Sustainability - April

With the development of the COVID-19 across the world, April was much like March.

Ironically (or unironically…), when I planned out my sustainability goal for April back at the beginning of the year, I was planning to focus on travel this month since I had planned to go on a trip - two things that didn’t happen in April.

There are much bigger issues than a canceled trip out in the world, but it did help me decide to shift my focus for this month.

For now, I decided to continue my research on sustainable clothing. I’ll be sure to research sustainable travel and purchase relevant products at some time this year, but April (and likely next couple of months) are not the best options for doing that - at least not on any kind of practical level.

Since I extended my focus on sustainable clothing, I decided to read The Conscious Closet: The Revolutionary Guide to Looking Good While Doing Good, one of the books from the stack I managed to check out from the library before it closed for at least two months. I appreciated such a multifaceted approach to making and keeping your closet sustainable. Most of it is very easy to read - the statistics are not too technical or overwhelming, and the tips range from how to build a strong closet with secondhand clothes to how to sew all kinds of patches and do other quick fixes.

Since I moved into my new apartment on April 1, I also had the opportunity to finally use the products I purchased in March to help protect my clothes so that they will last for years to come!

With the lingerie and wash bags, it is a bit harder to tell if they are making much of a difference. I may never know, but I do trust that they are keeping my stuff from getting snagged and stretched.

I also liked being able to pull all of my socks out of the dryer in the wash bag and being confident that I didn’t somehow lose any between the washer and the dryer. The same goes for the undergarments in the lingerie bag. I didn’t have to dig through my clothes to find them or worry that they somehow got stuck to something else, I knew that they were all safe in that bag and I could fold them all at the same time.

The result of the dryer balls was a bit more noticeable. The first time I dried a load of clothes in my new dryer it took forever. Finally, I gave up and put away the clothes which I was satisfied were mostly dry. However, the next time I was sure to use the dryer balls and they did help. I don’t think I could say that they cut the drying time in half or anything, but it did reduce it by a couple of minutes.

This month I also learned that it is more energy efficient to dry things for longer at a cooler temperature than to dry them faster with more heat. Of course, there is a similar principle for washing machines - it is best for the environment, and your clothes, to wash them with cold water. Ninety percent of the energy used in washing clothes goes to heating the water! In addition, even if the tags of your clothes say that they can be washed with “warm” or “hot” water, that isn’t telling you that they should be washed at that temperature but rather that it is the maximum temperature that they should be washed with.

So while I didn’t purchase any new clothing-related thing for this month, I did purchase a new sustainable product to maintain that goal from my 20 for 2020 list. However, I will wait and share more about that product later.

The uncertainty of the world is continuing, but I do know that it won’t have any effect on my ability to complete my sustainability focus for next month.

Until next time,

Carly

Photos by Mason Joel Photography