Reader question: what to do with old shoes?

I had a question from reader Lorraine, and I thought you might like to see it. Lorraine asks:

Where can I send my kids shoes, besides landfill? Some are more battered than others, but all are wearable. It seems like such a shame to throw them out…

We all know we shouldn’t be sending stuff to landfill if we can avoid it. But sometimes it’s a bit puzzling to know where things should go instead.

It’s possible to reclaim material from shoes, but it seems to me that if they’re still wearable, “reuse” is better than “recycle”. When it comes to reuse, we’ve got two options: sell them, or give them away.

If you want to sell clothing and accessories in Australia, most people think first of eBay, classifieds and websites like Gumtree. But there are plenty of places online dedicated to pre-loved clothing, so check out Tricia’s comprehensive post at Little Eco Footprints and the suggestions in the comments there.

If you’re happy to give them away, then you can do what I do and see if your local charity shop accepts shoes – some will want to check them first to make sure they’re suitable. Other options include freebie sites like Yoink or Scoodi and local Freecycling groups.

I’d love to hear further suggestions from anyone who’s done this before. Where have you managed to find a second home for old shoes?

National Swap Day

As you know, I’ve already had a go at hosting my own clothes swap party at home. I had a great time, and plan on doing it again. But I can see where people with very busy jobs and families to look after might not have enough time to plan one for themselves.

This is where the public swap events come in – you RSVP and just show up on the day with the clothes you want to swap. No fussing about who’ll be there, or making sure you have enough snacks and drinks.

If you’ve always wanted to give it a try, but haven’t made it to one yet, you’ve got a great opportunity coming up next week. On Monday 25th October, there will be Clothing Exchange swaps all around Australia.

They’re calling it National Swap Day, and there will be swap events happening in Melbourne, Sydney, Adelaide, Perth and Brisbane. And if you’re not in one of those capital cities, they’re happy to send you out a swapping how-to kit so you can host your own.

It costs $25 for entry, and you bring at least 6 garments that are in good condition but you’d like to find new homes for. You can take home the same number of items as you brought with you, if you like. They do check for quality though, so maybe leave the spare tracky-daks for a charity donation instead!

If you’re interested, email the swap leaders for your city for more information. And if anyone is thinking of going to the Perth swap, please let me know and maybe we can meet up!

Six items or less

After all the politics last week, I’m ready to talk about something more frivolous…

Have you heard about the Six Items Or Less challenge? The idea was that a group of people would limit themselves to wearing just six items of clothing for a month. Exceptions included exercise gear, shoes, underwear and so on, but they had to pick their six main tops and bottoms and stay with them for the duration.

They had different reasons for doing it: some were anti-consumerists, some wanted to see if they could still be creative within the restrictions, some of them enjoy the freedom that comes from not worrying about what to wear. According to Good website, the rest of them are just masochists : )

Image from the New York Times

You can see some of the items people chose in this slideshow in the New York Times. Interestingly, one lady found that no-one noticed that she was doing it!

I always like it when people set themselves difficult challenges: eating only local for a year, creating no waste, restricting their purchases. I do similar (but less out-there) challenges for G Magazine every second month, and blog about it there. I’d love to hear from you about any others you know of.

I find that going to an extreme for a little while makes me think harder about my everyday life and decisions. Usually when the challenge ends I don’t keep up every aspect of it, but I don’t go back to my old ways either. I’ve gained new skills and found new resources for living greenly.

But I don’t think I could do the six items challenge at this point in my life. It’s just a bit beyond my capabilities right now. Plus – wouldn’t you end up doing a lot more laundry? I’d have to be doing a mid-week wash for sure, when I normally only do a weekly one. Maybe it’s different if you hate laundry enough that you let it pile up until you have nothing clean left to wear at all, then do one big batch! Or if you have a family and are doing multiple washes anyway.

