I am really somewhat skeptical of a lot of “green” claims. In “reduce, reuse, recycle” it seems to me that the “reduce” gets either lost or overcast by minor cases of reduction. The big question is, are people willing to buy less, overall? Are people willing to go back to, say, the standards of the 40′s or 50′s, where you had one or two “Good” outfits, a few pieces that could be mixed or dresses for work (or two suits and a few shirts for male office workers) and two or three house dresses/sports outfits? Somehow I doubt this. What we could save by having one less new dress would equal the “Savings” of true zero waste on SIX dresses, and that is just counting the fabric, not the production, distribution, etc.

This is not to say we should not be trying to use our scraps, or careless about what we consume as sewers. I am a great believer in every little bit helping – a little bit each from a few billion people adds up. However, I won’t believe the larger society gives a REAL feather about this until I see things like people pledging to reduce the number of showers, times they blow dry their hair, etc. Somehow if a woman gets up, takes a shower, blow drys her hair, goes to work, goes to the gym on the way home, showers again, dries her hair again, and then runs home to an air-conditioned home to sew while listening to the TV it does not seem to me that her sports bra being cut with zero waste has made an appreciable impact. Fine if you can do it, but this is not the largest issue in front of us.