Benefits to the community
Pregnancy and baby clothes sharing already takes place in the community through individual friend and family networks, this is disorganised, it’s not always correctly timed to the age of each baby, and does not cover people who don’t have an extensive network e.g. immigrants and other newcomers. By centralising the clothes sharing into a hub, the benefits can be shared widely across the community.
How have we not come up with a way to share a central bank of clothes?!
There are so many benefits to centralising our resources for a temporary need. Read on.
Affordability in a cost-of-living crisis
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Australian parents spend at least $3,128 per baby on clothing for the baby's first four years after which point these clothes usually end up in overflowing charity bins, landfill, or occasionally with a newly pregnant family member.
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Similarly, a full (average, not high fashion) pregnancy wardrobe easily costs $500. This is money spent towards clothes that are only useful for the second and third trimesters and are typically deemed useless after that.
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A clothes bank allows families to consistently borrow for example a ‘0-3 month baby’ box for a modest charge and then once the baby has outgrown the clothes, it can be swapped out for a ‘3-6 month baby’ box, and so on until 3-4 years of age. This saves families the trouble of having to buy brand new clothes which often are outgrown within weeks, or sometimes go unworn altogether.
Environmental impact
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The fashion industry produces c.10% percent of annual global carbon emissions, which is more than all shipping and flights combined. According to the United Nations, around 215 trillion litres of water p.a. are consumed by the clothing and textile industry. Of the total fibre input used for clothing, 87% is incinerated or disposed of in a landfill, and every year a half a million tons of plastic microfibers are dumped into the ocean.
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Fast fashion, or the perception that wearing an item only a handful of times is okay, has resulted in an increase of discarded items, fuelling overconsumption and overproduction. This perception needs to be eliminated in order to reduce our carbon footprint.
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By adopting a circular economy, we can reduce consumption and extend the useful life of pregnancy and baby clothes.
Modern Slavery
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In an affordability crisis, parents often turn to fast fashion retailers such as Big W or Kmart to save money. These fast fashion retailers not only have a high carbon footprint (noted above) but are also notorious in their poor modern slavery practices. But they are clever about it - modern slavery is embedded deep in their supply chains and takes place mostly offshore.
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According to Oxfam, Kmart Group earned $10.6 billion in revenue last year, yet workers in Bangladeshi factories producing Kmart apparel are paid as little as $6 per day.
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Manufacturing, which includes the garment and footwear industry, accounted for 15 per cent of the nearly 25 million people in forced labour in 2016, according to international human rights group Walk Free. That’s 3.75 million people. And given global garment manufacturing is enormous and expanding, it’s likely the scale of modern slavery is also growing.
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By reducing consumption, we can stop rewarding fast fashion retailers for their poor modern slavery practices.
