Live Here Love Here – a civic-pride partnership from environmental charity Keep Northern Ireland Beautiful – has introduced its Fashion Forever campaign for the second year in a row to continue to challenge textile waste.
This year’s campaign is supported by Department of Agriculture, Environment and Rural Affairs (DAERA,) leading shopping destination, Forestside Shopping Centre, second-hand clothing supplier, Haru, and charity, Action Cancer. All will come together to help encourage fashion lovers to stop putting clothing in the bin and instead explore a new relationship with their wardrobes.
Recent research from Keep Northern Ireland Beautiful has revealed that just four per cent of local people recognise the production and consumption of clothing and textiles as harmful to our environment. The research also found that only 17% of shoppers normally buy second-hand clothing on a regular basis but over 60% said they would like to explore buying more preloved clothing rather than brand new. *
Most concerningly, around 30 per cent of the unwanted clothing and other textiles that are binned each year, approximately 8,300 tonnes, end up in local landfills**. Landfills are hazardous to the environment, contaminating water supplies, emitting greenhouse gases, and posing a threat to the health of those who live and work nearby.
Siobhan Purnell, Tackling Textiles Co-ordinator at Live Here Love Here said: “We are delighted to launch Fashion Forever for the second year running, in partnership with DAERA, Haru, Forestside Shopping Centre and Action Cancer. It is wonderful to have all these partners involved who can each bring an exciting offering to help us encourage people to never put their unwanted clothing in the bin.”
The Fashion Forever campaign will educate fashion lovers on why they need to stop dumping clothing they no longer want.
A Fashion Forever clothing bank will be situated at Forestside Shopping Centre from 14-27 March, enabling shoppers to drop off their unwanted clothing and support Action Cancer by doing so.
The clothing will then be contributed to an exciting pop-up shop from Haru which will run from 9am to 6pm on 09 April at Forestside Shopping Centre, allowing fashion lovers to get their hands on some unique preloved looks and experience a new way of shopping. Action Cancer will be showcasing their preloved collection from its stores across Northern Ireland too.
Jacques Hill, Co-Founder of Haru Ltd, commented: “We are proud to support the Fashion Forever campaign and excited to uncover the donations people make for our pop-up shop. Adopting a circular approach to our wardrobes is really important to the future of the environment and shopping preloved is a key part of that. It allows us all to lower our impact when it comes to clothing pollution but also helps fashion lovers to find unique, great quality clothing items.”
As a haven for fashion lovers across South Belfast that experiences footfall of 100,000 people per week, Forestside Shopping Centre is the perfect location for the Clothing Bank.
Roy Ryan, Operations Manager at Forestside Shopping Centre, said: “Offering our consumers new experiences is really important to us and as a business that is focused on environmental sustainability and our own impact, Fashion Forever is a campaign that we are proud to support.”
Proceeds from sales made by the Haru pop-up will directly support Action Cancer.
Katherine Young, Retail Development Officer at Action Cancer added: “This is an exciting campaign. We hope lots of people get involved and donate their unwanted clothing during the two weeks at Forestside. We cannot wait to share our wonderful, preloved collection of clothing in association with the Fashion Forever Pop-Up Shop hosted by HARU. Donating and buying preloved clothes helps to slow down the fast-fashion cycle, which in turn helps to mitigate textile pollution.”
To find out more about Live Here Love Here’s Fashion Forever campaign visit @fashionforeverni on Instagram or keepnorthernirelandbeautiful.org
