Unlike food, clothing does not have a use-by date. Certainly some styles become dated but most clothing never gets a chance to wear out.

In the past we valued our clothing, bought quality, laundered with care, mended and maintained, handed down or passed on.

Engineer James Moody says it takes 10,000 litres of water to produce 1 kg of cotton, so we ought to treat cotton clothing with more respect – using, reusing, recycling or upcycling it – doing everything but put it in landfill.

Moody is CEO of online sharing platform Tu-Share and recently participated in a Rethinking Waste conversation with ABC Nightlife’s Tony Delroy along with National Association of Charitable Recycling Organisations CEO Kerryn Caulfield. Listen to the fascinating podcast here. 

Sew 280 is cotton overalls that have never had a chance to wear out. They made it into the ‘keep’ pile when unearthed from the back of a cupboard. They are 100% cotton and I know for a fact they are at least 25-years-old (my before-children era). They haven’t been worn much, but as I mentioned, clothing doesn’t have a use-by date so they should be good for another decade or two. On a recent bush-walk, I wore them with an op-shop-found long-sleeved linen shirt (from the Made in Australia era) and a 2m piece of white muslin cotton hemmed into a scarf.