Hey it's Kristen, how are you guys doing?
I am
struggling with finding like a sexy clickable title for this video.
It's like a really useful video and I promise I'm gonna make it fun. But like I cannot think of a clickable
title.
The number one question that I always get it here on YouTube and on Instagram is
"How do I build an ethical closet" and especially people that don't have access to thrift stores, can't afford
ethically made clothing so I'm gonna go over all of that today.
I am going to give you the tools that you need in order to shop more consciously and
give your money to the best person that you possibly can.
So, the first thing that we all need to start taking into consideration when we want to start building our ethical
closet, no matter what budget you're in, is learning like the five R's, basically. Which is
Refuse, Reduce, Reuse, Repair and Recycle
So the first R which is refusing is
the first step. So learning to say no to impulsive
purchases. Learning to say no to buying things just because it's cheap.
Learning to not buy things just because they're in style.
So there's a lot of things we need to first learn to say no to.
Then the next step is
Reducing the amount of clothes that you buy and you might be buying a lot of things and you might actually like all of them
But then the other question is do you really need?
You know all that stuff. Is that really something that adds value to your life?
Can you cut down on shopping so much even if you like everything? Reducing means just cutting down on
The volume of things you're buying. Then there's reuse which means just basically reusing all the clothes that you already have.
Until they're not wearable anymore
because a lot of us buy things we buy things we like, we buy things we need and then
We just end up not wearing them
I've heard that you have to wear every single item of clothing at least 30 times in order to make up for the
Environmental cost that it took to make that item of clothing. So yeah, maybe you can keep that in mind
I certainly have in the past bought a lot of new clothes that I wore like once or twice and
Never wore again
The next step is repairing. So taking clothes that might be damaged might not fit well and making sure you do the necessary
adjustments so that you can keep wearing those clothes because even if something rips you there are many creative ways to
Kind of keep using it.
If you're not certain on how to repair your clothing, YouTube has a ton of tutorial videos and
Inspiration to give you advice on how to do that and I've actually made an upcycling DIY video
That nobody really wanted to watch but that's okay
And in that video I show you what you can do with clothing that is
Permanently stained or ripped and I kind of upcycle a jacket that I have that has a few bleach things on it
And yeah a little plug of a video of my own
over here, so and then there's recycle which is the last step and a
Lot of people can interpret that in a lot of different ways
But I'm gonna cover what the best way to recycle is in my opinion
So literally recycling your clothes in my opinion is not the best solution. It should be the last resort
honestly
If you have clothes that is too damaged that you don't want to wear or just clothes that you know
They're in fine condition. You just want to donate them recycle them or whatever
the best solution opinion is first
Trying to find a home for those clothes before you donate them or recycle them
So either sell them on your new pop or Poshmark or whatever other app
Is local or popular in your area or try and give them away to your friends family
You can host a code swapping party at your place. But yeah, hold on to your clothing
Find a home for them. Make sure that that clothing gets used because once you donate that clothes
there is not a
Guarantee that that item of clothing is not going to end up in the landfill because a lot of donation centers
Receive a huge amount of clothing. They can't use all of it and they end up sending a lot of it to the landfill
But if you have found a company that recycles a hundred percent of the clothing they perceive
Then go ahead and donate in my opinion before you recycle an item of clothing
That is too damaged to get resold or reward
Then I would say just turn it into cleaning rags. You can also turn old damaged t-shirts into totes
There's just a bunch of ways. You can upcycle old damaged clothing
So yeah, I'm thinking of making a video specifically about that. Anyone would want to watch it
But I feel like nobody watches my DIYs anyway
So so we can call the five hours the first step in building an ethical closet then the second step is
When it comes to purchasing things, what options do you have?
so in my personal opinion
I do believe that
secondhand is the most environmentally friendly way because you are not contributing to the production of new items and if you don't have
Thrift stores in your area or vintage stores. I'm going to list in the description box all the online
Apps and the website where you can go and buy second-hand clothes for cheap. I have a deep pop store
Of course, I'm gonna plug my deep op store. It's all secondhand
and
You also know when you're supporting my deep op shop that I'm not gonna take that money and spend it on more new
Fast fashion clothing. So yeah, that's something that maybe
Maybe means something free. Okay moving on but just because there are online secondhand stores
That doesn't mean the problem is solved because there are a lot of things that we kind of need to try on
before we buy things like jeans things like shoes sometimes and then there's other things like
Underwear that we can definitely not buy second-hand
So there's a lot of exceptions to things that we can buy second-hand
If you do have a high budget first stuff, like underwear bras and things like that
You can buy ethically and I do have a list with all my favorite
ethical fashion
underwear brands in the description box that you can check out and
Underwear, especially bottoms. There's not really a problem when it comes to sizes, but then for bras
there are a lot of women the first need to try on a bra before they buy it because
The sizing and getting it right is very important. So thrifting isn't an option
Second hand isn't an option on buying online isn't an option. There is something that you need to buy
that you can't get secondhand and that you have to try on obviously the first thing I'd say is
find an ethical brand in your area that you can try that specific item you want on but I'm
gonna be realistic here the chances of that happening and the chances of an ethical store existing in your area are
Very low if you can't support ethical fashion
Then your option is to support an unethical brand
But that's the only option you've got and it's totally okay
when it comes to food
most of our food is unethically produced and people producing it are not being paid a fair living wage either but
The other option is starving. We can't really do that. But luckily there is a scale even when it comes to non
Fairtrade ethical eco-friendly brands there is a scale of best to worst and
I'm gonna explain to you what that scale is and how you can figure out what brand is better to support than another one
so one good option is actually supporting a local brand a local business that
Produces our clothing in their country if that's even possible. I know here in Greece
There are some brands that actually produce their clothing in Greece and the clothing is an eco-friendly
It's not like ethically made workers, you know minimum wage in Greece is super low
they're not like in any way thriving on their salary, but at least you're
supporting your own local
Businesses, which I think is kind of a good thing
And also there's no like huge transportation costs to ship the clothing all across the planet basically
So that is like a little more eco friendly
I think in my opinion that seems like a more
good solution compared to going immediately to a fast-fashion store at this point were like
Picking at straws. I don't know if that's the right expression but
Basically, it's up to your own judgement. I personally would recommend choosing a smaller less popular
Brand rather than going straight to the fast fashion brand, but obviously we do have price to take into consideration
And if you don't have the money and the only thing you can afford is fast fashion, then that's your only option
There's there's absolutely nothing wrong with buying something that you need from
The only person that is providing that option it is a waiter's at this point
but I do leave things are gonna slowly get better and everyone's gonna start having
many more ethical and environmentally friendly
Options when it comes to shopping in the future, so then we can look forward to that
Right, and of course
I almost forgot to mention this but another thing you should be taking into consideration is the
materials now the whole material
Thing maybe it could be another video that I can make because there is a lot of stuff that I can say about this
So yeah, let me know what you think in the comments below. Did I help you at all with this video?
I hope I did. I hope I covered a lot of questions here. So yeah. Thank you so much for watching
Don't forget to like this video if you liked it subscribe for more videos like this
And also if you do enjoy watching my videos and want to help me keep making more of them
Please do consider supporting me on my patreon and of course a huge thank you to all of my patrons for making these videos possible
And I'll see you guys next week. Bye
You