 Today, most of the new clothes available to us come from the fast fashion industry, which was one of the most destructive industries currently on earth. But the good news is there are great alternatives. And today, my friend Kameya Chayne is going to share her top tips for a sustainable and ethical wardrobe. So if you like to dress fashionably or you simply wear clothes at all, then this video is definitely for you. Here she is. Hey, it's Kameya Chayne here. I'm the curator at the directory, consciousfashion.co. And I'm also the host of Green Dreamer podcast, which Rob has actually been a repeat guest on because he's incredible, as we know. And I'm always learning so much from him and just am really grateful to have this opportunity to take you through 10 of my favorite sustainable fashion tips. And they do kind of go from what is the easiest and most accessible to what may require more thought and more research. So you can kind of go through them and see what stands out to you most or what resonates most with you that may work best for you and go from there. The first thing that we can do is to simply make the most use of everything we already have. So there's this idea that sustainable fashion is unattainable, it's too expensive, it's unaffordable. Well, we don't actually have to buy anything at all from sustainable fashion brands or eco fashion brands in order to participate in sustainable fashion or to be more eco-conscious with our wardrobe. Because one of the best things that we can do is to just make the most use of everything that we already have. For me personally, I've had this scarf right here ever since I was in high school. So it's been a while now. And because it's been with me for quite some time, I've gone through a lot of different memories and experiences with this scarf. So even though it wasn't actually that expensive or there wasn't anything special about it when I first got it, I wasn't even eco-conscious or consider myself a conscious consumer way back then. But because it's been with me through so many experiences, I feel like it's really enriched the sentimental value and sense of meaning that I get from wearing this. So you might be able to relate with things that you've had for a long time. It really makes that item more meaningful and more valuable to you. So that's the first thing is to check the backs of your wardrobes, the backs of your drawers to see what you already own and make the most use of it. And also, oftentimes we end up buying new things that look a lot like things we already have. So just taking inventory of what we already own every so often can help us to avoid doing that. The second thing we can do is to borrow clothes from our friends and family members or to rent clothing. So of course, if you're so lucky to have friends and family members to have a similar clothing and shoe size as you, then that's definitely a great option is to kind of browse through your closets to see if there's anything that you can borrow for any events that you have coming up. And the other option is to rent clothing, especially for things like special occasion or attending friends' weddings and stuff like that. These are items of clothing that we might otherwise only wear once or twice if we were to buy them. So it's more affordable and we would be able to get even more expressive with our fashion choices by renting different items for different special occasions that we attend. And also, if you have little ones in your family who are growing really quickly in the stage in their lives, I believe they're also clothing subscription, clothing rental subscription services now for children because they grow so quickly and grow out of their sizes so quickly that it'll ensure you don't necessarily have to buy or own these items of clothing, but it can make sure that these items of clothing are being recirculated among different families so that they can be maximized in their use. My third tip is to make the most use of things that aren't necessarily in our closets already but already exist out there. So this includes swapping items with our friends or buying used clothing or also buying new clothing that are made with waste fabrics. So there's also this misconception that if you were to participate in sustainable fashion then you have to be super minimalistic and try to wear the same things every single day or something like that and that it can limit your ability to be super expressive with your fashion choices and that's actually not true at all especially if you participate in the used economy where you can still have a lot of different styles of clothes and still circulate or buy and consign, buy and consign, you can still go through that cycle especially if you do it locally with local thrift shops, you can still be super expressive and have a lot of fun with your fashion choices without having it be wasteful materials-wise and not breaking your bank because of course shopping secondhand will definitely be cheaper than if we were to buy new. So that's the third tip that I have is to shop secondhand to support the circular economy or swap with your friends or buy new clothes that are made with surplus or waste fabrics. The fourth thing that we can do is when we are buying new clothes of course to go for quality over quantity that's kind of a given but when we are buying new to prioritize low impact, natural and biodegradable fibers. So once you dive into this there's really a lot of nuance that goes into it but I would say to start you can look for things like organic cotton, linen, hemp, tensile, lyoscel and if you do wear wool to ensure you know where it comes from to ensure the company behind it has really ethical practices and has transparency or even some certifications which we'll go into later but those are just some things that you can look for when you're just starting out. The fifth thing is having a wardrobe of 100% natural fibers isn't always possible especially if you do yoga or if you're a swimmer or you're an athlete or you know you go skiing or you live in a really cold place and things like that where you do need the performance properties of synthetic fibers. So in these scenarios definitely again prioritize secondhand but also if you are buying new you can also look for recycled fibers. So nowadays there are a lot of swimsuits or athletic wear or yoga wear that are made of things like nylon polyester and so forth but they're actually recycled nylon or recycled polyester or things like that. So if you are buying new clothes that need to have these special performance properties then definitely look for recycled fibers as opposed to virgin microplastic fibers. My sixth tip is to look for certifications and there are numerous out there so you can look at what certifications the companies have or the products have and then just do a quick search for what they mean but just to give you a quick idea of some that are more notable in the fashion space I have my notes here so I don't forget the key ones so there's the OACO-TEX 100 standard certification which denotes non-toxic. There's the gots organic for organic cotton there is B Corp which is pretty well known it's more general to certify companies that are transparent and have eco and ethical practices in general or are conscious about their practices. There's the ZQ certification that certifies ethical wool. There's