wardrobe Archives - First Washington News

Our planet is changing. So is our journalism. This weekly newsletter is part of a CBC News initiative entitled “Our Changing Planet” to show and explain the effects of climate change. Keep up with the latest news on our Climate and Environment page.

Sign up here to get this newsletter in your inbox every Thursday.

This week:

A sustainable wardrobe contains this much clothing, report says
Speedy construction with mass timber
Why there’s been a drought of hydropower in Alberta

Why this group thinks you can — and should — only have 85 items of clothing

How many pieces of clothing do you think you have in your wardrobe? In today’s world of fast fashion, easy online shopping and ever-changing trends, chances are it’s way too many.

Now, a new report from a Berlin sustainability think-tank, the Hot or Cool Institute, lays out how many items of clothing the average person in a four-season G20 country such as ours really needs: 85 (keep in mind that includes coats and shoes, but not underwear and accessories).

Going by the institute’s math, that works out to about 23 outfits total, which they say can include one to four pieces of clothing.

The report notes we need to drastically reduce our clothing consumption if we’re going to meet the 1.5 C target of the Paris Agreement.

“Current trends in fashion consumption, in particular fast fashion, cannot be maintained if we aim to achieve a fair and just transition to climate neutrality,” the authors say.

That number 85 falls within what the institute calls a “fair consumption space,” defined as “a space where consumption levels stay below environmentally unsustainable levels yet above sufficiency levels that allow individuals to fulfil their basic needs.”

It assumes the average person needs workwear, home wear, sports and activewear, festive occasion outfits and outdoor clothing, and all 85 items are actually in use. It also requires a reduced carbon footprint — such as avoiding excessive laundry and impulse shopping, extending the life of your garments through mending and buying second-hand or swapping.

When you consider that the average person in North America purchases 37 kilograms of clothing per year, according to Katherine White, a professor of marketing and behavioural science at the University of British Columbia, it’s safe to say many of our wardrobes far exceed the recommendations.

“The average North American buys way too much clothing,” White told CBC News.

“Part of this is driven by the fact that we are constantly bombarded with advertising messages to buy more stuff. The system is set up to remind, reinforce and reward us for making repeated consumption choices with short-term hedonic payoffs.”

Advocates have been saying this needs to change for years. A recent study found that Ontarians generate 500 million kilograms of textile waste a year — and that 86 per cent of those materials have reuse or recycling potential.

The textile and clothing industry is also responsible for two to eight per cent of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions, according to the United Nations Alliance for Sustainable Fashion, and textiles account for about nine per cent of annual microplastic losses to the oceans.

So, with that in mind, how can you cut down on your own clothing consumption?

First, think of it in terms of pieces, not outfits, said Erin Polowy, the founder and editor of Canadian clothing sustainability website My Green Closet. With careful planning, you can have a diverse and fashionable wardrobe with very few pieces in it, she said — even fewer than the 85 suggested in the report.

“I can make 40 or 50 outfits from my roughly 33-item wardrobe that I do every season,” she told CBC News.

“There’s a lot of creativity that comes with constraint.”

In a recent YouTube video, for instance, Polowy shows viewers her winter capsule wardrobe — a curated collection of a limited amount of clothing that she mixes and matches — which contains just 28 items to get her through an Edmonton winter.

Pay careful attention to what you actually wear day-to-day, Polowy suggests, and build a wardrobe around a few quality, staple pieces that you love. When you are looking to add new pieces, shop second-hand, try to avoid impulse purchases and choose more sustainable clothing brands.

— Natalie Stechyson

Reader feedback

Helen Prolas:

“Glad to see that someone is finally talking about the environmental cost of this war. Thank you for your wonderful reporting!”

Onni Milne:

“I send this message to respond to your article about Ukraine wanting to charge Russia for environmental damages as a result of their war destruction in Ukraine. There is a growing movement to create a new international ecocide law to be administered by the International Criminal Court in The Hague. My understanding is that ecocide is being discussed at high levels at the United Nations [General] Assembly. Many thought genocide would never be codified as an international crime. It is now. Ecocide is next on the list to ensure that perpetrators are held to account for the destruction they create.”

Old issues of What on Earth? are right here.

CBC News has a dedicated climate page, which can be found here.

Also, check out our radio show and podcast. Solar radiation modification sounds like science fiction: speculative technology to reflect sunlight and cool the Earth. This week, find out why the United Nations says the world needs more research and regulations before it becomes a reality. What On Earth airs on Sundays at 11 a.m. ET, 11:30 a.m. in Newfoundland and Labrador. Subscribe on your favourite podcast app or hear it on demand at CBC Listen.

The Big Picture: Speedy construction with mass timber

We’ve written before about the trend of building multi-storey buildings with mass timber. The wood stores carbon in the building and reduces the need for carbon-intensive steel and concrete. But another benefit touted by proponents is how fast you can build with mass timber – something many of them have demonstrated with time-lapse videos like this one. This shows part of the construction of YW Kitchener-Waterloo’s 41-unit supportive housing building for women. It was fully assembled in just 20 days, and residents were able move in last spring. You can learn more about the building and its construction in this video from Element5, the Ontario-based company that produced the prefabricated mass timber.

