefer it to be made in China and India. Bamboo might sound better but its production method is very similar to viscose. Tencel and Lyocell are a little better but it is hard to check out the process accurately when it is made in China. Tereshina went on to talk about natural fibres but sadly there are problems with most of these too. Cotton is a great fibre that we all love - it is comfortable and dyes well and looks good ......BUT.... Cotton pickers are not treated well and it uses lots of water (as do most other fibres) and then we must consider the dyes and how these are produced. Cotton that is grown in Africa is very good as they have a suitable climate. However there are no subsidies there as there are in America and other cotton producing countries, meaning that African cotton is expensive. Linen is a very good fibre but as it is very labour intensive, it is also expensive. Happily, wool is another good fibre as long as it is local and not produced on the other side of the world using questionable farming methods. Here is Tereshina's list of what we can do to help reduce climate change. 1. Reduce our consumption to 10% of current consumption 2. Use what we already have 3. Make our own clothes 4. Knit 5. Share stash - will it outlast us?! 6. Only buy durable 7.Mend 8. Wash clothes less And lastly...... If a piece of cloth is big enough to wrap 3 beans, keep it and use it (Japanese advice) If you feel you are too small to make a difference just think of spending a night with a mosquito! We buy an average of 26kg of textiles per person per year Make your clothes loveable Finally I would like to thank Tereshina for her fascinating talk which made everyone in the room think and consider and discuss how we can improve our practices and spread the word.
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AuthorWendy Simpson , guild member since 2014. Started as a spinner, then got hooked on natural dyes and now I'm learning to weave Archives
January 2023
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