Wednesday, Jun 18

Welcome to Your Daily Dot where Dot will share tips, advice, and stories on how we can make our world better.

Dear Reader,

We consumers can often feel powerless. Behemoth corporations determine the materials our products are made from, how they’re packaged, how they’re transported to us, and whether we can (or cannot) responsibly dispose of them when we’re done with them. With textile waste a global problem, Wendy Ward, a PhD fashion student in the UK, decided she’d had enough. She mailed her tattered, 10-year-old polyester/cotton sheets back to the department store where she’d bought them in an attempt to shift responsibility for their disposal back to the brand that produced them, along with a letter pointing out that she had no acceptable options for disposal. In response, she received what amounted to “thanks for your input.” 

Then today’s Climate Champ took her frustration to her 20,000 social media followers who responded with support and encouragement. Recognizing that she’d tapped into a broader consumer frustration, Wendy created a campaign: #TakeItBack, including a template others could use to undertake the same action of returning their unwanted items to the brands themselves. You can’t be combative or confrontational, she told a reporter. To help each of us tap into our power, Wendy created a template for a letter that each of us can tailor and then send, along with our items. 

The equivalent of a garbage truck full of discarded clothes ends up in landfill every single second.
Credit: Neenawat Khenyothaa at Shutterstock

Wendy isn’t referring to items that are in good shape and useful — those are best donated. But it was a sign in a thrift store discouraging people from donating items that were torn, damaged, or worn out (the cost of disposal was very high, they pointed out), that inspired Wendy’s campaign.

She’s unsure just how many people have taken action but, at the least, she’s raising awareness of the issue and tapping into a collective frustration at brands’ offloading the responsibility and costs of disposal onto consumers/taxpayers. Such an action won’t make much of a dent in the huge issue of textile waste but it can make manufacturers reconsider the materials and the packaging they use.

Hurrah for today’s Climate Champ!

Have you taken action on an issue in your community? Tell Dot about it. 

Empoweredly,

Dot

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