How To Shop Sustainably.

 How would you go about shopping sustainably? What is sustainable shopping, and why is it important? 

Shopping sustainably is so much easier now than it has been in previous years, however there are still some problems with it. First of all, it is a privilege to be able to shop sustainably. Not everyone can avoid fast fashion, not everyone can afford to pay a lot more for an item in one go. One solution to this problem is if everyone who is privileged enough does shop sustainably, over time the prices will go down because of the growth in market, similar to how organic food has gone down in price due to the demand. 

Shopping sustainably means that the brands pay fair wages to all their workers and don't exploit any of their employees, it is the brand reducing their carbon footprint, and not using animal products in their materials. Other forms of sustainable fashion is also using second-hand shops to buy your clothes. 

Emma Watson has made en effort in only wearing clothes from sustainable brands, she has the privilege to do so and is using it. Even her red carpet looks are all sustanable clothing. An app that she uses to ensure the brands she buys from are ethical is Good On You. They use information that companies provide to rate them out of 5 stars for how sustainable they are. There are three topics that the app judges, Labour, Environment, and Animal. 

A thing to remember with shopping sustainably, is that buying more expensive clothes, or branded clothes, doesn't mean that it is sustainable. Brands like Gucci, Prada, Chanel, are not doing enough to provide sustainable clothing, they still animal products and not all of them pay a fair wage to their workers. 

What is fast fashion? Good On You says this 'Fast fashion can be defined as cheap, trendy clothing, that samples ideas from the catwalk or celebrity culture and turns them into garments in high street stores at breakneck speed to meet consumer demand. The idea is to get the newest styles on the market as fast as possible.' Buying clothes from made-to-order shops or tailored specifically to you, is not only in your best interest to get the best suited clothes, but also better for the environment.

I am starting to think about sustainable fashion, and I am going to do my best to shop sustainably. What are your thoughts about this? Do you shop sustainably?