第198期：拒绝浪费：这家人一年没买新衣服

想成为我们的主播，欢迎加微信 xdfbook 投稿。 一段美文，一首英文歌，或是一点生活感想，全由你做主。 《拒绝浪费：这家人一年没买新衣服》 This Family Went a Whole Year Without Buying New Clothes This article is part of HuffPost’s “Reclaim” campaign, a project spotlighting the world’s waste crisis and how we can begin to solve it. In June 2015, Emily Hedlund gave herself a challenge: She would go an entire year without buying any clothes. At first she thought she’d try it out on her own. But because she was also in charge of clothes shopping for her husband and young son, she expanded the experiment to also include them. Hedlund calculated that she spent hundreds of dollars each year on thrift store finds and cheap fast-fashion impulse buys, stuff she and her family didn’t feel any connection to and never actually wore. Together, they had enough of a stockpile to keep themselves dressed for a year, Hedlund thought. There was just one potential hitch: She was pregnant―her second child was born two months after she started the challenge―and would need clothes in various sizes. Fortunately, she had a strong rotation of summer dresses, activewear, leggings and jeans, including items from the first time she was pregnant. Hedlund shared her pledge on Facebook and her personal blog to keep herself accountable. And to eliminate temptations, she unsubscribed from emails from companies like Old Navy, Victoria’s Secret and American Eagle, which peppered her inbox with emails about sales. It worked. With the exception of a single pair of running shoes, Hedlund succeeded in not buying any clothing for anyone in herfamily for one year. Along the way, the exercise in frugality brought her attention to something else entirely: the clothing industry’s staggering wastefulness. This problem, Hedlund realized, was fueled in part by people like herself, who bought too many clothes they didn’t need or even really want. Worldwide, people buy more than 80 billion pieces of clothing each year. Compared to other household expenses, Americans are buying more clothing than ever before but spending less. These purchases power a fashion industry where pollution, waste and unsafe working conditions are too often seen as simply the cost of doing business―unsettling truths that Hedlund realized as her experiment progressed. “There’s this whole dark side of the fashion industry that I’d heard of but wasn’t really aware of,” Hedlund told The Huffington Post. “It definitely wasn’t at the forefront of my mind when I started the ban, but now it just makes me want to keep not buying clothing.” It’s not necessarily naïve to think that one person’s actions can impact a trillion-dollar global industry notorious for its lack of transparency. Consumers can pressure retailers into slowing the hyperproduction that leads to so much waste, said Christina Dean, founder of the fashion waste reduction organization Redress. By controlling their consumption―that is, buying less stuff―consumers can “send a clearer signal to the big players that are producing billions of garments a year that they don’t want to buy so much and they don’t want to buy cheap stuff that’s badly made,” Dean said. Hedlund, who lives in St. Louis, began to think about her own place in a larger system when, in the midst of her yearlong experiment, she invited a group of friends to her home for a clothing swap. They arrived toting1) garbage bags full of unwanted items, many of whichwere from fast-fashion brands like H&M and Forever 21. When they’d finished picking over each other’s stuff, most of it remained unclaimed. 《赫芬顿邮报》的“回收”运动是一个关注全球浪费危机及如何着手解决这一危机的项目，本文就是该项目的一部分。 2015年6月，艾米丽·海德伦德对自己发起了挑战：她将在一整年内不买一件衣服。 起初，她打算仅是自己一个人尝试这个计划，但由于她负责为丈夫和儿子购置衣服，于是她把实验范围扩展到全家人。海德伦德算了一笔账，她每年在二手店购买的东西和在快时尚店冲动买下的廉价物品花去了上百美元，这些衣服她和家人都不大喜欢，甚至一次都没穿过。 海德伦德觉得他们全家储备的衣服够多了，足够穿一年。目前唯一可能的障碍是她怀孕了——在她开始这项挑战两个月后，她的第二个孩子即将出生，到时候将会需要各种尺寸的衣服。还好，她有一堆夏季衣服可以轮换着穿，有连衣裙、运动服、打底裤、牛仔裤，而且第一次怀孕时穿的一些衣服也能派上用场。 海德伦德在Facebook和个人博客上分享了自己的承诺，让大家督促她日后言出必行。为了避免受到外界诱惑，她取消订阅了许多品牌订阅邮件，如老海军、维多利亚的秘密、美洲鹰。这些品牌的售卖信息塞满了她的邮箱。 这一招果然有效。在接下来的一整年里，除了一双跑鞋之外，海德伦德没有给家里的任何人买一件衣服。践行节俭的同时也让她把全部注意力投向另一个现象：服装行业浪费惊人。海德伦德意识到，像她这样的人在这一问题中起了推波助澜的作用：他们买了太多不需要或根本不想要的衣服。 在全球范围内，人们每年购买的衣服达到800亿件。与其他家庭支出相比，美国人购买衣服的数量不断增加，可花费却在下降。美国人的购买行为支撑着时装业，而在时装业内，人们经常单纯地把污染、浪费、不安全的工作环境看作是做生意的代价。随着实验的推进，海德伦德逐渐意识到了这些令人不安的行业真相。 “我以前听说过装尚产业的这些黑暗面，但从未真正意识到，”海德伦德接受《赫芬顿邮报》采访时说道，“禁买实验开始时，我首要考虑的不是这些，但现在这些黑暗面却让我想要坚持不买衣服。” 一个人的行为能影响一个万亿的全球产业，这种想法未必太天真，尽管这个产业由于缺乏透明度而臭名昭著。Redress的创始人克里斯蒂娜·迪恩说，消费者能通过向零售商施加压力来迫使其放慢过度生产的速度，正是这种过度生产导致了如此多浪费。Redress是一个致力减少时装浪费的组织。 通过控制消费，也就是少买衣服，消费者们能够“对那些每年生产几十亿件服装的产业大公司传递出更清楚的信息：他们不想买这么多衣服，也不想买价格便宜但做工粗糙的衣服”，迪恩说。 海德伦德住在圣路易斯，在这一为期一年的计划进行到一半时，开始思考自己能否在一个更大的组织中起点作用。她邀请一些朋友到家里进行旧衣交换活动。朋友们来的时候，每人手里都提着几个垃圾袋，里面装满了他们不想要的衣服，很多都是像H&M和Forever 21这样快时尚品牌的衣物。他们互相挑选完衣服后，大部分衣服无人问津。 文章摘自：《新东方英语》杂志2017年3月号