Transcript for:
Insights on Social Entrepreneurship and Sustainability

one thing that's always been really clear to me is that the smaller brands are doing the work they are doing the heavy lifting in the sustainability conversation and the ethics conversation it's the big brands that have the most to change and you know it's much easier to like change the course of a speed boat than like a cruise liner small brands are agile they're inventive if a small brand wants to change their supply chain they can do that relatively quickly and easily where the big brands change one little thing and go oh aren't we so great and it's like no no you aren't your clothing passes through 50 different hands sometimes you don't even know where it comes from [Music] aj i really appreciate you spending some time here with me on the social entrepreneurship and innovation podcast uh for folks who are unfamiliar with you and in the work that you do would you mind uh briefly introducing us yeah my name is asha barber i'm the author of a book called consumed and i educate people in the general public about ethical manufacturing particularly as it deals with the garment and fashion industry i feel like there's not enough good information out there for people about what it looks like to actually sort of live your values especially when it comes to what we buy um and so much of consumerism is really so embedded in our culture and i think we tend to tie consumerism to our identity because there's so many like signs within our society telling us to do that and so i have an instagram platform where i just unpick all of these systems and i dive into the language because sometimes you know we we have these conversations about sustainability and how we get everyone on board but then the language and the barrier for entry is too high for the average person to even feel like they can be a part of the conversation so i try and break down all of that on my instagram platform but also trying to encourage people to like not take the bait when it comes to you know rampant consumerism that's being pushed through social media and and uh yeah it's just always a good conversation and i like to play with clothes and get people excited about wearing the things that they already have in their closet i love that and thank you so much for the the introduction you you showed your your cover there that is uh from that looks like the uk version just for folks watching this on video i have the the us version both the uh equally beautiful covers um and uh you know believe it or not the book is mostly the same on the inside you know us or the uk it is you you do get a few illustrations and the uh and the uk one and the second edition of the us one i'm gonna work to make sure that it's a little bit more uniform but yeah it's pretty much the same well i think uh speaking to the the book specifically i think it's it's one thing to uh uh feel very uh passionate about a particular perspective uh issue or or um you know industry or area and you know it's one thing to think about writing a book it's another thing to actually approach that that task that feat because it is uh something of a serious one why did writing a book uh feel like uh the the best fit for for your way to to kind of speak and and uh advocate for change um in fashion and you know our broader consumption happens um i think while social media can be a really great thing and can make things really democratic and bring things across you know the board to bigger audiences there's a level of i guess impermanence to social media where um the ideas are free-flowing but often the credit is not given our people will read it and forget it five minutes later there's something really tangible and beautiful about a book um i've always wanted to write a book i never thought that i would but i always wanted to and i just wanted to get my ideas and my words somewhere besides an instagram account because let's be honest like these apps they own everything you put on you know what i mean so like everything that you put on app is owned by the app which means that the app can kind of do what it wants and i think it's better to sort of spread yourself around a bit um put yourself in different areas but also with books you can reach an entirely different audience in readership and i love the idea of somebody passing the book on to a friend there's something about that that's just you can't replace that with social media i mean i tried with like the e-readers but i can't with them either i still love books and so i just felt like it was a different way of getting the message to a different audience i'm with you on that i definitely feel like social media can be the best and worst of everything at all at the same time um and and so the the impact of the book for you you i believe that it published in fall of 2021 uh yeah we're not yet up on a year but but how do you feel about that impact especially with you know i'm i mean thinking myself of of writing a book or you know if i were to that exact goal of you know having someone you know ideally hand that off to a friend you know refer to recommend it to a friend that that seems to be like you know right a very very intangible but tangible writing goal that that you'd like to seek out like what how have you felt uh the reception and the impact of the book since its publication has it met some of those those aspirations yes absolutely and the reception has been wonderful like i have to say on social media like i have to say i think i have like the best online community i know everyone is biased but mine is the best let's just be real um and so the reception has been wonderful it's been really great i mean i think the book has been a success in the fact that when i set out to write it i got a lot of no's because a lot of publishing houses didn't think that a book of this nature would do well commercially um typically it hasn't always uh so there were a lot of passes on the book and so to to sell as it has and to be a consistent seller um dream come true it's been really really great and even though you know i did write it in lockdown and i always joke that like for the first year none of this really felt real because it was all happening in lockdown so i wasn't actually like seeing my agent or meeting with my publisher in person so it almost just felt like i'm writing a book you know what i mean like none of the perks of being an author were were being sent my way because the whole world was in lockdown and now i'm getting back out there and going to festivals and whatnot and it really feels real and that's pretty cool um yeah and i i noticed that from uh uh scrolling through your instagram account it seems like you've you've now had the opportunity to to sign some books in person and perhaps have some some conversations about it face to face with with readers what's that been like for you oh it's just so important i mean you can form community anywhere online or in person but there is something about meeting people in person about putting a face to a name i mean the people that comment pretty consistently on my post and