Thrifting
Student Names: Julia, Cici
Project GOAL
What was the mission or aim of your project?
The mission of our project is to inform people by making posters on Instagram to let them understand the impact of fast fashion on the environment and encourage people to recycle, reuse or buy and sell second-hand clothes to save resources and energy, thereby mitigating climate change.
Why was this your mission?
This was our mission as we have learned the growing problem of climate change over the past few years. This problem is mainly caused by anthropogenic factors. The issue of over-producing fast fashion clothes is generating large amounts of greenhouse gases due to the energy used in the process of production, manufacturing and transportation. In addition, unsold clothes will eventually be landfilled and burned, which also release lots of CO2 into the atmosphere. The facts above have inspired us to communicate knowledge about the impact of fast fashion as a way to mitigate climate change.
ACTION
What action did you take?
We post posters on social media to teach people about the impact of fast fashion and encourage people to donate, recycle, and reuse clothes to decrease unnecessary production to protect the planet.
How did you get your audience involved?
We brought out many different sources about where and how to donate or buy second-hand clothes to let them know how easy it is to decrease the amount of impact of fast fashion.
How did you educate your audience about the issue/event? Include images from your social media campaign.
We made posters on Instagram and announcements to let people know/learn about the issue. (Click on the pictures on the left to see the poster).
Reflection
What impact did you have?
We believe that the Instagram posts we create will help educate more people about climate change issues and the impact of fast fashion, which will also encourage them to take actions such as recycling, reusing or buying and selling used clothes to help mitigate climate change.
How successful was your action (it's OK if it didn't go as planned)? Did you meet your goal?
Our move was to set up donation boxes in the school to collect clothes that students no longer need, but due to the increased cases of COVID-19, we had to stop and change our plan to do it online (which was the Instagram post), but it is okay because we still meet our goal of informing people about the impact of fast fashion and encourage people to recycle, reuse, and donate they no longer need.
What contributed to your group's success (or lack of success)?
COVID-19 was a big issue for us, and our first move didn't go well. But we came up with a better plan, which we were able to do well by posting posters on social media to get people to continue on with our action.
What would you do differently if you could?
If we have an opportunity to do it differently we would be setting up donation boxes in school to collect clothes since we didn't get the chance to do it.
WHERE IT COULD GO NEXT...
Pitch a next phase for your project.
In the next phase, we would like to continue to post more posters on a different website or to set up donation boxes around the school to collect clothes students no longer need and donate them to Big Brothers Big Sisters of Ottawa.
Inspire a future group of students to pick up where you left off.
Fast fashion contributes significantly to climate change due to the high consumption of non-renewable resources, greenhouse gas emissions, and large water and energy use. So it would be terrific if other groups can pick up from where we left and continue on with it.
Why is it an important cause? Why should they continue with it?
It is an important cause because clothing production is the second-largest source of pollution in the world and over-producing fast fashion clothing is really having a great impact on the environment and climate change. The future group of students should continue with it because the issue of over-producing fast fashion still exists, and they could definitely have a larger impact than us by doing in-person activities such as clothing drives.
Where would you like to see it go next?
We would like to see it goes to running clothing drives at school next because that is what we felt a little bit pity about since we did not have the chance to do it.
Self Reflection
Cici:
I personally really enjoyed working on this project. After doing a lot of research and research on this project, I realized how important these issues are. I'm very grateful for the opportunity to work on a project like this, and I hope our actions can help at lease one or more people.
Julia:
For me, this is a very meaningful project. The issue of climate change is relevant to all the units we study in class. Not only did this help us broaden our knowledge, but also allowed us to put gr.10 science into practice. After doing lots of research and learning about climate change and the impact of fast fashions on the environment, I have come to realize the importance of these issues and I think we have a responsibility to protect our planet. When I make posters to communicate the impact of fast fashion and climate change and the actions we want to take to help solve the problem, I think we are communicating more of our individual responsibility to the Earth. It made me realize even more that it is impossible to complete this mission alone, everyone needs to work together to save our planet. Doing this project affected me as well. I have started recycling, reusing and donating clothes myself, and I encourage my family to do the same as a way to protect our planet. Regrettably, due to COVID-19, we had to change our original plan so we did not get the chance to run a clothing drive at school. However, it was one of the most amazing projects we did all semester. I really enjoy informing people about climate issues and calling for action to mitigate climate change. I hope our actions will have some impact on others to take this climate change issue more seriously and do more to help solve it. I also hope that some of the next batch of students will be willing to continue the project and do things that we don't have the opportunity to do in this particular situation.