By Carol Fung

This National Recycling Week we’re celebrating the people who are fighting the good fight, through the simple act of caring for Country within their spheres of influence. We hope you find inspiration from these local heroes! This week we’re talking slow fashion with Maggie Zhou – a true multi-hyphenate: writer, content creator, host of Culture Club Podcast and slow fashion advocate based in Naarm, the traditional lands of the Kulin Nation (Melbourne).

CIRCULAR, SLOW FASHION

A conversation about sustainability in fashion.

Maggie jumped onto Instagram when she was in Year 9 and started sharing her outfits online. This led her to regularly collaborate with fast fashion brands, but after a few years, she started to feel like something wasn’t quite right. At the end of 2019, she decided to start grappling with the uncomfortableness she was feeling, which put her on the path she is on today—advocating for slow fashion.

You may have read in our recent blog post that the fashion industry is on its way to emissions of 2.7 billion metric tonnes of CO₂ equivalent in 2030. Positive changes in consumer behaviour during use and reuse, and the introduction by brands of radically new operating models based on closed-loop recycling could contribute 347 million metric tonnes of emissions reduction in 2030. In this interview, we slow it down and delve more into sustainability in the fashion industry.

“Where is this conversation about reducing our fashion intake… it’s hard but it’s something that we need to tackle head-on in our fashion conversations.”
– Maggie Zhou

Tune into Part 1 of a chat between Envirobank’s founder Narelle Anderson and writer Maggie Zhou as they dissect the spectrum of sustainability buzzwords floating around fashion (ethical, eco-friendly, environmentally conscious and environmentally friendly), the importance of circularity in the fashion economy, what happens to clothes after we deem them unsuitable for our wardrobes and putting the waste hierarchy (reduce, reuse, recycle) at the centre of our conscious approach to fashion.

Read Maggie’s articles on Refinery29 to learn more about sustainability and get “slow” inspiration in the fashion space:

What Do These Fashion Sustainability Buzzwords Really Mean?

How To Vet A Fashion Brand’s Ethics & Sustainability Practices

6 Aussie Sustainability Advocates On The Small Ways You Can Make Your Wardrobe More Ethical

We’re So Fixated On The Future Of Sustainable Fashion — Are We Missing The Point?

Follow Maggie @yemagz.

“It’s important to note, we’re actually going to run out of landfill in this country in the next 20-30 years. This is why the waste hierarchy is even more important than before.”
– Narelle Anderson

Looking for more ways to reduce your carbon emissions? Get our 6 tips on a greener way to care for your clothes.

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By Carol Fung