Second Hand Clothes

At London Fashion Week, Lord Philip Hunt, Minister for Sustainability announced the governments new sustainable clothing action plan. This sets out agreed stakeholder actions from over 30 clothing and fashion stakeholder organisations to improve the sustainability performance of clothing. It includes designers, manufacturers and retailers. The action plan cover social, environmental and ethical issues involved in the production of clothing. The manufacture of clothing has been shown to have a high environmental impact which is made worse by the consumption of clothing as a result of fast fashion.

Many well known names such as Marks and Spencers, Sainsbury's, Oxfam and Tesco have signed up for a variety of actions including increasing fair trade and organic ranges and increasing the awareness of the environmental benefits of clothing reuse.

Swapping, buying and selling women styles of second hand clothes is a great way to help the move towards sustainable clothing. There are also now a number of designer recycling second hand clothing in to new garments.

Further information can be found on the Defra website http://www.defra.gov.uk/news/2009/090220a.htm