are in a bunch of different community spaces i know them by like name and to meet some of them is really really special it's really really it's like breaking the fourth wall you know but um it's a wonderful experience i love being an author it makes me really happy um i i i i can imagine that that's something it's it's that the spending hours with your work like someone not knowing you personally at all like you know i i have the the great pleasure of reading your book beforehand uh before this conversation it's like that's a dedication of time and effort just someone to you know spend you know 200 or so pages with you uh like that and all the work that went up into it just to to get that final uh product in their hands so it's a very connected and you know intimate but still oddly impersonal experience so it's a really interesting thing that i'm glad you're getting to enjoy but so people are intimately familiar the title the book is consumed the need for collective change colonialism climate change and consumerism and so i'm curious at you know what what publishers kind of pushed back on was it i'm imagining maybe something of like such a broad uh uh field of subject matter kind of like you know curious as to for me reading that just title right there i was like oh how are these all exactly going to to tie together because they're very large topics very broad topics um and so my brain got really fascinated with it was like let's see how this goes uh and and i think i was particularly struck by the the way in which you did it and explained it very nicely but was that some of the pushback that you're receiving in conversations with publishers i think people were just seeing it as a fashion book um oh it's about the fashion industry and yeah it is but it's about so much more than that and we we didn't the title wasn't there when i was you know selling the manuscript and so i think you know the title really speaks to a lot of things and i don't do a deep dive on all of those topics per se but because they're you know there are people that have written amazing books about colonialism and i could never match some of that literature but i try and give people an overview and the linking pieces so they can link all these subject subjects together and i hope to sort of spread a breadcrumb trail so that people will read it and then maybe go off in a different direction and read more work about these topics from different authors well and i mean the the interconnectedness is there you know not my own quote and i think a previous podcast guess but you know the environmental issues are ultimately human issues at the end of the day um you know and so so many of these things are there's a lot of great overlap i mean i don't know if great's the right word but there's a lot of overlap nonetheless um and and it's important to see those things connecting together hey y'all cory here we're gonna take a quick break to hear a word from our sponsor being an entrepreneur is tough especially when trying to run a business in a socially and environmentally conscious way having a community striving for the same type of impact makes the process easier and knowing that others are reaching for the same goals is incredibly motivating that's why our friends at oliver russell created the social good network the social good network is designed to connect socially minded entrepreneurs and their employees with the community and tools they need to grow the testimonials and reach that they've already seen have reiterated how much of a need there was for a community like this social good network they've seen heartwarming testimonials one-on-one connections and engagement from over 10 countries so far visit socialgoodnetwork.com to create your profile today again that's socialgoodnetwork.com uh but asha if you you wouldn't mind and i know you you share this story quite nicely throughout the book but but what brought you into the the fashion industry specifically so i always want it to be in the fashion industry but not from a position of critique um i think you sort of take the position of critique when you see the things that are wrong with the system i mean one of the things i talk about a lot on my platform it's like privilege and the fashion industry has these various drawbridges of privilege where you know depending on who you are and what your background is you might not ever get to be in the fashion industry because the system of unpaid labor through unpaid internships means the only people that can really do four or five different internships until someone decides to hire them are people who are independently wealthy you know if you are not coming from a place where you have the bank of mom and dad on your side which i never did my parents are i grew up pretty lower middle class i mean now my family has definitely you know we've got upper mobility so we've moved in a different direction but growing up my parents didn't have money to just pay my rent in new york so i could work for free for a bunch of different fashion companies that just wasn't going to happen but that was who i noticed was getting hired within the industry it was all people when i moved to new york which i talked about in the book i foolishly asked some of my fellow interns like uh so how do you guys um pay your rent and they were like our parents and i was like oh and then i felt so silly i felt so silly but then i thought well wait a minute that's the only way you can do this then what that does is it makes a class system where only certain people can participate and when you have a class system where only certain people can participate then only certain people are presenting the culture because that's essentially what the fashion industry is it's their culture it's zeitgeist it's telling the story of us through clothing and if you only have a certain type of viewpoint then what sort of industry does that create um certainly and i i think you made mention in the book too just the different experience of you know security of of healthcare if you're you know living and working in the uk as an example versus living and working in the u.s i mean the the list goes on and on of course you know rent prices can certainly be uh quite high and feeling out of control in the london area as they might in you know boston new york or whatever it might be if i can be honest i'm not sure if i would have a writing career if i were still in the u.s because not having um health insurance is really scary in the u.s and i feel like having insurance which you know is the nhs which me and my partner obviously both have access to has broadened the amount of work that i can do or the fact that i can take a stab in the dark and go after this writing thing where in the u.s i just didn't have the security to leave myself open like that you know absolutely it's it's a backwards set of values especially in in how much we enjoy the things that contribute to culture you know be it uh fashion art broadly speaking but how little it seems that we we want to support you know what what sort of lifestyle or livelihood can best contribute to that you know