Growing up in Africa, hand-me-downs and repaired clothes weren’t sustainability trends, they were just how things were done. Here’s what fast fashion has lost since then.
Long before “circular economy” became a term people put on slide decks, many of us were living it without ever naming it.
Growing up, clothes that no longer fit us didn’t get thrown away, they got passed down to a younger sibling, who wore them until they, too, needed passing on. If something tore, it got repaired, not replaced. And when a piece of clothing had truly reached the end of its life as clothing, it didn’t go in the trash, it became a washcloth, a tablecloth, a duster, a rag for cleaning a door rug etc. Nothing was wasted; everything just changed jobs.
Our parents weren’t doing this because they’d read about sustainability. They were doing it because resources were limited and you made things last. But the effect was the same one the circular economy movement is trying to recreate today: less overconsumption, less textile waste, fewer clothes ending up in landfills.
Compare that to how most clothing is made and used now. Fast fashion has turned garments into something closer to disposable goods. The industry produces around 92 million tonnes of textile waste a year, and the average garment gets worn only seven to ten times before being thrown away. A large share of that clothing is now made from polyester, which doesn’t just sit in a landfill quietly, a single load of laundry with polyester clothing can release hundreds of thousands of microplastic fibres into waterways, something a cotton hand-me-down or a repaired garment never did.
This is the gap Uzi Tamu is trying to close. We’re not inventing a new idea, we’re bringing back an old one, using the same instinct our parents had: nothing is really finished until there’s truly nothing left to do with it.
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