So good in every way – #sgiew_SlowLived

This week’s so good in every way challenge {#sgiew} is about rethinking the way we live and act as consumers, and to understand our impact on people and on the planet.

Every other week on instagram, we have a photographic theme – so on #sgiew-uesday (Tuesday) for this theme we are celebrating a spot of “slow living” – asking you to use the hashtag #sgiew_slowlived as an antithesis to #fastfashion, so who better to be our guest judge than @safia_minney – founder of People Tree and MD of @po_zu ethical shoes.
The prize this week will be one of Safia’s newly released (& signed) books Slave to  Fashion @slavetofash – so get sharing your photos!!

We are slowing things down, and looking for your hashtags #sgiew and #sgiew_SLOWLIVED – Let us see how you slow your life down, take stock, and look at the bigger picture.

(pictured, me, wearing People Tree, with our part-time-pet Pickle – my cousin Angie’s dog who spends some of her time with us as a family here in London, so that we don’t have to get our own dog and therefore adding to the carbon paw print – ps – methane-producing we know, yet we still love her – she gets us out into the countryside, away from screens, and mobile phones – and out into the fresh air…)

Extracts from Safia’s Slave to Fashion book – explaining more about Slow vs Fast Fashion:

“As founder and CEO of People Tree, the Fair Trade company I set up in Japan 25 years ago, I was able to make sure that at least some garment workers in Bangladesh and India could escape the horrors which are widespread in our fast fashion profit-driven clothing industry. I developed the first Fair Trade supply chains and helped to create social and organic standards to improve the lives of over 5,000 economically marginalized people in the developing world. 

Working on this book has given me the chance to take stock of what we have achieved as a Fair Trade and social justice movement, the extent to which we have helped to shape current business practice and thinking, and what more needs to be done to finally end modern slavery. There have been some significant gains recently: Britain’s Modern Slavery Act, which came into force in 2015, and which you can read more about in Chapter 1, was inspired by the California Transparency in Supply Chains Act and by three decades of campaigning for Fair Trade, social justice and ethical consumption… It is much harder now for brand owners and boards of directors to turn a blind eye to the conditions in which their clothes are made….

In China’s context, modern slavery means forced labour…… Factories that are producing garments for fast fashion brands are pushing workers to do 12-hour days, with only one day off a month. In some extreme cases, factory workers were starting at 7.30am, working through to 2 or 3am, getting a couple of hours’ sleep and then starting all over again….”

Further reading:

Slow Fashion – Aesthetics meets Ethics, by Safia Minney

Slave to Fashion – Safia Minney

Slow Living Retreat (free e-book) 7 days to slow down and reconnect back to yourself available from Geoffrey and Grace – Melanie Barnes’ wonderful website.