One of the things that has helped me on my sustainability journey is learning about new sustainability initiatives.

Just like with most things, small, manageable challenges can often help us to develop lifelong habits.

Full disclosure: I am not the poster child for sustainability. I drive a car, live in a large-ish house, and still eat meat (although less frequently).

But I do recycle, I use reusable bags and reusable mugs, I shop less and less for clothes, and primarily through the secondhand market, I don’t use paper towels, disposable razors or plastic straws.

I pledge to always make a concerted effort to be a better consumer instead of a user of things.

There are so many small, everyday changes that we can all make in order to contribute to a positive effect.

Progress over perfection.

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A good place to start is with the following 2 initiatives. These initiatives focus on sustainability in terms of fashion, which is a major area of concern when it comes to the future of the planet.

1. Fashion’s Future: The Sustainable Development Goals

This is a 4-week course developed by Fashion Revolution and hosted by Future Learn. The purpose of the course is to:

Explore the fashion industry’s impact on people and planet, what the Sustainable Development Goals are, and how they are linked.

Fashion Revolution

The course starts with an introduction to the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) that were developed by the United Nations in 2015, with a date of achievement by 2030. There are 17 global goals in total that address a number of issues, such as poverty, health, education, gender equality, energy, climate change, and oceans, just to name a few.

There are also a lot of great resources such as “The Lazy Person’s Guide to Saving the World” which seems like a great place to start if being more sustainable is something that you strive for.

The course is free and only takes a few hours a week to compete. If you are interested in joining, you can sign up here.

2. Slow Fashion Season

This is an initiative developed by CollAction to encourage people to not buy any new clothes for 3 months, and usually occurs from June – September.

Why participate? …

The fashion industry has an enormous negative environment and social impact around the world. Did you know that it takes 2,700 liters of water to make your cotton t-shirt? And that fashion is one of the most polluting industries in the world? It produces more greenhouse gases than international shipping and aviation combined.

CollAction.org

The rules are pretty simple: trading clothing and shopping secondhand is totally acceptable! Just no new clothing purchases.

Changing the way that we shop for clothing is really such a small thing but it has a HUGE impact! There are so many wonderful, cool and stylish clothes in the secondhand market! For tips on secondhand shopping locally and online, check out this post and this post.

To join, head to Collaction.org, find the slow fashion season initiative and enter your email address. If you miss the window, you can always make the pledge and participate alongside everyone else anyways!

Or you can do it at anytime! If you want some accountability, feel free to email me or share it on your social media accounts! There’s nothing like telling a bunch of people to keep you accountable lol.

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Well friends, that’s all she wrote. And by she, I mean me ;). Do you think that you would be interested in either of these initiatives? Does one appeal to you more than the other? What things are you doing to be more sustainable in your everyday life? I’d love to hear about them below.

Until next time,

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