because it's very hard to to feel in a state of desperation or really just you know constantly on you know attempting to to make ends meet with unpredictable and unforeseen expenses especially in the context of healthcare here in the u.s but at the same time you know want people rightfully so you know to take some risks on you know making art in one way or another and i would even put you know independent uh a small boutique restaurants you know in that category and you know things that that we all really kind of seek to to enjoy you know when we're traveling or seek to enjoy you know when we're we're living in our own cities but they're such a privilege to being able to take a chance in that way but if the social barriers if this if the social gardeners aren't there for everyone to be able to sort of have those opportunities to go work in the arts or to go work in fashion or to go and start that independent business then that definitely impacts the culture absolutely and i mean i you know i have this particular i don't know fond view of of europe generally and you know speaking to the eu specifically i know that the uk is not in that category so much anymore but i know right bummer yeah bummer do you feel like the the like cultural awareness around those sorts of things i mean privilege broadly speaking do you feel like it's it's higher or it's on par with the us uh like where it i mean i don't know if that's contributed to why you live there but yeah i think there's some weak spots in in both cultures and they're different and they're unique like when i first moved to london um it was 2003 i was a student so really dating myself here and uh i remember people in the uk sort of going oh you know the uk doesn't have the same race problems as the us which is patently untrue you know what what should have been said is oh we just don't talk about race is in the same way because we kind of sweep it under the rug like we don't want to talk about the fact that britain profited from the slave trade it didn't happen on our shores but we sure didn't collect those profits but we don't talk about that so that means that we don't have a race problem you know we don't talk about the wind rush generation and now now we do so things are starting to really you know come up to the surface but for so long i think some people within the uk kind of thought that like oh america is the big bad boogeyman of racism um because they just weren't ready to own it um socially i think there are some things that this country definitely understands for instance the nhs i think that's something that people over here absolutely get and i always sort of joke that like america in some ways some people have like stockholm syndrome to america where they think that because there's this narrative of america being the best and the greatest and the most awesomeness that like any other way of doing life is just not as good because we have our freedom you know you've literally got people convinced that they don't need social services like healthcare and it's ridiculous you know well i mean exactly the opposite in just that it's like how much actual kind of liberation and freedom can you feel if if you are you know needing to make some particular income so that you can just care you know have the the medical care that that you can you know that you'll inevitably need both basic preventative services as well as you know scenarios in which it's unplanned and uh unfortunately unexpected that that is the quite backwards thing yeah exactly so you know there's some good things over here there's some bad things over here it's all uh i i always joke and you know because there are certain people that would be like and that this is again like a weird america thing where people get a bit annoyed that like you've moved overseas there's sort of like this idea that like oh you think you're better than us and it's like well no i always joke to people that like racism and oppression and the systemic issues that we talk about exist everywhere but i feel like for me particularly america isn't serving me a side of anything like if racism is a [ __ ] sandwich and everybody's serving the [ __ ] sandwich the nhs is a side of french fries which are actually edible the good public transportation that's like some mac and cheese i love mac and cheese yummy yummy yummy in america i feel like i'm just getting the [ __ ] sandwich and i would like a little bit more than that you know a long um vacation for full-time work longer maternity leave all of these things make the oppression that you deal with everywhere um it's still oppression but at least you have something else that can make you feel a little bit lighter and so that's how i talk about it like no people will say oh there's racism everywhere and it's like well duh but at the same time there are these other things that i also quite enjoy you know i don't have a child but if i do have a child i can breathe a little bit easier knowing that if i send them to school they're going to be relatively safe and i can't say the same in america certainly i mean there's there's pros and cons to to anywhere that you decide to sit on it and this can be weighted differently for different people but i i like i like your your the the vision you're describing for me except for the [ __ ] sandwich you know no one wants that nobody wants to eat a [ __ ] sandwich but you know that's what's being served sometimes very true uh i'll just so i from what i understand you one of the the first uh jobs that you took within the fashion industry was with a a small brand uh in london uh called rude and i'm curious how did diving in that way to fashion uh uh you feel like influenced you know what what's gonna continue to evolve into your perspective uh and experience with the industry one thing that's always been really clear to me is that the smaller brands are doing the work they are they are doing the heavy lifting in the sustainability conversation and the ethics conversation it's the big brands that have the most to change and you know it's much easier to like change the course of a speed boat than like a cruise liner right so like big brands or small brands are agile um they're inventive if a small brand wants to change their supply chain they can do that relatively quickly and easily where the big brands change one little thing and go oh aren't we so great and it's like no no you aren't your clothing passes through 50 different hands sometimes you don't know where it comes from you know um working at rude it really brought to mind for me that this is how all brands should be operational like we never wasted fabric if we had a bolt of fabric that we had bought we used that bolt of fabric and this obviously was almost 20 years ago but we had had this bolt of like cotton canvas denim looking material um and we weren't going to produce with it so we didn't know what to do with it so we made toad bags and instead of giving people plastic bags with their birches we gave them a tote bag now today we have tote bag overkill where it's to the point where we gotta stop with the tote bags because it's