Harmful chemicals be gone! Have you heard the one about rivers turning blue outside of denim factories in China? Or being able to tell the colours of the season by looking at the waterways? Horrendous, right? But change is possible. Meet the Greenpeace activist who led the Detox My Fashion Campaign, which led to an industry-wide commitment to phase out harmful chemicals from fashion.

Meet Kirsten Brodde - the former science journalist on a mission to clean up fashion.

It’s time to tackle land use

The New York Times calls him "the poster boy for zero waste living". He's a florist, artist, restaurateur, architect, inventor and revolutionary thinker. Meet the man on a mission to convince us we can grow all the food we need where we live.

In this riveting episode, we discuss everything from how wasteful the floristry industry is to the microbial power of healthy soil to boost serotonin (yep, it can get you high apparently). What steps can we make to reconnect with the natural world? How might eating seasonally change our health, happiness and impact? Could we really grow all the food we need on the roof and walls of our houses and apartment buildings? What's the future of green cities?

Out in the open

It’s overwhelmingly women we’re talking about

Go for bold

C is for collaborate

Denim is ubiquitous. According to British anthropologists Daniel Miller and Sophie Woodward, we wear jeans on average 3.5 days a week. In 2017, the global jeans market was worth USD $57 billion. Almost 2 billion pairs were sold around the world in the same year. That is a lot of jeans…

It’s also a lot of jeans waste.

According to The New Textiles Economy report, less than 1% of used clothing is recycled into new clothing. We’re landfilling and incinerating discarded, unloved clothes at increasing rates, while at the same time decreasing clothing use over time.

Fashion life after shopping

By 2030, we keep going as we are, the fashion industry will manufacture 102 million tons of clothes and shoes. For comparison, that's the weight equivalent of half million blue whales!

Growth is not something we like to question in the fashion industry (or indeed any industry). In our capitalist system, commercial success is measured by growth. But, how can we support infinite growth on a finite planet?

Words and pictures

Twenty-five-old British poet, filmmaker and activist Wilson Oryema describes himself as “a semi-retired model”. He was scouted on his lunch break when he was working a London office job, and walked his first Paris show for Margiela in 2015. He went on to appear in ads for Calvin Klein Underwear and Hugo Boss .

His first book of poetry, titled Wait, explores consumerism, contemporary culture and waste. It sprang from an art show he held in a London gallery, after he interned for his photographer friend Harley Weir.

What’s your favourite Global Goal? Have you even heard of them, otherwise known as the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)? Don’t feel bad if you haven’t because while these 17 goals, created by the United Nations as a roadmap for a sustainable future, are super important - they are not as well-known as they should be. Some countries are doing great work in advancing them. Others, including Australia, have a pretty ordinary record on progress so far. In this interview with Togetherband founder Cameron Saul, we discuss why these goals are for all of us, and how we can work together to make them a reality.