Now even clothes are damaging our planet

Last December Blue Planet II gripped the nation. David Attenborough detailed the immense damage that plastic waste has inflicted on our oceans using footage of an innocent sea turtle with a plastic straw stuck up its nose. Enough was enough.

That horrifying image kick-started an enormous shake-up in how we use plastics. In January this year, the Evening Standard set up The Last Straw campaign . Many London bars and restaurants signed up, announcing they were banning single-use plastic straws. Progress.

But now it’s October 2018. We’re back on the sofa and watching Stacey Dooley’s new BBC show Fashion’s Dirty Secrets. It’s no Blue Planet but the message of how we’re damaging our planet is again blisteringly real. This time, it’s our clothes.

The fashion industry is now in the top five most polluting industries in the world. Dooley explains how our insatiable desire for fast fashion is royally messing about with our environment.

Distressingly, the countries who make our cheap frocks suffer the most. An estimated 20 per cent of freshwater pollution comes from the textile industry. We’ve even managed to lose an entire sea, the Aral Sea in Kazakhstan. Now, thanks to our incessant need to farm cotton, it’s a depressing desert.

So who’s to blame? Social media plays an enormous part. I am that person who’s bought a dress for 11p in five different colours because I was scrolling on Instagram and thought my boobs would look just as good as the models in it (they didn’t).

Since I was a teen I’ve associated buying a new piece of clothing with a happy feeling. I never made the association — despite me using tote bags and reusable water bottles — that my clothes are damaging the planet.

I’ve also lived by a rule that if I’ve “worn” a dress on Instagram, I probably can’t wear it again. I’m aware this may sound ridiculous to some, but I’m not alone. A recent study claimed that 10 per cent of men and seven per cent of women said they would “feel embarrassed for a friend to see them in the same outfit twice”.

According to the Waste and Resources Action Programme, a lot can be done to slow down the damage to our environment. Design focused on durability; more widespread use of sustainable materials — Marks & Spencer, Tesco and Sainsbury’s have all committed to 100 per cent sustainable cotton by 2020 — and, once we own the clothes, repairing or recycling them rather than shoving them in the bin.

Charity shops also have an important role to play. The most durable item I own is an old Burberry mac. I couldn’t afford a new one but I could buy one if it was on sale in a Mary’s Living and Giving shop at a 10th of the original price. From now on I will shop better and wear my mac until the arms fall off. Only then can Instagram judge me.