too many tote bags but at the time nobody was doing that you know and it was like and not only we weren't creating this from like you know fabric that we had bought we were creating it from what we had left around the studio so that's really interesting we um used to print t-shirts on demand in our shop we had like a screen printing press and today one of the big high street brands which i often criticize in their store in london actually has like a place where you can get something printed on a t-shirt as well so like all these ideas that we were just coming up with are now being reflected today 20 years later in the modern fashion industry but because of the ways in which the big brands do business it's actually ecological disaster all over um but i do think that the smaller the brand the more agile they are in their thinking and the ways they do things but additionally a small brand is never going to have the same carbon footprint as h m or zara it's just not going to happen they can't waste that way you know when you look at the big brands the big multinationals they have warehouses full of fabric that they can't use and they don't know what to do with it like a small brand could never create that much waste additionally i talk about buying local buying small versus buying from a big box store and there are studies that have been shown that when you buy something local particularly within your own community more of that money is going to stay within your community where if you're purchasing from a big box store only a small percentage of that is going to stay within your community and we all like strong communities what do we get from strong communities we get good schools we get good places for children to grow up we we get places where we can blossom so there's so much in thinking about all of these systems that make a lot of sense for people to be invested in it because it's not just good for the planet but it's good for us as well i totally agree and there's one thing that that i really struggle with and i'm curious kind of where you fall on on this spectrum but i feel like this isn't spoke enough that one business is just kind of grouped into one giant conglomerate like i think in very like much of the or a large portion of the mainstream conversation is that we put small businesses in the same context with these large multinational corporations and i find this extremely difficult because i think exactly in the few examples you mentioned there just the quantity of material the complexity the supply chains you know the list goes on small businesses and large multinational corporations operate on completely different planets and that they they should be complete like the conversation i think gets it certainly benefits the large multinational be like well you know these are these are pro-business agendas and the small business owner may you know group themselves into that category um but i i like i when we speak about business i think that's a very important you know thing to decipher is that there are a lot of small businesses small brands especially in fashion who have committed from the very beginning to you know do it right uh or sustainability and ethics yeah and but i i i much of the retort i think to that is just like well or you know in in h m changing or whoever these very large companies corporations you know it's kind of like we're pleading this complexity or you know pleading some sort of thing of like it you know it is much more difficult for them to change you know incremental change um i don't know i i'm curious where you fall on the context of scale like i fall a little bit maybe aggressively i don't know if you do but i'm like well you know do we need that that big like is there any benefit to having brands of that size and that scale or should we just be comfortable with we're on the same page we're on the same page break up all the multinationals break up all the conglomerates this size thing isn't serving anyone except for a small percentage of people that's really it it's a small anytime you have a business where the person at the top is making billions of dollars a year and the person who is the most depressed at the bottom of the food chain is making pennies to which they cannot feed their family that's a business where i don't care if it exists in five years i really don't honestly and like no i don't think that these big multinationals are serving anyone which is why i always tell people if there's one thing you can do today spread your money about stop giving it to the same 20 companies because they're not doing anything good with it and like the truth of the matter is we've all known for like the last you know 20 years that these systems are actually killing the planet so what have these companies done in 20 years time oh just to expand it you know amped up our production exploited more people oh but they did build that well that one time in that country in the global south but they had to build the well because they had polluted the water along the area where most of the workers live and like depend on so so yeah i'm i'm a hard line on these multinational conglomerates that is time for them to get their [ __ ] together it is past time i don't have the patience and you know what we shouldn't have the patience because we don't have time this planet doesn't have time if we want humanity to thrive things have to change tomorrow so like this i don't know why we have like more patients with like corporations than we have for our fellow humans but we do do this thing i i i know why because corporations have done a really good job of humanizing themselves and sometimes that is done through social media but we have this thing where we're like give them time and i'm like no no no more time for them tax them let's put some taxes in there there's a few things that we can do right now no one is responsible for their waste so like extended producer responsibility programs also known as eprs is something that we should all be really you know championing and we should do that through government and and legislation the truth in the matter is is that if your business operates on a linear system meaning you know material product purchase waste then you should be paying taxes on every item that ultimately becomes waste at the end of its life cycle and the truth is these solutions that we can come up with we can really sort of incorporate into fighting the climate crisis so over in the uk we have a group called enslave britain that has been very vocal about the fact that much of the housing in the uk particularly social housing is not well insulated now one of the things that we're going to be facing as we battle climate crisis in our everyday life more and more it's colder winters hotter summers and so social housing the people that are the most vulnerable within the system are going to be really cold and so enslave britain has been raising awareness that the government should be coming up with programs to insulate houses one of the things that clothing waste can be used for is housing insulation every minute a dump truck of clothing waste