In my last blog about energy companies I came to the realisation that it’s actually pretty freeing not to always chase the ‘cheapest’ deal, to make purchasing decisions based on values rather than value (if you get my drift!). So this month I thought I should tackle another area where I’m always looking for the best deal – clothing. To prevent me from being too overwhelmed I’m going to tackle women’s fashion, so I won’t include sportswear, footwear, underwear etc, I’ll save those for another day!
The average UK household spends somewhere in the region of £1,200 annually on clothing so I’m definitely interested to see where all that money is going.
For the sake of brevity I will be looking at two particular areas to see what ‘change’ I could make.
Sourcing ethical clothing
Firstly next week I want to look into the issues surrounding ethical purchasing of clothes. I’ll be asking the questions; ‘What makes my clothes ethical?’ and ‘Where can I buy them?’. I want to focus primarily on the high-street rather than specialist ethical online companies, to test whether it’s possible to shop with a conscience in big name stores.
Redressing the balance
Secondly I want to look at what I already own and whether I could be making more ethical choices with what I have. Scarily I discovered (via Ethical Consumer) that around 1.7 billion garments (30% of what we own) lie unworn at home and that new unworn clothes worth £30 billion hang in our wardrobe but we spend £44 billion every year on buying more. I want to look at how I can redress (pun intended!) that balance in my own wardrobe.
If you’ve got any tips on ethical spending on the high street or recommendations of your go-to companies do let me know!