Fashion and Textile students at Teesside University have begun creating sustainable fashion pieces as a way to tackle the waste produced by throwing away clothes.
Instead they claim students should upcycle and mend their clothes.
With tonnes of clothing being dumped in landfill, according to The Indepedent, clothing is the second largest pollutant on the planet.
The rise of cheap, disposable clothes, and their impact on the environment, will be investigated by MPs.
‘Fast fashion’, worn a few times before being dumped, can add to landfill, release toxic chemicals in production, and plastic fibres in the wash.
The Commons environmental audit committee will look at how the industry could be made more sustainable.
The latest report by campaigners Wrap suggests that about 300,000 tonnes of clothing are binned in the UK each year.
Raquel Frenandez, a member of ‘Love Thy Earth’, an upcoming brand that will make fashionable clergy wear, and Teesside University Fashion Design student, said they were really trying to develop sustainable fashion to help the environment.
They were inspired after meeting a clerical graduate who wanted new ideas around what the clergy currently wear.
Raquel said: “Our idea is to produce recycled and upcycled clergy clothes.”
“The idea came about when one of my teammates was approached by a graduate after discovering she did textiles.
“When they found out that she was a textile student they pleaded for her to do something about how boring and uninspired the current clergy wear is, so we came up with the idea of upcycled and recycled clergy wear.”
By using recycled materials to produce new fashionable pieces, they plan on helping reduce the amount of waste and pollution caused by clothes thrown away.
Emily Dey, Jack Swales and Mark Naylor, members of ‘Nova’, an upcoming student-based fashion website and magazine, said: “Buying second-hand clothes is the best thing to help the environment.”
Their idea is to encourage fellow students to reuse their outfits, instead of purchasing a brand new outfit.
They also encourage the purchase of higher quality material because it has a higher chance of lasting longer.
Written by Beth Clayton and Shannon Crammond
Magazine journalist, 20
