Purchase old, make it new.

My blog posts lately have been about how to stay trash free in your daily life, whether it be with coffee outings, groceries, or baking because I firmly believe keeping trash out of landfills, oceans, parks and everywhere else it gets leaked is so important! This post is a bit different as I have been researching a lot of things on how the way we live is being correlated to carbon emissions without even seeing it affect our lives…yet. Our personal transport, fashion, food habits and even how our home is set up has everything to do with our environmental impact. 

The fashion industry these days is scary. It is the second largest user of water in the world. Cotton is the largest single source of fibre for global apparel and over 53% of cotton fields in the world require irrigation, and most of these sources are where water is already scarce. The Aral Sea lost 70% of its volume as a result of diverting water to grow cotton in the desert.  With our unsustainable throw away fashion mentality, it seems like we care about quantity more than quality. I say this because I was one of those people who online shopped with cheap apparel eyes. If it was on sale, it was pretty much mine. I went through leggings about once every month and was obsessed with dresses I would never wear but "had" to have. Clothes were piling up and I would wear only 1/3 of what I had.

So what is the hope? Duh! Buy second hand clothes! Imagine if we all lived simple and had a few dresses, a few tops, a couple jeans etc.. and then donated what we got sick of and bought more vintage and so on and so forth. That cycle would be beautiful and we would never have to manufacture clothes again! That dream is far from reality but I shall make it come true for myself, and you can too!!

Here is an outing with one of my best friends, Dana. We went to the creek on this very hot day and we decided to have a picnic!

It is so much easier to bring your own cloth bags and jars for picnics. No throw away annoyances, it feels classier, and it looks way better. Make sure to compost any banana peels or food scraps after you're done! I bring a jar so I can bring it home to my freezer compost! 

I have a vintage Minolta camera with 35mm expired film and I currently have an infatuation with how gentle, personal, and beautiful the photos turn out. I get them processed onto a memory card and I keep the plastic cartridges for reuse. So here below are a few photos from that. The dresses we each bought are from vintage thrift stores. I got my dress for $8 and those thrift sunglasses for $9 and Dana got her dress for $15. Its just one of those dresses you can go anywhere with because of the flow and ease of it. I'm in love.

Hey look at Dana sporting that classy jar full of sugar snap peas!! :D

Dana snuck in a picture of me while I was taking in the creek breeze before we swam. The top is a 70's vintage ribbed piece. My new favorite summer top.

I spy a blonde monkey babe in the trees. <3