goes to landfill what are we doing that is an untapped resource like if you actually tax these big multinational billion dollar companies that can definitely afford to pay for it we could actually create jobs we could have textile recycling currently we only have one percent of textiles being recycled that should not be the case no textiles should go to landfill and they certainly shouldn't be being dumped on the global south which is what's happening but if we actually had some extended producer responsibility by taxing these multinationals we could create jobs within our own markets where people actually sort through waste things that are really really out of shape and not good we should we should note who's creating that and they should pay higher taxes that stuff gets ground up turned into housing insulation there are so many solutions here we just meet lawmakers that are brave enough and courageous enough to actually implement them that's really it it doesn't even have to be scary but it does look like all of us starting to care and caring looks like you know buying less because we're all buying a lot of clothing and it's really unnecessary caring looks like supporting you know better businesses particularly if you can not everyone can but the average consumer is buying 68 items of clothing a year which i would argue we're spending quite a lot of money so maybe we could just do less but spend a little more and feel good about our purchases you know it's a lot of different solutions and it's acting at your intersection because we know that not every solution works for every person but there are solutions out there and it's time for us to get our head in the game um absolutely and and for me anyways it like exactly what you're describing there is like this the creativity the creative problem-solving of seeing you know what things we once considered as waste and repurposing them you know for some other very important purpose or need that like that is creativity that feels good to me and i think it it likewise connects with what you know we're speaking to earlier is you know contributing more so to the culture of things you know the the small independent brands you know restaurants independent bookstores coffee shops like where do you go when you travel where do you like to spend your time you know on the weekends relaxing and enjoying it's like we're not racing off to go to target you know we're not racing off to go to walmart it's like we want to support uh these these small businesses that you know aren't companies so much as contributors to to culture you know all they are uh small businesses additionally though you know when we talk about the climate crisis which we we need to be talking about the climate crisis every day needs to be front page news every single day a lot of it can sound really scary and some of it is kind of scary i don't know what we're going to do about the fossil fuel industry you know but i think i have a few ideas but when it comes to the fashion industry which accounts for 10 of global carbon admissions depending on who you ask some people say it's less than that some people say it's more that's not something that has to be scary right like clothing isn't the same as food we need food to survive and that's that's another thing that we're gonna have to come up with some different systems but clothing ultimately can be frivolous and luxury and so that shouldn't be a scary problem to fix awesome um well aj i'm curious was there a particular uh epiphany point for you when you you became acutely aware of of this overarching consumer culture as it it kind of drove and ran throughout the the fashion industry was it working within uh rue that that small band brand that we we talked about earlier or was there some other point in which you became you know kind of struck uh uh with the dynamics that were uh running the fashion industry and the consumption of it there wasn't one like boom moment it was a lot of small moments for me um first of all just say with fast fashion you know the first time i encountered it i was very young and i thought oh my god this is amazing because i was someone who grew up without a lot of disposable income family with three kids and at times you know the pocketbook was pretty pinched so i felt really excited that i could finally sort of find clothing that really fit how i wanted to project myself to the world but deep down inside there was a part of me that was like um why is it so cheap you know what i mean like that but i didn't i didn't want to dive into it because i just wanted to satiate this need that i had to fit in through material items so like deep down inside i knew that well somebody has to make the clothing so how are they doing this so cheaply um but you know sometimes when you're young the pull of fitting in you know is is stronger than the pull of diving into the ethics so i've always kind of known and then i got a sewing machine one birthday and i started making my own clothing and what i found was that it's really hard and it requires skill and for every three projects i made only one of them was wearable um and you know these were really simple things that i was doing and because i was doing this and knowing that okay i spent 14 on this fabric 20 hours of labor for something that is barely wearable how is it that this company over here is doing it for 10 like how how is this possible so once i started to make my own things i began to understand that like there was something really fishy going on but additionally throughout my 20s and 30s i kind of began to notice that everyone around me was buying a lot more clothing like when you go to university do you ever like see the waste on move out day when you like live on campus it's it's ridiculous right and i just kind of was always thinking how can we afford to waste this way how is this possible but also like how are my fellow students so wasteful like what is going on here but even in my 20s i you know i would i i knew people that would like move and they would bag up like eight bags of clothing to just give to charity like and this was not an uncommon thing so i'm thinking okay i don't think we're out of the ordinary obviously i i did grow up in a very affluent area so like there is money but if everyone else is kind of making similar moves and buying the same amount of clothing where is it all going you know like how is it possible that so many of my friends are very very wasteful with their purchases and if everyone else if this is the trend then what is happening and then one summer i volunteered at a local charity shop and i began to see the amount of clothing that was being donated and i always say that like that summer because i'm the type of person i'm a very hard worker when i put my mind to something and i would come in and the bags of clothing would be just piled almost up to the ceiling so i would go through all the bags of clothing and we would only keep like probably less than ten percent of it the other 90 some of it would go to less affluent areas and then some of it i had no idea where it was going but i would go through