— Emily Chung

An animated GIF shows a four-storey mass timber building being constructed. — (Element5 Limited Partnership/CBC)

Hot and bothered: Provocative ideas from around the web

Hydro used to generate half of Alberta’s power. Why is there so little now?

A dam in Kananaskis Alta. runs with the Rocky Mountains in the background. — The Kananaskis Hydro Facility was TransAlta’s second power plant built in 1913. (TransAlta)

More than half of Canada’s electricity is generated from hydro sources, with 632.2 terawatt hours produced as of 2019. That makes it the fourth-largest installed capacity of hydro power in the world.

But in Alberta, it’s a different story.

Currently, hydro power contributes between three and five per cent of Alberta’s generation capacity, while fossil fuels make up about 89 per cent.

So why is it that a province so rich in mountains and rivers has so little hydro power?

Hydro power didn’t always make up such a small sliver of Alberta’s electricity generation. Hydro installations began in the early 20th century as the province’s population exploded.

Grant Berg looks after engineering for hydro for TransAlta, Alberta’s largest producer of hydro power, with 17 facilities across the province.

“Our first plant was Horseshoe, which started in 1911 that we formed as Calgary Power,” he said.

“It was really in response to the city of Calgary growing and having some power needs.”

By the 1950s, around half of the province’s installed capacity was hydro power.

“Definitely Calgary power was all hydro until the 1950s,” said Berg.

Despite the current low numbers in hydroelectricity, Alberta does have potential.

According to a 2010 study, there are approximately 42,000 gigawatt hours per year of remaining developable hydroelectric energy potential at identified sites.

An average home in Alberta uses around 7,200 kilowatt hours of electricity per year, meaning that the hydro potential could power 5.8 million homes annually.

“This volume of energy could be sufficient to serve a significant amount of Alberta’s load and therefore play a meaningful role in the decarbonization of the province’s electric system,” the Alberta Electric System Operator said in its 2022 Pathways to Net-Zero Emissions report.

Much of that potential lies in northern Alberta, in the Athabasca, Peace and Slave river basins.

The AESO report says that despite the large resource potential, Alberta’s energy-only market framework has attracted limited investment in hydroelectric generation.

So why does Alberta leave out such a large resource potential on the path to net zero?

The government of Alberta responded to that question in a statement.

“Hydro facilities, particularly large scale ones involving dams, are associated with high costs and logistical demands,” said the Ministry of Affordability and Utilities.

“Downstream water rights for other uses, such as irrigation, further complicate the development of hydro projects.”

The ministry went on to say that wind and solar projects have increased far more rapidly because they can be developed at relatively lower cost and shorter timelines, and with fewer logistical demands.

Braden said hydro power still has a part to play in Alberta, even with its smaller contributions to the future grid.

“It’s one of those things that, you know, the wind doesn’t blow or the sun doesn’t shine, this is here. The way we manage it, we can really support that supply and demand,” he said.

— Christy Climenhaga

Stay in touch!

Are there issues you’d like us to cover? Questions you want answered? Do you just want to share a kind word? We’d love to hear from you. Email us at whatonearth@cbc.ca.

Sign up here to get What on Earth? in your inbox every Thursday.

Guest editors: Emily Chung and Janet Davison | Logo design: Sködt McNalty

Princess Diana’s ‘rebellious’ sense of trend continue to conjures up large-finish fashion designers today, a product and activist has claimed.

Talking in Channel 4’s Diana: Queen of Design, which airs tonight at 10pm, British model Leomie Anderson says the late royal, who died in 1997, conveyed a ‘chic’ sense of insurrection in her outfits that designers even now check out to emulate.

‘I assume Diana evokes a ton of large manner designers, due to the fact she was observed as the royal rebel,’ Leomie suggests. ‘And I really feel which is an electricity that a lot of designers consider and capture in their personal collection.’

‘I come to feel that when folks are referencing Diana, they are trying to seize that stylish, couture ingredient, but with a rebellious touch.’

In the meantime, sesigner Jacque Azagury, who dressed Diana on various situations, notes how the late royal wore short, revealing attire – this kind of as the 1 she famously donned through a check out to the Serpentine Gallery in June 1994 or the blue ensemble she wore at the Royal Albert Corridor in June 1997 – to exhibit she was a ‘free woman.’

Channel 4’s Diana: Queen of Design and style, which airs tonight at 10pm, explores how Princess Diana’s wardrobe even now influences fashion right now. Pictured: The royal in the Christina Stambolian black gown that is now referred to as the ‘revenge gown,’ in June 1994 at the Serpentine Gallery, London

The documentary explores how the late Princess of Wales’ wardrobe and feeling of style have stood the take a look at of time and are nevertheless well-known with the community 24 years soon after her demise.

