over consumption Archives - Suzanne Carillo

As style and fashion bloggers have we become walking commercials?

How invasive do you find marketing today?

I was trying to access my emails in Yahoo and honestly couldn’t because I had the most annoying woman in the corner of my screen rubbing what appears to be a plastic face mask repeatedly all over her face like a crazed robot.

It bothered me so much I had to leave my email screen. When I went back Oprah was there wiping her nose and crying and then Ellen was there reacting to something that she seemed terribly ashamed about.

ARGH!!!

Ad placements in my email drive me crazy.

Especially moving ads. I find them very annoying.

And yes, I know I’m a bit of a hypocrite because I do have ads on my blog, however I very specifically requested that no moving ads be placed on my blog.

It is hard trying to walk the fine line between trying to make a bit of money from the blog and keeping my personal morals in tact. Sometimes I feel like a walking commercial. Especially when I link to products. I get a very small amount of money from those links, but I’m still promoting consumerism and often that can make my conscious feel heavy.

Some of you might know that Melanie, Sue and myself are putting together a little blogger get together in July in Vancouver.

I’m getting very pumped about it…even more so now that I’ve just added some brief bios and photos for some of the attendees. This is a wildly diversified eclectic bunch coming from as far away as Singapore! It is going to be a blast!

We have been offered some sponsorship opportunities for the meet-up. The three of us are avid thrifters. We aren’t your “normal” commercial bloggers. In fact I think each of us is in our own way, is trying to some degree, to be environmentally conscious and not promote over consumption/fast fashion. It isn’t always easy trying to balance what is right and what is an opportunity though. Everyone deserves a chance to make some money and score some freebies, especially when you put so much effort and time into blogging.

In the end we chose decline sponsorship because it didn’t feel authentic or reflect the ideals behind the meet-up. Instead there will be a clothing swap which will hopefully divert some waste from our landfills. It’s a small step, but in what we feel is the right direction.

I plan on asking attendees what they think of sponsorships/goodie bags. If this should become an annual event we will be better informed.

How do you deal with trying to be environmentally conscious and blogging? Do you find it challenging?

Photo Source

I had to share these excerpts from some articles I've read recently on Fast Fashion and the impact it has on us and the environment.

Perhaps, as in the case of fast food, fast fashion is yet another degredation of our quality of life.

"Cheap fashion, " says Liz Jones, "like cheap, factory-farmed salmon and chicken, has stripped away any notion we had of something being luxurious or in any way special . It has devalued all our lives, making us ever more dissatisfied, always wanting more." More prosaically, everybody looks the same. Sure, we all have in mind the ideal of the inventive fashionista, effortlessly and creatively mixing high and low fashion into one dazzlingly chic whole. But the reality is that we are far more homogenous in our distinctively-printed designer knockoffs than we would be in simpler basics. The idea of high style comes to us pre-packaged, complete with eclectic jewelry and accessories, and I'm guessing this paradoxical illusion of the unique is at the expense of individual creativity.

Jezebel

The increase in the amount of clothes people consume also has consequences for the environment. More clothing is shipped and flown from the Far East to Europe than ever before and the life cycle of these garments is decreasing.

Ethical Fashion Forum

– One cotton T-shirt requires seven bathtubs of water to make. For every tonne of textile produced, the industry pollutes about 200 tonnes of fresh water — in a year, that’s the equivalent of more than five million Olympic-size pools.

– The average North American discards more than 30 kilograms of clothing annually.

The Clothes On Your Back by the Toronto Star