Are there other clothing-related green challenges out there? Maybe I can work my way up to something more hardcore…

Want to win a prize? Tell me about hemp…

Hemp fabric is one of those things that’s associated with tie-dye and hippies, because it’s known to be eco-friendly but people rarely see it used well. Which is a shame, because as well as being useful and eco-friendly, it can be made into things just as beautiful as we see made with water-guzzling, pesticide-laden cotton.

Although you can grow cotton organically, which is great, it does take a lot of work. Hemp is naturally ahead of the game:

• the plants grow too close together to allow for weeds, so no herbicide needed;
• insects prefer other crops so it needs fewer pesticides;
• and it doesn’t need nearly as much water to grow (which is great for Australia).

Hemp producers can go organic without much extra effort at all.

I’ll admit that I hadn’t paid much attention to it until I saw a beautiful range of hemp purses online. Anne from Sir Tom uses hemp as one of the materials in her work, and she’s showing all those hippies how it’s supposed to be done! I spent quite a while looking at her Etsy store, and was very pleased when she agreed to help me out with a little competition here on my blog.

Anne is giving away a hemp purse from her store to the Go Greener reader who can tell us the most interesting or fun fact about hemp – environmental, historical, scientific, etc – in the comments of this post. If you’re not interested in using a purse yourself (hello, gentlemen!) you might like to enter and win a gift for your partner or a friend.

You have 3 days to leave your comment here, although I suggest doing it now and then telling your friends. On Friday night at 8pm Perth time (so 10pm for you east-coasters) I’ll pick a winner from the commenters, and be in touch with you about receiving your prize.

Hopefully you will be the lucky winner of a very stylish purse, and when people give you compliments on it, you can thank them and tell them how eco-friendly it is too.

Looking good while saving the world

Of all Dave's shirts, this one is my favourite

Hayley over at Remade in Melbourne wrote a thought-provoking post last week about the politics of fashion. She asked us (among other things) “Can you be smart, informed about world issues, and still think your personal style is pretty damn important?”

I left a comment but felt so many ideas swirling around that I figured I’d take my ramblings over here! The short answer? Yes! The long answer… well, here goes.

• Unless we all want to move to places with a perfect year-round temperature, we’re going to need clothes.
• People do judge each other by appearances. It’s why I try to wear ‘nice’ clothes to protests. We can try to be fairer in our judgements, but they’ll never go away altogether.
• Clothes can be made ethically and responsibly – I’ve written previously about buying second-hand, making your own, fair-trade and low-impact materials.
• I know some of those ethical, sustainable clothes can be pretty ugly. But not all of them, and it’s getting better all the time.
• Looking good feels good, as long as you skip the surgery and don’t give yourself wrinkles from worrying about how you’ll pay for your wardrobe.

So for me, the question now becomes: why wouldn’t you pay attention to your personal style while you’re busy saving the world? It’s possible to do it right, and there’s more than a few benefits. So here’s a little thought experiment:

Just imagine if we succeed in greening our lives, in greening everyone’s lives. Imagine if we succeeded in bringing the world’s poor to a better standard of living, so they could have more than just the bare necessities. Imagine Australia with clean energy, low-emission transport, no rat-race anymore. Close your eyes for a moment and visualise what your life would look like in a really green world. A socially-responsible job (no long hours!), followed by time spent eating a sustainable meal with family or hanging out with friends in your energy-efficient home, riding your bike to the beach or bushland to have fun or just get back to nature – well, that’s what I picture, anyway.

Now what were you imagining everyone wearing? I bet it wasn’t hemp sacks! If you’re like me, you imagined people wearing pretty much the same stuff they wear today. As we’ve talked about before, that same stuff could be produced so much differently – but it won’t happen on a widespread scale unless we pay attention to it as an issue.

If we save the world only to become joyless and colourless and have no fun, then what the hell is the point? I say fashion is important for self-expression and fun, over and above the practicality of clothes. I don’t want to live in a world where we can’t compliment each other for looking nice because we’re all wearing boring, bland stuff.

Anyway, pop over to Hayley’s blog and read the comments on the post – people have said some really insightful things about status anxiety, empowerment and self-esteem in relation to fashion, it’s well worth a look.