In last week’s Opening Remarks, Pique editor Braden Dupuis jokingly floated the idea that Whistlerites could take up sewing during the dead season.
Little did he know this reporter did just that throughout October. My motivation was not inspired by the slow season, though stitching certainly makes for a good indoor activity. My choice was driven by a desire to slow down consumerism and reclaim a skill that was once a part of everyday life in Canada.
The group lessons I attended are taught by Barbora Vanickova and run in Whistler and Squamish through her business, Muse Lab. Over four weeks, I learned how to use a sewing machine, from threading a bobbin to installing zippers. I came away with a finished project at the end of each two-hour lesson, and she helped answer any questions we eager and occasionally frustrated students had.
While I won’t pretend to be a seamstress now, I do think I learned the basics and built a bit of confidence in taking on a new creative task. But it’s more than that.
Sewing is both an act of reclaiming traditional skills and a choice which turns my back against climate-change-driving consumerism.
I grew up in a consumerist era that is still so prevalent today: I buy instead of making, and I throw away instead of repairing what’s broken. Paying the low cost of a T-shirt saves me time and money. Yet when I throw away that cheaply made and cheaply bought T-shirt, it doesn’t disappear into thin air.
According to Environment and Climate Change Canada’s estimates, textile waste makes up six per cent of all discarded plastics in Canada. In the government consultation document titled researchers estimate Canadian households threw out 480 kilotons in 2018 alone. One kiloton is equal to 1,000 tons. And that’s just households. Non-household textile waste is 659 kilotons annually. In 2021, we Canucks consumed 1.3 million tonnes and threw out 1.1 million tonnes of textiles.
What an insane amount of waste. These numbers don’t even dig into the environmental impact from water, energy and chemicals used, shedding microfibers or global carbon emissions from textile industries, nor do they speak to the horrific working conditions in offshore textile factories.
But before I chase you away with my frustration at a system I’m admittedly highly complicit in, I want to point my prose towards a few solutions. I’m not here to say we shouldn’t ever buy a new piece of clothing or that I think the fashion industry is going to suddenly change overnight. But I do genuinely believe you and I can make different choices that impact the world.
An easy example comes from the Association of Whistler Area Residents for the Environment (AWARE). The group’s zero-waste events in October saw residents attend community garage sales, repair cafés and clothing swaps. The clothing swap alone had 140 people come out with 471 kilograms of used items that went to new homes or headed to the Whistler Community Services Society, according to Charlotte Reid, program manager at AWARE.
In addition to getting clothes secondhand, we can choose to repair what we already have. I’ve had a pair of sentimental holey socks growing dusty in a drawer for about a year. If I didn’t care much about the socks, I likely would have pitched them in the bin. But because I bought them locally from a friend who designs socks inspired by the Sea to Sky, I’ve formed an attachment that can’t be bought when I grab a pack from Costco.
And this October, I repaired them. One rainy evening, I sat down with a cup of tea and stitched my socks back together again.
Which brings me to my last thought on our consumerism.
While we can reuse and repair, we can also reconsider whether we need to buy something in the first place. If Canadians are throwing out textiles at almost the same rate as we’re buying, do we really need them? And if what we buy is made to last only a season, why are we buying it at all?
