My Climate New-Year’s Resolution: The Rule of 5

It’s 2024! A new year filled with many opportunities for positive change. It is also one year closer to the ever-imposing deadline to end the era of fossil fuels. The emotional turmoil that comes with passing time in the face of the climate crisis makes the new year bittersweet. This year, I have decided to take the opportunity of a new beginning to pointedly change my lifestyle to help meet the world heating threshold. I am doing this by taking on the Rule of 5. 

I have always loved fashion, but since I became aware of the climate crisis and the many environmental and human rights violations that come with the clothing industry, I have delved into the world of sustainable and ethical fashion. This has made me fall even more in love with it. Since then, I have almost exclusively thrifted my clothes, with some exceptions when I didn’t have the time or capacity to dig through stores for something specific: then I’d just buy it new. And there is absolutely nothing wrong with that (reminder that it would take 1,500 years for someone in the bottom 99% to emit as much carbon as the richest billionaires do in a year). However, a recent article made me rethink how radical our consumeristic changes have to be to truly meet even the (less ambitious) Paris Agreement goals. According to a recent report by Hot or Cool Institute, “Unfit, Unfair, Unfashionable,” to meet the Paris Agreement goal of limiting warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius, every person in the G20 countries should limit their purchase of new clothing to 5 per year. 

5 pieces of clothing are drastically less than what an average person would buy in a year. In fact, according to the Wall Street Journal, in 2018 Americans bought an average of 68 garments a year. For the average American that is a 92.3% decrease. For more environmentally conscious consumers, the decrease may be less. But even as someone who considers herself a thrift girlie, I definitely bought more than 5 new items last year. This report was eye-opening, and after reading it, I decided to only buy 5 new clothing items in 2024. I know it won’t be easy, especially since our society puts so much emphasis on materialistic pleasure, but I truly believe that limiting the purchase of new clothes will be freeing in the grand scheme of things (and I will also save money). 

As an environmentalist, I am wholeheartedly against blaming the climate crisis on the consumer while large corporations (and the top 1%) destroy our environment at a much larger scale. However, I also believe in the power of bottom-up actions because community building and value shifting are essential parts of building a more just future. We know that our current consumeristic patterns are not sustainable in the long run and that is why I am taking on the Rule of 5 in 2024. I invite anyone reading this article and beyond to take it on as well; it may seem difficult, but we will succeed as a community. 

Speaking of community, I am working on a guide with resources to help people achieve their sustainability goals! For updates on the guide and other parts of this campaign, follow @ljenvironmental_action on Instagram. I hope to build the Rule-of-5 project further and educate people on the importance of sustainable fashion in building a better future.