May 4, 2020
[00:00:00] Liz Bothwell: Hi everyone, welcome to Waste360's Nothing Wasted Podcast. On every episode, we invite the most interesting people in waste recycling and organics to sit down with us and chat candidly about their thoughts, their work, this unique industry and so much more. Thanks for listening and enjoy this episode.
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[00:00:26] Liz: Hi, everyone, this is Liz Bothwell, from Waste360 with Elizabeth Cline. She's an author, journalist, expert on consumer culture, fast fashion, sustainability, and labor rights. Welcome, Elizabeth, thanks for being on the show today.
[00:00:41] Elizabeth Cline: Hi, Liz. It is so great to be here, I am excited to dig into the world of waste with you.
[00:00:47] Liz: Excellent. Could you start by introducing yourself, and telling us more about what fueled your passion for sustainability?
[00:00:54] Elizabeth: Sure. I am a journalist and the author of two books. The first, came out in 2012, it's called Overdress: The Shockingly High Cost of Cheap Fashion. Then, this past year, in august of 2019, I put out a book called, The Conscious Closet: The Revolutionary Guide to Looking Good While Doing Good. Both books are about the global apparel industry, the hidden and unexpected impacts that our clothing choices have on the world around us, including impacts on the environment.
I've been writing about this subject for almost a decade, we can dig into a little bit more about what took me there, if you'd like me to go explain how I had my eureka moment and decided to start writing about this.
[00:01:52] Liz: I would love that.
[00:01:53] Elizabeth: [laughs] It's an embarrassing story. Prior, to writing Overdress, I was not writing about the fashion industry, I was working as a journalist, mostly, writing about culture, arts, music, and nightlife. I became a shopaholic, I amassed over 350 items of clothing. All of it was very cheap, I was very into going into discount, and fast fashion stores, like Forever 21, Old Navy or just going to the clearance aisle of any store.
It was like cheap shopping became a sport to me. It was ironic, because I was a very conscious consumer in other aspects of my life, I try to eat organic, eat local, and recycle, I do all the things. But then, with clothing, I just didn't have that same reflection.
I noticed that, pretty much, everybody around me was shopping this same way, maybe not as extreme, but had started really buying a lot more clothes and buying clothes very cheaply. I was like, "Okay. There's a book in this because something clearly, fundamentally, has changed in the clothing industry that is making this possible." That is how I got the idea for Overdressed,