Watching movies has been an interesting activity for us all the time, but yesterday´s movie entitled THE TRUE COST on clothing made us really sad. We saw lots of long faces which took us thinking throughout the night. Thursday morning looked brighter with lots of sunshine.

Breakfast was lovely with lots of expectations. We then joined our colleagues for the morning devotion led by Laura and Chiara. They gave us some inspiration from the words of MAHATMA GANDHI. Itching to know more about consumption, we quickly set of for our field trip.

We first went to L‘EPICERIE BIO which is a plastic free shop. The main objective of this shop is to allow individuals bring their own jars or bottles to purchase whatever they needed for themselves. It gave us some sense of relief knowing that the campaign on stopping plastics had begun here some years ago. Voila! our hearts rejoiced the more when she informed us that there were more of these shops around the city.

Change indeed begins now.

Our second stop took us to the KLIMAWERKSTATT; a repair cafe. The most interesting part of this visit was when we learnt that individuals could come do their own repairs with the guidance of volunteers. We shared some ideas from Ghana about how repairs are done.

Lunch was fun as we had to led by example. We sent our own basket to avoid taking plastics from the food court. Right after lunch we „tramed„ down to Hafen museum for an exhibition on clothing. We had a brief introduction of the place and had a tour through the exhibits. We were divided into groups and worked on various questions like :

a. Which items were made from cotton

b. The value of jeans

c. What happens to old clothes that you don´t wear. Etc.

HUGE SURPRISES:

1. Margarine and soap had some elements of cotton!
2. Only 1% value goes to the worker and 50% goes to the retailer.
3. How cotton travels from the harvest period to the final attire.

   After the exhibition and trying on some clothings we discussed what we could do with the help of the following questions:

A: WHAT THE INDUSTRY ACTORS CAN DO

we suggested that the governments should enforce laws and customers avoid buying many cloths.

B:WHAT WE CAN DO AS INDIVIDUALS:

Up-cycling of cloths and educating other individuals.

Coming back to the house, we felt empowered, we felt we had a task and many like us were poised for action.

Lexicon

1. Trammed – to take a tram

ISAAC NUNANA AGBEMENU

STELLA YAYRA DZIANY