Conscious Consumer: What to Look for When Clothes Shopping

Being a conscious consumer is not only great for the planet, but it can be great for your wallet too! Unfortunately, clothing shopping is hard enough as it is- and making sure you’re buying the best stuff can be a daunting task. So, we’ve devised a little cheat sheet of things to look out for on your next shopping trip.

Shop Small

Small businesses often have less waste, as their products are produced on a smaller scale. Additionally, without having to cater to a board of directors who are concerned mostly with profit, small business owners have full discretion to ethically source their materials. For instance, at Hand Jive, we use remnant fabrics from the mill to conserve resources. You won’t find that at national chains!

Get high-quality clothing, and less of it

According to planetaid.org, the average American contributes up to 82lbs of textile waste alone. Furthermore, it can take up to 40 years for clothing to breakdown- leaving it to pile up in landfills. Fast fashion is a fun, and easy way to keep up with trends, but buying high-quality clothing you’ll wear and keep forever will take less of a toll on the environment, and your finances!

Stay away from dry-clean only

This one is tough- some things will just need to be dry cleaned. But the fewer, the better. Did you know that the chemical used in 85% of dry cleaners, perchloroethylene is “a probable human carcinogen," according to the EPA. And that’s not all- when this chemical gets released into the environment, it plays a big role in breaking down the ozone layer. Not good! Luckily, many dry cleaners are “going green”, so if you have to dry clean your clothes, try to find one of these good players!