these bags of clothing marking clothing checking for quality and i would spend hours upon end and i would go home and i would come back and the bags would be replenished and i always said it's kind of like that greek mythology about prometheus getting its his guts ripped out by the great eagle and then every night like the guts regrow and the process begins again it was like that like opening these plastic bin bags and clothing just spilling out and then thinking okay what won't be so bad the next time i come back and it would just always be the same thing so i began to understand that like we are one charity shop among thousands in the us which means that like it's quite possible that this is an ecological disaster even though i didn't have the numbers i'm just thinking if everybody else is getting the same amount that we're getting and and that experience led to me sort of going to the mall and going oh my god it's all going to become trash you know have you ever like just looked at the sheer volume of stuff that we create in our society if you go to the mall you just think okay but like if all this clothing just gets worn for one season what actually happens to it so that experience of working in the charity shop just took the wind out of my sails of consumerism but it was good i needed that um and all of these you know experiences sort of led to me becoming more and more curious additionally when i moved to the uk i had to get rid of like 75 of what i owned and i just found myself thinking i'm never going to amass this amount of stuff again so there were a bunch of different things and because i also knew when i was moving i knew you know that charity shops were overloaded i really tasked myself to like thoughtfully get rid of things so that meant putting things on facebook on buy nothing groups i didn't just want to dump all the stuff on a charity and that process took me well over a year i mean when i go home to my parents house in virginia i am still doing that i will tackle you know a drawer or two and go through stuff and go how do i repurpose this how do i re-house this how do i recycle this and that's a long process so when you go through that process with your own items you kind of are like right never want to do this again um so all of these little moments sort of just led to me realizing that like consumerism is a plague um and it seems in the u.s for things that we we've considered waste we have quite the uh the skill of making that disappear but it does have to go somewhere it does go somewhere and it ends up in somebody's backyard in the global south where it becomes pollution and colonial waste and you know obviously you know with recycling we don't recycle our own goods it gets exported to other countries um with our clothing it's the same thing the 90 that doesn't get sold in the charity shop is either going to get landfilled if it's in really bad shape where you know the majority of our clothing that's being made today is being made from polyester fibers which means it doesn't decompose when it goes into a landfill it will sit there and it will be on this planet for far longer than you and i will and like the the next generation and probably the next generation after that and so the clothing that's going to landfill isn't decomposing and if it's not going to landfill it's going to get sent to you know rwanda uganda organa which i talk about in the book where it becomes colonial waste there because the amount of clothing that cantamonto market receives in acargana 15 million items a week a week just an onslaught of clothing only 40 of that is going to get sold which means the other 60 becomes waste um it's filled up the municipal dump 10 years ahead of schedule like if americans had someone dumping their trash on us we'd be so mad because like americans hate that stuff but that's essentially what we're doing to people in the global south um additionally the clothing washes up on the beach um it's in neighborhoods it stinks it's gross it's pollution and so this is a really really really bad system recently the aura foundation who is on the ground and camp toronto did receive um groundbreaking money from xi'an which that is a business that i cannot stand but they're the only ones to hold their hands up and be like yeah we should probably send some money in this direction because we're a part of this cycle and i think every brand on the high street in the uk should be doing similar um and so we we've woven it throughout our conversation a bit and i know you this is much of the subject matter of your book but for us if you wouldn't mind spelling it out why do you believe that we have the the consumer culture that we do why are we sitting with this level of consumption uh currently oh it's everywhere in our society it's in our it's in our media you know i talk about films and how like cult classic films particularly the ones that are geared towards like young women always involve some sort of makeover scene where a character who's treated really poorly by society goes undertakes like a makeover that involves a lot of clothing maybe a haircut and then all of a sudden people that were like mean to them aren't mean to them anymore like that's in so many films and like when you see an idea that's portrayed so many different ways you do start to internalize it this whole idea of like new year new you and you know also this idea of like retail therapy like buying things is not therapy therapy is therapy it attaching buying things to our idea of therapy and healing ourselves is arguably part of the reason why we're in this mess there's dopamine there's social media there's so many different parts of our culture in which there are opportunities to partake in consumerism but also i think the culture of america has consumerism woven into it i mean our politicians certainly encourage that have you ever like well i mean you probably haven't but i've been in a fitting room before where i've heard someone go oh yeah i'm not really sure about this but you know what let's just support the economy and buy it there's this idea that like you could support the economy by buying things from a multinational corporation that probably doesn't pay its taxes and it's like no so you know there's so many different ways that like we're we're sort of signaled to that buying things makes you a good upstanding upright citizen i mean after 9 11 george w bush definitely told us to shop rishi tsunak definitely said a few short years ago that like if you had savings because of the pandemic you should be like spending it on the economy rishi sunak i think is if not a multi-millionaire a billionaire so like no rishi maybe you should just be tax hire i'm gonna keep my money because i'm not as rich as you how about that you know so like there's all these signals within our society they're just like spend your money on things you don't need because that'll make you happy and additionally i think with our generation in particular um we're facing such monumental problems that sometimes the only source of power that we feel is buying things like we don't feel in control of the