At Least the Emperor’s New Clothes Were Sustainable…

Perhaps it is because I recently moved 2000 miles across the country, ruthlessly paring my possessions in the process, but I have been feeling overly sensitized to waste. All kinds of waste: leftover food, used plastic containers, discarded paper, defunct electronics. Most of all, though, I have been thinking about clothes. I started preparing for my move by going through my closet. Or, more precisely, my bedroom floor, since that is where most clothes ended up after my last move four years previously, when I relocated to an apartment that did not require neatness because there was more space than I really needed.

Following that last move – an international one involving shipping containers and long delays and a strong desire to be okay living out of two suitcases – I had instituted a “rule” whereby I did not allow myself to buy any new items of clothing without simultaneously giving away an equal number of pieces. At least, I mentally gave them away. And I physically moved them from the closet – or the bedroom floor – to one of several REI shopping bags lining my guest bedroom. But in New York City, getting those bags to the next step – Housing Works, the Salvation Army, one of the several donation bins scattered around the city – was more involved than simply throwing them in the backseat of my car. I admit that this was something of a mental block more than a physical one – the nearest Housing Works was only four blocks from my apartment – but for some reason, I let the clothing-filled bags pile up in my guest bedroom. Eventually, I had 20 ready to go.

It felt cathartic to finally offload the last bag, after many trips over several weeks, and since some of the bags included a plethora of lightly used business suits, I at least deluded myself briefly that I was doing an overall good deed, helping a young woman shine with confidence at her first job interview, for instance. But then I read something about the nearly 100 pounds of textile waste that the average American discards in a year and that apparently make up an estimated 8% of our landfills. Although I can hope that most of the clothes I donated ended up on second-hand store racks at reasonable prices, I know that even thrift stores try to turn over their inventory, meaning that eventually things that aren’t sold likely end up in the trash.

Some startups are trying to address this issue: Recycle.how specifically targets clothing, shoes and books and has established a network of partners to ensure goods are actually recycled rather than thrown away. Even so, while donating the suits I no longer wanted was better than throwing them directly into the garbage, I still can’t help but wallow a bit in the idea of how much waste I potentially created. When I was a child, we always saved worn-out clothes and used them as rags or in the countless crafts that we entertained ourselves with in the pre-dawn before technology. In my streamlined, modern life, there doesn’t seem to be a place for a craft bin. Although the success of Michael’s and Hobby Lobby suggests that other people might still have them, I am introspective enough to recognize that I am more intrigued by the idea of making things by hand than by the actual process. Reducing my clothing waste via recycling into quilts or dolls’ outfits is not realistic.

Nor does merely recycling clothing actually absolve me: the initial manufacturing process probably wasn’t terribly sustainable (producing a T-shirt and a pair of jeans apparently uses 5,000 gallons of water), and eventually everything I repurpose or pass along will get old enough to make its way into a landfill, where it might take thousands of years to degrade. Instead, the most sustainable avenue is probably to pretend I am living in the 1800s, when most people only had a few articles of clothing that they carefully repaired to ensure maximum longevity. I can avoid waste by avoiding consumption in the first place.

Leaving aside for a moment that acquisition is an instinct – and advertisers expertly use our biology against us, making it extremely difficult to dampen the desire for new things – deciding what parts of a wardrobe are necessary and which are superfluous is not easy. This is especially true when a common piece of advice is: “If you find something you like, buy it in every color!” Some people use the “if you haven’t worn it in a year, pass it on” rule. But if I had done that, I would have moved back to Montana and needed some new apparel. It turns out that the fleece jackets I barely wore over the course of twelve years in New York City and Bermuda are really handy in my new habitat.

The first modern advocate for a minimal wardrobe I remember was Dr. Ian Malcolm, who in Jurassic Park explained that all of his clothes were either grey or black so that he didn’t have to waste any mental energy thinking about what to wear – anything he grabbed would work. My twelve-year-old self was struck by the logic of it. As a pre-teen girl largely dependent on hand-me-downs from wealthier, older cousins, I was painfully aware of the importance of clothing – and I was disappointed when that particular quirk of Dr. Malcolm was not explained in the movie. Many adherents of a minimalist or “capsule” wardrobe cite such things – fewer decisions, less wasted time – as reasons that they prefer owning fewer items of clothing.

In an age where more people seem to be embracing various forms of minimalism in their lives, there are countless blogs dedicated to helping people parse their closets. In general, though, they don’t adequately address the problem of variety. Although there is research on both sides of the debate about whether there is such a thing as too many choices, I have lived with a capsule wardrobe several times during my adult life, and I have always gotten excruciatingly bored with the set of clothes available and welcomed the arrival of more alternatives. Perhaps this indicates a moral failing particular to me, but I suspect I am not alone in wanting at least the option of a different shirt, even if nine times out of ten I ignore it in favor of an old standby. However, I recognize that by opting for broader variety I am also choosing more waste.

This is one of the paradoxes of life in the 21st century: How do we maintain sustainability amidst abundance? First, it is important to note that the abundance is not universally allocated, which is one reason global climate change discussions hadn’t gained much traction until Paris in 2015. Nonetheless, as the Food and Agricultural Organization of the United Nations (FAO) points out, we produce enough food for every person on the planet (although much of it is wasted), and most consumer goods are far from necessities (how many of the 19 pairs of shoes owned by the average American are really indispensable?). So, although there is an issue of distribution, it still makes sense to talk about abundance.

The central quandary then centers on the aforementioned instinct to acquire. How much is enough? For millennia, religious and philosophical traditions sought to answer this by deemphasizing material wealth in favor of experiences like inner peace and enlightenment. However, abjuring creature comforts to follow the ascetic path runs counter to our nature and therefore requires concerted and persistent effort and attention – just ask anyone who has tried to incorporate regular meditation into their lives to reduce stress. Capitalism, on the other hand, has thrived precisely because it celebrates the natural human instinct to acquire. As Gordon Gekko famously said in the original Wall Street when explaining the ethos of his success, “Greed is good.”

When it comes to determining how many T-shirts I really need, though, greed is decidedly unhelpful. For me, the allure of choice is catnip, which makes it hard to focus on the wasted resources poured into the process of giving me the freedom to choose both to own and to discard. Despite the surfeit of blogs on minimalist wardrobes, I can’t seem to crack my addiction to choice. Like so many things that helped Homo sapiens survive throughout the centuries, the instinct to acquire is proving to be a maladaptation in the modern world. A previous post explored the possibility of a technological solution to another maladaptation – prejudice – so perhaps technology can also help here. Unlike in the example of prejudice, however, technology in this case likely would need to be more intrusive. Like the implantables discussed in another post, the intrusion would probably need to alter our brain’s wiring, suppressing the idea that more of something – or more variety – is better. However, while that would reduce waste, it might also constrain innovation, and some of that innovation could lead to less wasteful production methods or better recycling processes. So, instead of trying to seek a shortcut in curtailing my longing for sartorial options, I should probably just meditate more. Sometimes the oldest solutions are still the best solutions.