You Wear it Well!

I know you’d love to buy that expensive, organic, stylish and ethical garment, but it’s expensive. I don’t know about you, but over the years I’ve bought quite a few items off the value end of the high street. I am trying to move away from this now and look for more ethical suppliers, better quality and longer lasting. Ignore fashion: fashion is the killer, don’t succumb. I know you might look around the club and think fashion isn't a big thing here, well that’s great if that’s the case. I do, however, think most of us have an eye on it. So, your sustainability behaviours need to pervade your entire wardrobe to make any difference at all.

There may be a case to re-examine how our sponsored athletes model their gear, with shiny new colours every year, with slight changes to style, with the next best thing, the thing that you must have to improve what you do and how you do it. Perhaps, it’s our role models that need to take heed, not the paddler per se.

Did you know..

Nike sells over 780 million pairs of trainers every year and Adidas 400 million. Almost none are recyclable, they are on the planet forever. This is from Damien Hall’s book ‘We can’t run away from this’. Well, we can’t paddle away from it either. It’s a book that I recommend you read. Just substitute the word paddle for the word run. His message is buy less, use less, keep it longer, use it again, repair it, use it again, share it, pass it on, take it back, repair it and use it again. 

Shoes and footwear such as the specialist shoes we wear for paddling suffer the exact same issues as trainers.

You have probably heard how bad cotton is for the people that make it, you’ll know it needs large amounts of water and chemicals to manufacture garments. What should be a renewable, biodegradable product ceases to be so because of the way we make it. Organic, ethical garments are far from being issue free too. And don’t forget all the packaging being used. Even biodegradable and recyclable packaging has to come from somewhere. Again, buy less, wear it longer, that’s the way to be ‘cool’ going forward.

In the website world PeakUK are talking the right language. We should support this, encourage it and see how we can help rather than hinder. 

Buying less stuff will be the best thing you can do for the environment, but when you do buy, buy wisely.