climate crisis our politicians are pretty laughable these days how many recessions does like one person have to live through most people cannot buy houses because it's really hard the job market sucks so when you've got all these things going around and you're just sort of like i guess i'll just go and buy this dress from h m you know what i mean so i i totally understand but we have to find ways to harness our power differently um well certainly and i mean i i've been becoming more and more aware of of those those messages historically of you know where it means you know the context of being a good american it's also you know being a being a good consumer you know we put a lot on that that quarter for you know consumer spending for the holiday season that seems to be indicative of some health of our our economy you know and it seems like we're we're uh mismanaging the numbers and in uh looking to our gdp to see how satisfied we are although that doesn't seem to be uh actually what produces satisfaction for the average person yeah can i also say in the uk during lockdown i can't remember whether it was 20 it was 2020 it was the first year of the pandemic here and they basically released everyone from lockdown right before the holiday season and then they put everyone back in lockdown for the holidays and that made me so freaking mad because you know what that was about it's like oh well let them out so they can go and spend money because it's the holidays but then don't let them see their family that's what the holidays are about so they literally like you know allowed people this hope and this idea that we were gonna like get together with family at the holiday season but really it was about boosting the economy and that's messed up absolutely well i mean like something that that i've been thinking about more and more is this particular phrase kind of keeps running over my head of like are we are we wanting to encourage people to be contributors to the economy or be contributors to their communities you know the world at large um like that those seem to be the the important messages that we need to shift and kind of redirect yeah it's definitely the latter that needs to happen absolutely and and asha what can you offer up for us i know there's definitely different perspectives from what the individual does versus what we think about at a systemic level but you know how can we stop this this level of of consumerism what can maybe we do as individuals we've mentioned a few items throughout this chat and and then you know at large uh what do we seek to do differently so we we always have this conversation in the space that i'm in the individual versus the collective but we actually need the individual actions so that we can get our head in the game to change things at a collective level like if everybody is just like consuming like normal then no one will be inspired to hold anyone to account i i know how that is i was that person so you know you as an individual need to think about how you participate in this system are you the person that buys 68 items of clothing a year be honest because everyone likes to say oh no that's not me but that is a lie someone is buying the clothing and when i was in my 20s it was definitely me you know and it was definitely my friends because i didn't have the same funds as some people i knew to do that amount of damage so like being honest with like who you are and where you fall in the system is really impactful and then you know starting to really understand like who needs to change and putting pressure on those corporations to change um one of the things that we have going on in the uk currently is there's a washing machine bill that's being argued in parliament so this is a great way to sort of talk about systemic action so what people don't understand is your polyester clothing is made of plastic and it leaks microfibers every time you wash it and the microfibers go into the ocean they go into our water supply they get in your food they found microfibers in a human placenta last year grim so we need to like stop the flow of microfibers from going everywhere um and part of that is looking at the washing cycle so there's a washing machine bill that's being argued in parliament that um every washing machine sold in the uk should come with its own microfiber filter because currently if you want to do something about microfibers you've got to buy into that as a consumer you can buy a filter for your washing machine which then you have to pay someone to install it you can get a guppy bag you can get some little ball things that collect your microfibers but wouldn't it be great if on like a systemic level no one could buy a washing machine that didn't have a microfiber filter since this is clearly a problem like we do need to stop virgin polyesters from being created there's more than enough polyester to go around on this planet but like one short-term solution is to definitely make sure that we're filtering that out of our water supply so there's things big and small happening there's um you know garment worker legislation being argued everywhere there's good conversations about extended producer responsibility happening um and getting involved in those conversations getting more information about that that's a good thing to do at the systemic level but like also if a corporation is doing something that like pisses you off be loud about it let them know be on social media social media this is where social media is great you can actually force corporation to like apologize for something if you get enough people just being really vocal about it i've done it before with h m with my friends we think that h m was being very misleading about something and so we just spam them in their comments and eventually they did apologize and that feels very very powerful and so harnessing the tools that you have at your disposal but ultimately changing yourself and how you interact with this system that's what we need to do most excellent uh advice there for us uh it seems like there's the two components you know in context the washing machine a bill for one you know we can take those small actions perhaps you know seek to if we do you know acquire clothing not with those materials but likewise the guppy bag but you know supporting where there are the systemic uh changes that that would really make things so much easier if everyone just bought like a few items secondhand instead of going new that would have huge impact in the waste stream so like i buy probably about 50 of my clothing second hand now and we've got so many great places to do it like it didn't used to be as accessible but it is and then people sometimes will go oh well you know if i buy secondhand am i displacing someone who doesn't have money no that's a myth because the fashion industry actually pumps out 150 garments a year the human population is only 7.9 billion so there's actually more than enough clothing to go around already on the planet now when people say oh secondhand is becoming gentrified what they really mean is there's less good quality because of fast fashion