Lucy Siegle > Quotes

“The amount of plastic debris in the sea is predicted to increase from 50 million metric tons in 2015 to 150 million metric tons by 2025.28”
― Lucy Siegle, Turning the Tide on Plastic: How Humanity (And You) Can Make Our Globe Clean Again

“When I ask consumers (as I frequently do) what they do with their ‘old’ clothes – I use the term ‘old’ with caution – their answers are upbeat and cheerily green: ‘I recycle them,’ or ‘I donate them to a charity.’ We have a tendency to overvalue or talk up the items that we give away: people will remark on how they’ve given up a ‘very good skirt’ or a ‘top quality piece’. They appear to expect to be walking down the street the following Thursday and to see their skirt or jacket occupying pride of place on the central mannequin in the window of their local charity shop. This is highly unlikely: only around 10 per cent412 of UK donations, the ‘cream’, will actually be retailed through the shops (these make up the most valuable donations to the charities). Most are likely to be found somewhere on a 10,000-mile journey. We are back to salaula.”
― Lucy Siegle, To Die For: Is Fashion Wearing Out the World?

“The plastic we throw away in a single year could circle the earth four times. Out of the 320 million metric tonnes of new plastic mass-produced each year 1 – almost all from oil – eight million tonnes leak into the world’s oceans and waterways. That is the equivalent of a truckload of plastic being upturned and shaken out straight into the sea every minute of every day. Every minute of every day, one million plastic bottles are used.2 Imagine each of those bottles, a quarter filled with oil; the amount of oil needed to make the bottle in the first place.”
― Lucy Siegle, Turning the Tide on Plastic: How Humanity (And You) Can Make Our Globe Clean Again

“The speed and price that define fast fashion, and which are so beloved by consumers, directly affect the garment workers of Savar. Where the consumer wants fast, the garment worker must work faster; where the consumer wants cheap, the garment worker must get paid less.”
― Lucy Siegle, We Are What We Wear: Unravelling fast fashion and the collapse of Rana Plaza

“Whenever you see packaging that is totally over the top, take up the pen and write to the company responsible. It needn’t be a formal letter – a tweet will often be just as if not more effective. Add the hashtag, #reducepackaging to your tweet, and make sure you copy in your local council and trading standards office (if they are on social media).”
― Lucy Siegle, Turning the Tide on Plastic: How Humanity (And You) Can Make Our Globe Clean Again