Sustainability firm to teach women about reducing clothing consumption

Independent sustainability advisory firm Milieu Centraal has launched an online course to help women “consciously buy less clothing” to help protect the environment. The information organization is going to focus specifically on women as they buy more clothes than men.

In collaboration with Psychology Magazine and the Amsterdam University of Applied Sciences, Milieu Centraal has developed the free training 'My Style iD'. In six steps, participants learn to "develop their own sustainable clothing style and make well-considered choices". It also explains "what buying does to the brain and how to deal with temptation".

What the creators of the training are mainly aiming for is that consumers will follow less of the latest trends and focus more on developing their own style. "Follow your style, not fashion" is the motto.

Behavior researcher Judith Roumen of Milieu Centraal explains that buying new things brings a feeling of joy due to the dopamine that is released in the brain. That happy feeling is “short-lived each time” while the temptation to buy clothes continues.

This 'purchase urge' is also "enormously stimulated by advertisements in stores and online, sales, new fashion and also influencers who enter into collaborations with clothing brands".

The organization knows from previous research that most Dutch people are aware that it is better for the environment to buy less clothes. But just one in three people actually do so. Milieu Centraal says that almost a billion pieces of clothing are put on the market yearly in the Netherlands. The production and transport of the pieces leads to more CO2 emissions, which in turn contribute to climate change.