The aim of this activity is to understand the impact of fast fashion on our planet and explore what actions we can take to become more responsible consumers. 

Discussion: Around 100 billion items of clothing are produced around the world every year. Collectively, the world’s population buys 400 per cent more clothes than we did 20 years ago. How many items of clothes do you buy each year? The reason we buy more is that clothes are much cheaper and are not made to last, thanks to “Fast Fashion”.

What is Fast Fashion? Fast fashion is the constant production of new fashion lines, which encourages us to buy the latest trends. It keeps us wanting more because what we bought yesterday is not in style today.

Prior to fast fashion, clothes were more expensive, higher quality and lasted longer.  In the 1950’s people used to buy clothing and wear it on a regular basis, today people typically only wear 20% of their wardrobe on a regular basis – a single item of clothing may be worn few times before it is thrown away.

​Why should we care about fast fashion? ​To keep sales up and fashion affordable to the average consumer, fast fashion produces clothes at the lowest cost possible. This can be achieved by mass production, low prices and large volumes of sale. Which often means the environment and workers pay the true cost.

Environment:  The fashion industry uses a vast amount of our natural resources and is one of the leading polluters. According to the UN Environment Programme

• Resources-  93 billion cubic metres of water, enough for 5 million people to survive, is used by the fashion industry every year
• Pollution- The fashion industry produces 20 per cent of global wastewater
• Emissions- Clothing and footwear production is responsible for 8% of global greenhouse gas emissions
• Waste- Every second, the equivalent of one garbage truck of textiles is landfilled or burned

Workers: According to non-profit Remake, 75 million people are making our clothes today. In order to make them less expensive

• Wages -A living wage is a human right. This is the minimum amount a worker needs to earn to meet their basic needs.  Yet for the majority of workers in the global fashion industry earn poverty wages and are unable to live with dignity, earning no more than €6 a day. According to Oxfam’s report ‘Reward Work, Not Wealth It takes just four days for a CEO from one of the top five global fashion brands to earn what a Bangladeshi garment worker will earn in her lifetime. In the US, it takes slightly over one working day for a CEO to earn what an ordinary worker makes in a year.
• Worker Conditions – Clothes are often manufactured in sweatshops – factories that have very poor, socially unacceptable or illegal working conditions. People’s safety is often compromised and can even lead to death. Rana Plaza was an eight-story garment factory in Bangladesh that collapsed, killing 1,134 workers.
• Child Labour – The ILO estimates that 170 million children are engaged in child labour, with many making textiles and garments to satisfy the demand of consumers in Europe, The US and beyond. A 2018 U.S. Department of Labor report found evidence of forced and child labour in the fashion industry in Argentina, Bangladesh, Brazil, China, India, Indonesia, Philippines, Turkey, Vietnam and other countries.

Group work: Strategies for Change 

Step 1: Divide participants into four strategy groups assign each group a video to watch. Ask them to write down and discuss the main strategy outlined in the video to deal with fast fashion and or overconsumption. Each group should devise an elevator pitch for their strategy. (A short, well crafted, 1-2 minute pitch, describing the strategy and why they should adopt it)  (15 minutes)

Step 2: Ask each group to present their elevator pitch for their video/strategy to the wider group. (12 minutes)

Step 3: When all groups are finished, ask for a show of hands, on whether participants are likely or interested to adopt each strategy.

Extension: Ask participants to research new ways of manufacturing clothing, bio-fabrication.

The aim of this activity is to examine the sustainable food choices we can make to better protect people and planet. 

Discussion: Food is often consumed without thinking about the resources needed to produce it, where in the world it came from and who was involved in its production, packaging, transporting and selling of it. Occasionally we even waste food by taking what we can’t or don’t need to consume.

In order to protect our planet and ensure all people have access to nutritious food, people need to make sustainable food choices.   

Here are some facts to consider from the Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations on food production.

• Food production contributes more to global warming than all cars, trucks, airplanes and trains combined and is a major cause of pollution, soil degradation, deforestation and desertification, accelerating the loss of biodiversity.
• The ‘water we eat’ daily through the food we consume is much more than what we drink. It accounts for almost 70 percent of all water withdrawals, and up to 95 percent in some developing countries. (FAO)
• There is enough food produced in the world to ensure all people can have a nutritious diet. Unfortunately, 1 out of every 4 calories never gets eaten. (FAO)
• The world’s population is expected to increase by 2 billion persons in the next 30 years, from 7.7 billion currently to 9.7 billion in 2050. (UN)

Taking this into account, how do we produce enough food to provide a nutritious diet for everyone, while at the same time, making sure the planet stays healthy and can provide for future generations? Below are a few discussions worth having. Please use the discussion cards for support.

Group Work: Divide the group into 6 smaller groups, handout one of the three discussion cards to each group.

• Food Choices: What steps could you take to make your diet more sustainable for people and planet?
• Food Justice: What food choices can we make to ensure all people are protected and provided with adequate nutrition?
• Food Waste: What can we do to manage food production and consumption better?

The aim of this activity is to look at innovations that are leading us to a more sustainable future. 

Discussion: One way toward responsible consumption is to create a circular economy, where we take material from the earth and design it to use as little raw material a possible, it is used over and over again and is repaired when broken or worn, we collect it and use as much of the product as we can to produce something else, only getting rid of a minimal amount each time.

There are also some exciting ideas starting with growing more and killing less. Innovations like biofabrication are being considered the next industrial revolution. It is viewed by some as a game-changer. It uses bacteria, fungi and algae, all of which are plentiful and easy to grow to produce products from clothes to shoes to bricks and other such building products.

All of these products can be grown in a matter of days or weeks from cells.

• Mix hemp fibres with natural glue and some water and you get hemp concrete.” as “the vegetative part of a fungus mixed with waste and compressed for 10 minutes molds into any shape to make all kinds of furniture or even bricks to build homes.
• Bacteria put into a mold of sand and a solution of urea and calcium chloride produces these bricks in a matter of days, the bacteria will form a chain of chemical reactions that will cause it to solidify and bind the brick together. It is based on the way coral grows and is CO2 negative meaning it absorbs more Co2 then it emits
• Fabric can be made from bacteria but equally fungus and algae can be good to use. It takes a few days to make at home and can biodegrade outside within a week.

Other important things are simply to rewild our planet, allowing as much land as possible to turn back to nature. Growing plants up walls and making use of internal spaces to grow food.

Activity: More than 23 billion pairs of runners are made every year, over 300 million pairs are thrown out annually, and, on average, it takes 30-40 years for a pair to fully decompose in a landfill. Ask participants to group into threes and research a pair of runners that are sustainably produced (10 min). 

Each person has a role:

1. to determine do the materials, have a low impact on the environment and are they ethically sourced,  
2. to determine is the production chain circular, minimising waste and reusing materials,
3. to determine does the manufacturer have fair wages and working conditions (for all of its products).

Ask groups to present back on the shoe they found to the larger group. Discussion points: Would you buy this shoe? Is it available in the Irish market? Is it affordable? What is the most unusual product used? Does the company use these methods throughout their product lines or are these shoes a gimmick to greenwash their brand?

Video: A World of Solutions

We all have responsibility for achieving the Sustainable Development Goals by 2030. Below are the goals and their targets that address violence against children. Use them, along with the Convention on the Rights of the Child to support your call to take action and address these issues. Below are just a few suggestions of actions you can take.