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You still have massive downsides to new cotton or wool clothes. There's just less of the micro plastic downside. Clothing is just a place where we take a massiv

You still have massive downsides to new cotton or wool clothes. There's just less of the micro plastic downside. Clothing is just a place where we take a massive hit on everything from carbon output to micro plastics. Another issue is clothing repair. I think the clothing repair thing is kind of brilliant. But for clothing repair to work you would need to disincentivize buying new clothes. Which subsidizing clothing would work against.

pkaye 2y ago
Higher quality clothes like in the past might be nice. Stuff seems to fall apart so quickly these days.
- ffujdefvjg 2y ago
  Older clothes weren't just made better, people also took care of them better. Partly because of cost, but also culture -- fewer changes in fashion trends with slower and more local communication, cheap labor to launder your clothes by hand (which puts much less wear on the garment). Also a culture of repairing and mending (also easier to do this when you have fewer things to occupy your free time).
  - jabl 2y ago
    Yes. But really, it was much worse in many ways. A 100 years ago, say, the people doing clothes repair for a living were desperately poor, and often being single women they often had to resort to prostitution to feed themselves as the income from repairing clothes simply wasn't enough. I do think that from an environmental standpoint we should repair and recycle clothes a lot more than we do, but lets not romanticize the past. The small clothes repair businesses disappeared for a reason as living standards improved. Furthermore, today factory production of clothes is incredibly efficient and tends to be done in low-income countries, further making it even harder to restart some kind of clothes repair industry in high-income countries.
- baq 2y ago
  sad truth: dryers absolutely destroy clothes.
JumpCrisscross 2y ago
> for clothing repair to work you would need to disincentivize buying new clothes Why? I repair clothes. I also like buying new ones. In between I ruin and lose items, or find that I no longer wish to wear them for purely stylistic reasons.

pkaye 2y ago

Higher quality clothes like in the past might be nice. Stuff seems to fall apart so quickly these days.

ffujdefvjg 2y ago
Older clothes weren't just made better, people also took care of them better. Partly because of cost, but also culture -- fewer changes in fashion trends with slower and more local communication, cheap labor to launder your clothes by hand (which puts much less wear on the garment). Also a culture of repairing and mending (also easier to do this when you have fewer things to occupy your free time).
- jabl 2y ago
  Yes. But really, it was much worse in many ways. A 100 years ago, say, the people doing clothes repair for a living were desperately poor, and often being single women they often had to resort to prostitution to feed themselves as the income from repairing clothes simply wasn't enough. I do think that from an environmental standpoint we should repair and recycle clothes a lot more than we do, but lets not romanticize the past. The small clothes repair businesses disappeared for a reason as living standards improved. Furthermore, today factory production of clothes is incredibly efficient and tends to be done in low-income countries, further making it even harder to restart some kind of clothes repair industry in high-income countries.
baq 2y ago
sad truth: dryers absolutely destroy clothes.

JumpCrisscross 2y ago

> for clothing repair to work you would need to disincentivize buying new clothes Why? I repair clothes. I also like buying new ones. In between I ruin and lose items, or find that I no longer wish to wear them for purely stylistic reasons.