As a community who’s beating heart is all about travelling around this planet we call home, why do so many of us overlook the impact our clothing has on it? Now, I know travelling to distant lands in fuel-guzzling planes isn’t the best thing we can do for our planet, but what travellers do when in those countries is rather environmentally-friendly. We car share, we camp, we cram into buses, cycle and we walk. We eat local food, move slowly and, to be fair, are excellent at holding onto clothing that is long past it’s best. Having said that, there is more we can do to protect the planet we love to explore and that is through our clothing.
We’ve all heard the words ‘fast fashion’ and see it branded around all over the place, but what is it? Why is slow fashion the way to go and how can we become conscious wanderers with respect to our threads? Fast fashion, roughly defined, is clothing that has been mass-produced, is cheap to buy, is poor quality and as a result does not last (think SHEIN, Boohoo etc). Consumers in the UK wear an item of clothing between 7-10 times before it is discarded. We’ve built a culture where being seen in the same item of clothing more than twice is sacrilege and we should be ashamed. One of the many benefits of travelling, whether it be a weekend trip or a year long lap of the globe, is that it gives us perspective on what’s important. We often realise how little one truly needs to survive, whether that be money, food or any other material item but what I want to draw light on here is clothing. As travellers, we have a duty to protect the planet as we have built our life around exploring it. How do we do this with the clothing we wear?
A staple on any backpackers’ South American itinerary is Desierto de Atacama in Chile. A hostile environment, known for being the driest desert in the world, harbouring some weather stations that have never once received rainfall, and possessing a landscape indistinguishable from Mars. The largest ground telescope also sits here, enabling us to inspect distant galaxies. However, in a somewhat ironic turn of events, in recent years it is a view from space that has infamed the land.
With a pile of clothing so large it can now be seen from satellite images, growing by 50,000 tonnes each year, we really begin to see how our two worlds are colliding. Maybe this is the kick in the teeth we needed, we’ve seen it with garbage in Bali but now we are seeing a wonderfully sensitive land being destroyed by this chemically-infused fast fashion plague. To become conscious of this is one thing, but to act is next.
We can start by buying higher quality, organic cotton clothing which uses no chemicals in production (resulting in a safer biodegrading process), around 90% less water in production than conventional cotton and will last considerably longer than fast fashion items. Hemp is even better as it it grows much quicker than cotton and in greater volume (200-250% more on the same amount of land). We will save a whole blog for hemp once our first range has landed.
Iquique is attempting to mitigate the impact of fast fashion by offering sustainable clothing for conscious wanderers while working with local Chilean businesses who are repurposing the clothing found in Desierto de Atacama, such as Ecocitex. It’s difficult adding more to our plate with respect to environmentally-friendly decision-making but I feel clothing is something often overlooked. Footwear and apparel contribute 8.1% towards global greenhouse gas emissions, which equates to the total climate impact of the European Union. Buying more ethically crafted clothing, which last longer and are 100% organic, will help preserve the natural beauty in the world. It is these wondrous vistas that keeps us strapping on our backpack and leaving everything behind to find something within ourselves. Let’s keep that alive.
