Textile & foot ware waste: A guide to circularity & re-use
MRR (Maintain, Repair & Reuse) is the process that I have used for over two decades to look after all my belongings, after all it feels great earning money, (A penny saved is a penny earned) while at the same time doing your bit for our environment. The process of MRR can be applied to almost everything you buy, from electronics, cars, shoes, clothes, etc, but is mostly applied to high values items. Face it, you cannot go out and buy a new car, home, laptop, phone, bike, every month, every six months, or every year, unless you are like the bold headed uncle who recently flew into space on his penis shaped rocket.
Somehow this principal is conveniently forgotten when it comes to clothes and shoes. The fast fashion industry using principals of planned obsolesce and priming has over many years rewired our consumption habits from repairing, reusing, sharing, gifting to continuously buying and disposing. My father is military man, a retired Air Force Fighter pilot and as far back as I can recall, I remember him owning a few pair of shoes that he polished every morning and kept in immaculate condition, they lasted him a good decade. I was sent off two a catholic boarding school at a young age and for those of you who might have experienced life in a boarding school, it instils a certain level of discipline and accountability in you. Your bed had to be made, your shoes polished, a double knotted tie knot was compulsory and your shirt and pants ironed. Fast forward to one my many jobs of selling high end suits at Tip Top tailors a chain of retail store in Canada (over two decades ago), where I was first exposes to the unique concept of renting out tuxedos for various occasions, while attending college where my professor of economics would collect aluminium cans dumped by students after school to get a refund on them and would start off the semester narrating a story about his reversible belt and how small things done at regular intervals will help save you tremendous amounts of money over a period of time.
Why am I am telling you all of this? Because our experiences, what we see at home, what we learn in school define who we are. You are either taught to be sustainable (environmentally and financially) or you circumstance either force you to make sustainable choices. With that said, let‘s see what we can all do to limit our individual impact on the environment by deploying the principals of MRR and the circular economy to the clothes in our closet and the shoes in our draws.