that's really it there's more than enough clothing but the quality has definitely gone downhill and um once again at a consumer um level we have the ability to change that in who we support and who we give our money to before you buy it in the store ask yourself is this gonna last me a hundred wears if i don't want it will someone else and i think we all know deep down inside when it's a t-shirt that's paper-thin and has like a silly logo on it that's some weird inside joke no no one is gonna want that so like maybe we need to you know start thinking about whether or not the item sparks joy while we're still in the store instead of thinking about after we've brought it home and it's in our house um and absolutely with the the holistic conversation that that surrounds you know what what that t-shirt or whatever it is that you're buying represents you know who's who's behind it you know what what materials and and what kind of level of you know exploitation and extraction are are required to to get that to the retail shelf um well i really appreciate your time i want to be respectful of it um but before we wrap up do you mind if i ask you a few rapid fire questions absolutely i love this awesome so a first one for you what what's a book or or film that you might recommend to our listeners something you either always come back to or something that's impacted you recently can be about what we talked about here or or kind of out of left field whatever speaks to you yes it's ayanna elizabeth johnson and catherine wilkerson it's truth courage and solutions for the climate crisis yes the climate crisis is a terrifying prospect but we need to read things that not only uplift us but fill us with ideas for the solution because then we can all get excited about getting involved and being part of the solution because the conversation needs all of us really excellent recommendation uh a next one for you what what's one daily habit or morning routine that you feel like you have to stick to if anything um i don't want to say caffeine because that's extremely unoriginal uh i try and ground myself every morning i try and sort of take a moment to do a breather and remind myself of my positioning on this planet what i'm here to do who i am who i love what makes me happy just a little reset so that i can sort of come up with the coherent mission for the day um i love that and uh next one for you uh uh what what's your your leisure time look like what are a few things or maybe a single thing that that you really look forward to doing as a hobby it used to be reading but now i read all the time for my job um i do like reading still i read i when i'm not really really busy i read about 50 books a year um but when i'm writing a book that's impossible uh leisure time i like to do ballet i think everyone should have a hobby that isn't attached to capitalism because we do this thing in our society where it's like somebody really likes knitting we should like tell them oh you need to sell that and it's like no maybe you don't need to always sell your labor maybe you should be able to do something that you enjoy that is completely separate of capitalism and for me that's ballet i'm way too old to be like a professional ballet dancer but i'm pretty good i've been doing it for like 15 years now so not too shabby i love that and i love the recommendation there too i think that's quite important there is an obsession with trying to like monetize your your hobbies or like build a side hustle uh maybe we should just you know enjoy it for it for hustle culture is not where we should constantly exist like yeah if you're trying to get someplace i'm not going to tell you oh don't hustle to get there but like it shouldn't be our permanent existence yeah it's very important to be attentive to you know where we think that's coming from like our our concern to do that or a desire to do that is like do we generally want to do that or do we feel like that's you know it's something that's unproductive if we're not doing it uh just something to be attentive to um last one for you what's one piece of advice that you might leave our listeners with these folks are change makers and innovators from all sectors all over the globe hoping to leave the world a better place than they found it um pick consumerism within you unpick the idea of lack and need and want and desire you know i i did this thing where when i was of an age where i was dreaming about having the career i have today i thought about what amount of money i needed to lead a really nice life and i have this number in my head and i've always told myself if you can make that amount of money then the rest is gravy and once you realize the things that you need and for me it's enough money to support myself to have a beautiful life to be generous and kind with loved ones and to treat people that's really all i want to be able to take a holiday every now and then but like this idea that like oh i want to own a sports car and a helicopter who needs that stuff so i think unpicking this endless desire to make all the money can actually really free you because you realize you don't need all the money and once you get to that point it also gives you a level of integrity and your work where you can say no to the things that don't work for you so for me i very boldly said on my platform way before i had you know a book or whatever that i wasn't going to take money from fast fashion it was tempting at times because those were definitely the people that were like paying but that level of integrity allowed me to build a platform where my work is supported and i'm able to continue to say no to things because when you have a the power of saying no to things and you're able to maintain your integrity you're able to do a lot of really really cool things so i always tell people unpick the desire of constant consumption whether it is greed money big houses and ask yourself what it is that you truly want not what it is that society tells you you should want but what do you want out of life because once you can actually fulfill your own needs you can do incredible things with what's left over i donate you know 15 of my income every year if i can and you know there's something that feels really good about being able to do that um so yeah unpick consumerism unpick want unpick greed unpick all of these things and once you do you might find that you're left being a much happier person lovely advice for us to end on asha thank you so much last last item best places to to keep up with you and follow along with your work yeah so instagram i'm there constantly asha barber um is my instagram handle it's my name um i support my work through patreon where i do a pretty semi-regular newsletter about sustainable and ethical fashion um that's a really fun space if you like what i do online and you want more of me that's that's where you can find me um so yeah those are the two places perfect we'll have all those items linked up in our show posts at socialentrepreneurship.fm and growensemble.com aja thank you so much for taking the time thank you so much for having me [Music] you