Cleve Gibbon

We waste a lot of clothes. Fast fashion doesn’t help either. New becomes old faster than old becomes new so we end up with too much. That wouldn’t be a problem except for the fact that it’s environmentally expensive to produce clothes and its waste has a significant negative impact on the planet. Here are three disturbing facts:

• 8-10% of global greenhouse gas emissions are from clothes waste sitting in landfills
• It takes 2,700 liters of water to make one cotton shirt (that blows my mind)
• 85% of all textiles go to waste due to fast fashion, shipping, poor manufacturing techniques

Sadly, we don’t really connect with the aforementioned ‘big waste stats’ but the numbers are still frightening. So let’s bring this home. On average we only really wear 50% of our wardrobe. It’s true, we wear what we like. And we don’t prune our wardrobe very often. Instead, we keep stuff and then do periodical clearouts where we rush to donate, pass down, give away, or dump the excess. And guess which one is the easiest to do people!

As a result 3 out of 5 pieces of clothing (environmentally expensive) produced end up in landfills within a few years of being made. And that mountain of textiles you see above, well that takes 200+ years to decompose in landfills, emitting harmful gases throughout.

Some good clothes waste ideas

People are looking to the fashion industry to be held accountable for the full end-to-end life cycle of the clothes they produce. Here are a few good ideas:

• Digital platforms that facilitate the donation of a brand’s dead stock back to new customers.
• Biodegradable products that consumers can send back to brands to turn into compost
• A resell tag embedded with clothing where the owners simply scan the QR code and it’s advertised for reselling across major platforms such as Facebook and Instagram.

Good solutions for the problems we have created, but at least its progress. We can definitely do more.

I think about food a lot. Then I stumbled across this amazing WSJ podcast featuring the renowned food expert Emily Broad Lieb. She shares some seriously disturbing facts about food waste:

• 330 billion pounds of food waste hits US landfills every year
• 10% of greenhouse gas emissions are from food waste rotting in landfills
• In the US, up to 80% of water is used by agriculture to grow food, and 20% of that is wasted. 
• Globally, 35% of the food we produce is wasted 

That’s a lot of waste. I loved the way Emily humanizes these facts. Say tomorrow you go food shopping and fill three bags. As you leave the store you throw one of those shopping bags directly into the trash. It’s going to end up in there anywhere, so why not just cut to the chase. Welcome to the food waste problem.

More problems

Food donation is not easy. Restarants, food retailers and manufacturers have plenty of excess food (supply) and their are lots of food-insecure Americans (demand). However, we cannot feed hungry Americans. If donation were easy, then there is enough food waste in the US to feed every hungry American. Instead, it’s easier toss the food into the trash, which ends up generating greenhouse gases that damages our planet whilst leaving Americans hungry.

And then there is the best before eat (BBE) label on food. In the early days, BBE was used as an indicator of food quality and freshness. However, over time we have come to use it as a safety date. If these cookies as past their BBE date, will it harm me? That’s was never the intent behind BBE. Instead, BBE signals that these cookies are going to taste a little stale. Fun fact is that very few foods will put us at risk when they pass their BBE date. But we are where we are. Emily is pushing for two food label dates: BBE (quality and freshness) and Safety. That’s smart.

What about you

Back to the statistics. Personally, they are quite hard to read. But guess what, the average person, you, will read them, agree it’s bad, but take zero action to improve them. Why? Because we’re human. Hyperlocal, selfish, financial motivated in our decision making. The decisions we make tend to have a (hopefully) positive immediate and tangible impact on our close family and friends. Seldom are our decisions driving big global agendas.

However, if someone could show consumers that by reducing their food waste it would save them $1,500 per year then that is more likely to lead to a sustainable behavioral change than simply learning that 10% of harmful methane is from food rotting in landfills. And if we went one step further to help them do this, then that would truly be making it real.

Some solutions

There are many innovations to address food waste. Indusry award shows have entries where:

• A freshness system that educates people on how best to group fruits and vegetables with a similar maturity timeline. This can be used within the home and more importantly by grocery stores to keep food fresher for longer
• Composting home devices that turn food waster in a soil and/or biodegradable substances that can be recycled
• Recycling the off cuts from fruits that manufacturers can use to create clothing from, thereby achieving full circularity
• Labelling system that highlights which items are new vs old within your fridge

So, all great ideas and hopefully something we can integrate into our everyday. But food waste remains a problem. Keep an eye on what you waste. It doesn’t have to be 1 out of 3 bags of shopping.

https://www.wsj.com/podcasts/wsj-the-future-of-everything

Right now thousands of people are washing dishes.  Both dishwashers and people are using that abundant supply of water to clean their dirty dishes.  However, we all know that water is fast becoming scarce.  It’s not abundant. So does this feel right?

I recently zoomed into a session run by Reckitt.  It’s a huge holding company with three category-focused global business units across hygiene, health, and nutrition.  As consumers, you know Reckitt for its brands such as Finish, Harpic, Nurofen, Durex, Dettol, Strepils, Gaviscon, Mucinex, Schiff, and many more.  With over 43,000 employees, £14 billion in revenues, and 20m products solid daily, Reckitt wears its 200+ years of heritage well.

The numbers: washing the dishes

So I stood up and took notice when they shared how they embraced their sustainability development goals.  More specifically, they shared three facts that shocked me into action.

Water used	Doing what?
100 litres	Handing washing dishes
60 litres	Prewashing dishes by hand, finishing in the dishwasher
10 litres	Dishwasher only

Hand washing uses 10x as much water as a dishwasher! Every wash. Every day. Put another way, handwashing is 10x more costly to the planet’s water scarcity challenge than dishwashing (if you have and use a dishwasher of course).

How can this be?  Simple.  Dishwashers are smart.  They re-use and clean the same water multiple times throughout the cycle.  Where, by hand, we wash, rinse, and repeat with the tap in near always-on mode.  

The change: let the dishwasher do its job

I live in Seattle and had a friend over to stay from NYC. She’s so much fun. So after lunch, we got to washing the dishes. That’s when I got chastised for not doing enough to prewash the dishes. During the same visit, I unpacked the entire dishwasher load only to learn that the cycle hadn’t gone around. That’s right, the pre-wash was so good it had fooled me. And then came another round of silly Cleve.

Knowledge is power. How I wish I was armed with what I know now.

So there are better techniques.  Firstly, you can pre-scrap. Secondly, reduce the amount of water you pre-wash dishes with today.  Lastly, invest in better dishwashers if and when you can.  But most importantly, you can share what you now know with others. Please do!