Somewhere else, trend author Justine Picardie statements Princess Diana’s clothes helped her to join with the public – including that the personalized way in which she utilized her wardrobe to connect will appeal to potential generations to appear.

‘Every generation will return to Diana because every single generation understands the cloth of lifestyle, the material of appreciate and decline,’ she clarifies.

‘And it’s that we recognise in Diana’s wardrobe, what we are recognising is anything that demonstrates in ourselves: in our have pleasure, our own sorrows, our have grief, our possess joy, our personal losses, that is there, in the cloth of her clothes.’

But in accordance to Elizbeth Emanuel, who famously created Diana’s wedding ceremony costume, the royal was not often clued up on the power clothes could have.

Pictured: Princess Diana in a light blue costume intended by Jacques Azagury, which she wore to attend a performance of ‘Swan Lake’ by the English Countrywide Ballet at the Royal Albert Corridor in June 1997

The royal was not normally clued up on the electricity of clothes, but was stylish even as a shy newcomer. Pictured in her famous sheep sweater from 1980

‘In the commencing, when we very first met Diana, I do not assume she thought a lot about manner,’ she describes. ‘I imagine she appreciated sporting clothes but under no circumstances considered it by way of on the kind of stuff that would be suitable for her to put on. And we have been incredibly young of course and it was all new to us as nicely.’

She suggests this shifted when the Princess – who was just 19 at the time and had just received engaged to the heir-to-the-throne Prince Charles – wore a black taffetas gown with a revealing neckline for an night at the Royal Opera Household in 1981.

‘We occurred to have this black gown that was hanging on the rail which was a sample but she loved it, she tried it on and we all assumed “wow, she seems to be good in it”, Elizabeth recalls. ‘But we did not know at the time that black was not a great colour to wear because it is really ordinarily reserved for funerals.

‘But it was also quite low-slash, and when she wore that gown, most people just went ridiculous. It was a controversial outfit. It centered the eyes of all the fashion journalists at the time.’

The dress is nowadays found as the second Diana went from a shy newcomer to a manner powerhouse.

‘I consider that from that stage on, she realised the electrical power of the vocabulary of clothing and as several years went by she employed that. She understood it could seriously create an impact,’ Elizabeth notes.

Justine also explains how the late royal often employed her clothing to covey a message.

‘In the early 80s, we even now lived in a sexist society and women like Diana had been observed but not listened to,’ she states. ‘Clothes have been her way of speaking with the globe.’

She provides Princess Diana’s wardrobe was what manufactured her relatable, prior to the facts of her unhappy relationship to Prince Charles came to light-weight.

‘I feel that Diana is the People’s Princess, the female that folks sense they know her as if she is their good friend, their sister, their mother, really attained construction in that Australia tour,’ Justine claims. ‘That will have to come down in aspect to her outfits. Mainly because at that level, no person understood that her relationship was in hassle.’

British design Leomie Anderson, pictured in 2020, says Diana’s rebellious flair conjures up style designers to this day

‘So it wasn’t as if you could relate to Diana as someone that was struggling heartbreak.’

Author Banseka Kayembe agrees: ‘I assume basically, her garments is a way to have a voice in a media landscape that doesn’t like to give women of all ages voices and won’t like to give women any type of autonomy about their own narrative and their tale.’

Right after her separation from Prince Charles in 1992, Princess Diana arrived out with an emboldened wardrobe.

Her pay a visit to to the Serpentine Gallery in June 1994 on the night exactly where Prince Charles and Camilla Parker-Bowles’ affair came to gentle – now the Duchess of Cornwall – is even now talked about.

For the celebration she donned a revealing dress by Christina Stambolian which is even now spilling ink nowadays.

The style, which was a black fitted off-the-shoulder gown with a short hemline, was dubbed the ‘Revenge Dress’ and even has its very personal Wikipedia website page.

Designer Jacques Azagurdy, who created gowns for Diana in the 1990s, testified of the Princess’s wish to costume in revealing outfits more generally.

Pictured: Diana, then 19, leading to a commotion in a black taffetas dress made by the Emanuels for an night at thw Royal Opera Dwelling in 1981, which made her realise the result style can have on individuals

He discusses a blue diamond costume he created for her, which she wore at a functionality of Swan Lake at the Royal Albert Corridor in June 1997.

‘This is probably one of the renowned dresses that the princess wore,’ he suggests. ‘You’ll discover how shorter it is and the princess was 5ft 10 in flat ft, so there was not much costume and there was a large amount of the Princess,’ he jokes.

Pointing to the dress’ cleavage and hemline, he provides: ‘It was quite reduced right here and, really significant there. She really preferred it a bit shorter than this.’

‘At the time she genuinely preferred to set the information throughout that yes, she was a absolutely free woman finally and pretty self-confident in herself and higher than all, incredibly joyful in herself,.’

Diana: Queen of Design, airs tonight at 10pm on Channel 4.

Tag: wardrobe

What’s the ideal amount of clothing in a sustainable wardrobe?