Cradle to Cradle that really looks at minimizing waste. There's Blue Sign Verified which verifies eco-conscious manufacturing practices and then of course there's Fair Trade Certification which denotes ethical labor and they pay the artisans and garment workers a fair and living wage. So yeah, look for certifications where you can. My seventh tip is to support artisan made clothing that really hope to preserve cultural diversity as well as traditional craftsmanship. So once we get into this category of clothing they can tend to be more expensive due to the nature of it being handmade as opposed to mass produced in a factory using primarily machines that can just turn things out really quickly. But with this because it's more expensive we're likely to not be able to buy things as quickly which again forces us to slow down our consumption and at the same time a lot of artisans already are using natural materials that are readily available in their local region which helps us to ensure that we're not contributing to over extraction because their slower pace of making these items also means that they're able to use what is readily available and respect that slower biological cycle of the things that are growing in their region. My eighth tip and this is one that I've been personally getting really into these days that I'm really excited about is not just prioritizing clothes made with organic natural fibers that are low impact but also prioritizing natural fibers that are dyed using natural plant dyes. So right now the majority of our clothes are being dyed using synthetic dyes and some are certified non-toxic synthetic dyes but a lot are also azo dyes which is a whole family of dyes that include known carcinogenic or neurotoxic chemicals in them. So something that we can do in order to support the soil to soil circularity meaning that our clothes at the end of their lives can return to the soil safely without being toxic to the soil microbiology is to ensure that clothes aren't treated with things like formaldehyde or they aren't dyed using a concoction of chemical dyes. So for example, I have this and this one right here, this is dyed, actually forget what plant it was dyed using but this is actually, this is a fully organic and hemp blend jacket, it's like a crop top. I've been loving wearing this and it's dyed using plant dyes and then I also have these lounge pants that I wear all the time when I'm at home and this is actually colored cotton. So it wasn't dyed at all because the cotton that was grown, it's a variety that naturally is kind of, it has a light brown tinge to it. So that's something we forget as well is we think of cotton as only being white when in reality there used to be and there still is but in small amounts, cotton of a variety of colors like blue, green, I believe even red and then certainly different shades of brown as well. So this is all really exciting to look into, prioritizing color grown fibers as well as natural plant dyes. Number nine is to diversify and this is one that is more difficult for us to work on right now, especially individually just due to the limited options that we have out there. But I say this because if you think about how, yes, we know organic cotton, for example, to be a relatively more eco-friendly option, but imagine if everybody were to buy only organic cotton clothing. What that would end up doing is we would have to convert a lot of diverse localized eco regions and take out the biodiversity there to plant monocultures of organic cotton in order to meet the increasing demands of organic cotton all over the globe. So diversification is really important so that we can support biodiversity in different places. So there are a lot of lesser known fibers that haven't really been mass produced that a lot of people haven't heard of or that don't know a lot about. Some examples are Rami, I don't know if I'm saying that correctly, but it's spelled R-A-M-I-E, or there's nettle, or there's lotus fiber, banana fiber, or yeah, banana fiber, pineapple leaf fiber. So there are all of these different sorts of natural fibers that are localized to different regions that we can start to kind of learn about and support wherever we can. And usually artisan made clothes might have more of these options as opposed to mainstream mass produced even eco-fashion brands, for example. So this is something just to keep in the back of our minds is how we can help to diversify the fibers that are used within fashion. Finally, my 10th tip is to support localized regenerative textile systems. And this is definitely the hardest one, I would say, out of everything that I just mentioned because of the lack of localized textile systems that we have right now. But I really recommend FiberShed, the nonprofit that is spearheading this movement in creating localized textile systems around the globe. So you should definitely go check them out and learn more directly from them at FiberShed.org. But basically what this is about is right now, even a lot of eco-fashion brands have globalized supply chains where their organic cotton might come from India and then that might be sent to another country to be made and then sent all over the place. So just think about in food, we talk about food miles. It's the same thing with clothes as well. There's kind of your fashion miles of how far all of these raw materials had to travel back and forth in order to then end up at the store and then end up with the consumer. So the idea and the goal of localized and regenerative textile systems is for us to really regionalize where our clothes are grown and made so that we can minimize those fashion miles and then on the regenerative side, if we're able to regenerate healthy soils through carbon farming and regenerative practices, that can actually help us to sequester carbon. So ideally, when you really combine the two of localizing and having regenerative agriculture involved in this process, we can actually do good by purchasing new, regeneratively made clothes because we would be helping to sequester more carbon than was emitted throughout this production process. So that's certainly the most difficult because it's not so widely available right now but something that is being developed and spearheaded by Fibershed. And it's super exciting. Rebecca Burgess is the founder and director and she wrote a book on this, it's called Fibershed. So definitely I recommend checking that out as well. It's very inspiring to see the future of what could be for fashion and what that would look like when we can actually be doing good with fashion rather than just trying to do less bad. These were my 10 tips on how we can be more eco-friendly and regenerative with our fashion choices. Try to have some additional resources linked in the description. So certainly you can do more research on your own and learn more from here on out. But yeah, I hope this has been helpful and thank you so much for hearing me out. I hope that you got a lot out of this video and if you did, that you'll implement some of these tips into your life. Make sure to subscribe to Kamea's Green Dreamer podcast as well as subscribe to her here on YouTube and follow her on Instagram. The links are in the description and make sure to subscribe to this channel as well for many more great videos to come. I love you all very much and I'll see you again real soon.