News Sustainable Fashion TRAID Talk 06.03.2023

On Monday lunchtime we were delighted to welcome Sophie Calderbank, Head of Communications at TRAID, to talk to our students in the Bishop Centre. TRAID is a charity that supports sustainable fashion (rather than fast fashion) by encouraging people to buy second hand clothes and providing funds and resources to help reduce the environmental and social impacts of  clothes production and disposal. It has set up a network of over 700 charity clothes banks, home collections and charity shops diverting around 3,000 tonnes of clothes from landfill and incineration every year. Sophie explained that to manufacture a single cotton T-shirt takes 2700 litres of water plus pesticides, fertilisers and the burning of fossil fuels. Traid is working hard with cotton producers to cut down on the use of pesticides in particular, and to promote organic cotton. In 2022 Traid raised over £520,000 to encourage more sustainable production of clothes around the world and projects that support education and workers rights, particularly for women.

Inspired by the talk and to mark the end of Fast Fashion Free February, the Sustainability Committee is holding a second-hand clothes sale on Wednesday 22 and Thursday 23 March to help encourage students to buy second-hand and all proceeds will go to TRAID. We are collecting high-quality items only for the sale and are setting a maximum sale price of £5 to encourage plenty of sales!