July 2022
This information is for volunteers collecting textile pledges as part of the council’s Circular Economy Champions scheme.
We're hoping to make Brighton & Hove a city that chooses to repair, recycle and reuse. All sorts of things would otherwise go to the landfill or be incinerated.
This information pack helps you pass on tips and information to family and friends. This can help keep things in circulation longer.
Hundreds of volunteers are collecting 20 pledges to reduce, reuse, repair, and recycle. These pledges are from friends, family, colleagues and neighbours.
This scheme can have a real impact on waste reduction in the city.
Funding comes from a European project called BLUEPRINT to a Circular Economy.
Extra support comes from local reuse and repair shops, these include:
We have a linear economy. This means raw materials are made into products that consumers use until they discard them as waste.
Pledges are new actions someone commits to, that support the development of a circular economy. This involves recycling, repairing, returning and reusing products for as long as possible.
These pledges can:
You can:
We will:
This will help us find out if the pledges are having a positive impact on the numbers of people implementing the changes.
Image source: The R Collective
In the linear economy, household waste is converted into a reusable material at the ‘get rid’ stage. While this means the waste doesn't end up in landfill or energy recovery straight away, energy and materials are still needed to recycle.
For most materials there's a limited number of times that material can be recycled before it needs to be thrown away.
In a circular economy, rather than waiting until the ‘get rid’ stage, extending the products' life is possible at the creation stage. This prevents waste and pollution.
A circular economy:
In the linear economy for textiles more than 97% of the materials used to make clothes and other textile products are taken from the natural world. More than 73% of all these clothes and other products are sent to landfill or incinerated after use.
This means that almost every time we make a new cotton and polyester t-shirt, we must:
That t-shirt is then used and thrown away, so all the cotton, polyester, time, water, labour and energy used to make it is also thrown away, either in landfill or in an incinerator.
But in a circular economy, we take the used t-shirt, repair it and re-use it as many times as possible. Then re-cycle it so we can make new textiles from it.
If we don’t throw materials away, we don’t need to take new materials from the natural world to make new clothes or textiles.
The best thing we can do to make sure nothing is wasted is to only use natural materials. They can biodegrade when we can't use them or recycle them anymore.
Image source: The waste hierarchy London School of Economics and Political Science
As part of this toolkit, you’ll receive a form for collecting and monitoring pledges.
When you collect pledges, encourage people to prioritise the most preferred options like reduce and reuse.
On the textiles pledge form, we’ve given examples of actions residents could take. We've listed actions with the greatest impact first. For example - repair damaged clothes to avoid buying new ones.
Actions lower down have less impact like - stop throwing old shoes and clothes in the bin, and instead donate or recycle them.
Some suggestions for pledge examples are:
You can also:
Talking to neighbours, or close friends, about their habits and behaviours can be challenging.
It’s good to use open questions, to avoid suggesting a right or wrong way to do things. This helps people to trust you and not feel judged.
Try one of these questions to start a conversation.
Did you know that polyester is a type of plastic? If you want to go plastic free choose cotton, wool or linen items.
When you collect pledges, use some of these interesting facts to help people make good choices around textile consumption, reuse, repair and recycling.
Sewing is a dying skill because:
The global production of garments stands at 100 to 120 billion each year, with only 7 billion people on our planet.
Some shops are known for producing more clothing than they will sell, and/or selling low quality items that don’t last. Clean Clothes Campaign and Greenpeace can help you stay up-to-date about which shops over produce.
It’s estimated that more than two tonnes of clothing are bought each minute in the UK. This is more than any other country in Europe.
On average Europeans each consume 26 kilos and discard 11 kilos of textiles every year.
Although people could repair or donate a lot of used clothes, 87% get incinerated or sent to landfill.
In 2016 in the UK we spent about £3 billion to replace clothes that we could have mended.
In UK homes, about a third of garments are unworn. This amounts to over £1000 per household and £30 billion in total.
Globally, less than 1% of material used to produce clothing is recycled into new garments. This wastes over £70 billion worth of materials each year.
It takes 2,700 litres of water to make one t-shirt. This is enough drinking water for 1 person for 2.5 years.
Producing one new shirt creates the same carbon footprint as a 35 mile car journey.
Textile production causes 10% of global greenhouse gas emissions. This is more than all international flights and maritime shipping combined.
Dyeing and finishing textiles is responsible for about 20% of global clean water pollution.
Cotton growing uses 18% of pesticides and 25% of insecticides used worldwide.
Washing clothes with synthetic materials like nylon and polyester accounts for 35% of primary microplastics released into the environment. It releases about 0.5 million tonnes of microfibers into oceans each year.
Polyester textiles take more than 200 years to decompose.
| Type of impact | 2015 | 2050 |
|---|---|---|
| Resource consumption | 98 million tonnes | 300 million tonnes |
| Textile industry's share of carbon budget | 2% | 26% |
| Microfibres in the oceans | 22 million tonnes added after 2015 |
However you choose to collect pledges, it's important to think about Health and Safety.
The table below shows some common considerations for any activity. This list is not exhaustive, and if you have any questions, send an email to BLUEPRINT@brighton-hove.gov.uk.
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Threat |
Control measures |
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Threat of verbal abuse or physical assault |
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Slips, trips and falls |
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Pre-existing medical conditions |
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Lone working |
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Safe lifting |
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