Page 1747 - Week 06 - Tuesday, 7 June 2022
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work with the industry, developing Ethical Clothing Australia. That is helping us to ensure that, where we are manufacturing these products in Australia, we are respecting workers’ rights, we are making sure that we do not exploit outworkers and that we reduce the human impacts on those supply chains.
There are other ways that you can reduce your impact. You can buy fewer garments. That suits a lot of people. And you can make them last for a long time. Buy high quality and repair them. We have heard a lot about the repair options, the growing awareness of this, and businesses involved in that repair movement.
I personally prefer second-hand. I buy most of my clothes from op shops. Most of the clothing that I am wearing right now and my jewellery are from op shops. Most of the stuff that I wear around Belconnen is from op shops. It started out as an environmental choice and now it is a hobby. I have a lot of fun doing it. I had a lot of fun meeting my friends in the Green Shed. I built up a recycling business with them and heard a lot of the different stories that they used to tell about the stuff that they would sell. This is part of the joy of op shopping. It is not just stuff that you are finding; it is stories and people’s lives that you are finding.
I once did an interview with the Green Shed staff, and I asked them about the strangest garments they had ever sold. They had sold one of Michael Milton’s old prosthetic legs—I assume after he had finished using it—and they also sold quite a lot of used bondage gear, which is apparently very popular with the K-pop set. I have not bought either of those items. They are not in my current collection. But I have found a lot of other great treasures.
I once did a carbon audit of the Green Shed’s operations to see the impact that you can have from a business that sells a lot of used goods. I was pretty blown away by the carbon impact of that. Since 2011 the Green Shed has salvaged over 60,000 tonnes of stuff that otherwise would have gone to landfill. That represents a saving from landfill; much more importantly, it is a huge saving in carbon, energy and water for stuff that has not had to be re-created from scratch.
I analysed that and I found that 250,000 tonnes of carbon emissions were saved by that trade. These numbers are hard for people to get their heads around; so, to put that in context, the Green Shed’s carbon savings offset more than half of the ACT’s total landfill emissions. One business, doing a really good trade in second-hand goods, has actually cut the ACT’s landfill emissions in half, effectively. There is some really good news to be had here. I would encourage everyone to get out there and get to as many op shops as they can.
There are a lot of specialist businesses in Canberra. Roundabout in Holt has a good line in kids and baby goods, in clothing. They are a really good social enterprise. A lot of these businesses are working in the social enterprise space. There is the Green Shed. Ys Buys, Salvation Army, Another Chance, and St Vincent De Paul. There are so many op shops all around Canberra. A lot of these op shops will also accept goods back and accept donations. We had a rule in the business: if it is not good enough to give to a friend, you cannot really give it to an op shop.
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