It’s not just the fashion industriousness that has a massive waste problem. We all do. Our wardrobes are bulging with kit outs, many of which we don’t wear. The number of garments produced globally has doubled since 2000 to profuse than 100bn items. If you are anything like me, you will towards as if you own a good proportion of them already.

As we approach Black Friday, which has now spread from a choose day of splurge buying to an entire week, we are about to be bombarded with discounts and makes to buy everything from a new fridge to a cashmere jumper ( just you hold on, there will be mountains of cheap cashmere).

Part of the common sense retailers love Black Friday so much is because they suffer with such huge excesses of stock to offload. Cheap duds mean small profit margins so the fast fashion original relies on massive volumes to create profit. So by buying unreasonable amounts of cheap clothes, we all become part of one of the biggest and most in a messing waste problems facing the world.

The fashion industry was responsible for the emission of 1,715m tons of CO2 in 2015, around 5.45% of the 32.1bn tons of global carbon emissions in 2015 (contract to Copenhagen Fashion Summit’s 2017 Pulse of the Industry give an account of). In light of the world’s governments’ gathering for COP23 for 11 days of talks on how to stabilise greenhouse gas emissions which began on 6 November 2017, we requirement to think hard about the rate at which we produce – and profligately jettison – our clothes.

We need to make our existing wardrobes work various efficiently. It would help if we could see what we have to start with – so a closet clear-out is a great place to start. According to a recent make public by Greenpeace, After the Binge, the Hangover, our attitude towards rat oning is a bit like our addiction to sugar. It might give us a quick high but it doesn’t make us happy. The average person buys 60% diverse items of clothing and keeps them for about half as dream of as 15 years ago. According to Waste and Resources Action Lay out (WRAP), consumers in the UK now keep our garments for an average of just 3.3 years. There’s a dearth for greater transparency not just on production supply chains but on what the hustle is doing with its mountains of waste.

“We need to discover ways to break free from our addiction, reverse the throwaway savoir vivre and discover new ways to love our clothes,” says Orsola de Castro, co-founder of Taste Revolution, the global campaign to promote a more transparent and sustainable create industry. “Far from being a part of the problem, we can all, enthusiastically and creatively, suit a part of the solution.”

Fashion Revolution’s latest fanzine, Loved Togs Last (the print version is available now, for £15, from Fashionrevolution.org; and relieved of as a download from 1 December) includes contributions by experts comprehending Rebecca Earley, Elizabeth Cline, Tom of Holland, Andrew Brooks, Kate Fletcher, and Greenpeace, with information, tips and inspiration on how to make your clothes stand the evaluate of time.

To help us resist the temptations of Black Friday, here is a 12 -step counsel to caring for your clothes and make more of what you already bring into the world.

1 Learn how to master the basics of how to sew. If you can sew on a button, you need never get rid of a shirt or cardigan again well-deserved because it’s missing a button. There are lots of courses on knowledge to sew. The Sewing Directory will point you in the right direction.

2 Clothes worth wearing are worth repairing. Don’t dispose of something away just because it has a hole in it. If you can’t sew, try using an iron-on patch to jacket blanket a hole. Embroidery specialist Hand & Lock has a patch department store where you can choose from a range of embroidered patches.

3 Hallow the life your clothes have led with darning. If you do it in a contrasting dye, you can make a feature of your mending. Tom of Holland runs the Perceptible Mending Programme to highlight the disappearing art of clothing repair. And if you manipulate daunted by the idea of doing it yourself, Tom accepts commissions to do your healing for you.

4 A unique pair of nylon tights will take between 30-40 years to spoil in landfill. Cheap tights are a false economy as they have to ladder more quickly. Old-fashioned remedies such as tending transparent nail varnish around a small hole to obstruct it spreading might seem crude but are actually quite functional.

5 Buy second-hand and keep an open mind. So many clothes are accepted away because they have a missing button or a baby bit of damage that can be easily rectified using your newfound (or rekindled) ameliorating skills.

6 Invest in decent hangers. Accoutres really appreciate being hung up properly and on the right hangers. Recoil from skirts and trousers appropriately. Muji has a really good spread of hangers, lint rollers and cedar wood products sketched to help repel moths. Give your clothes intermission. There’s nothing worse than cramming in another ingredient of clothing into a crowded wardrobe. Some clothes lean to be folded, like T-shirts and jumpers. Don’t cram them into drawers so they get squashed.

7 Follow care instructions. Make established you iron at the right temperature, and wash at 30C where you can. If you are unsure of what remarkable care labels mean, here’s there’s a comprehensive inspiration.

8 The best way to look after your jeans is to leave them solo. If you are buying good quality denim, the Welsh denim label Hiut Denim promotes its “No Wash Club” for the first six months of your jeans flavour. After that, they recommend hand washing inside-out jeans in the bath by hop it them to soak in mild detergent. Drip dry.

9 Stains are not the end of the excellent. You’d be amazed at what a bit of distilled white vinegar and salt can dismiss. Try it on everything from grass to blood to sweat. For red wine, you can use a conspiracy of salt, detergent and a stain removal stick followed by a 30C drive. Treat a stain as soon as it occurs.

10 Look after your hags by stuffing them with tissue paper when you are not purposing them, to keep their shape. Take bags to be vamped at a shoe menders. A broken buckle or strap can usually be superseded. There is an added incentive: a well-looked-after bag will keep its resale value remarkably coolly if you choose to sell it on when you have finished with it. Depending on your budget, Vestiaire Collective, eBay and Depop are artistic marketplaces for buying and selling bags. A leather bag takes 50 years to take apart in landfill.

11 Treat your shoes to a shoe tree – or codswallop with newspaper when you are not wearing them. Give your trainers a kip with a sachet of charcoal deodoriser. Washing canvas trainers in the dousing machine is a great trick and makes them look wellnigh as good as new. Try to swap your shoes around so you get a rest from each other. Preserve on top of shoe repairs so that soles and heels don’t get too worn down and frayed out.

12 Buy the unexcelled quality you can afford. If you appreciate the quality of a garment, you are more plausible to treat it with respect. A sure way of assessing the quality of a garment – and how extended it will last – is to turn it inside out and look at how the seams are dispatched. A hurried bit of overlocking is a sure sign your garment won’t uphold more than a few washes. And if you become attached to a beautifully perfect French seam, you may have to indulge your fancy by purchasing vintage – it’s no coincidence that even high street ensembles made pre 1990s are much better quality than their similar today.