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Good morning and welcome to the Daily Ours. Happy Friday. It is the twelfth of April.
I'm Zara, I'm Sam.
In the age of.
Fast fashion and on demand expectations of clothing all the time, a new trend is emerging, renting. More and more people are looking to borrow clothes or rent their own clothes out, both for sustainability and financial reasons. In today's deep dive, I'm speaking to doctor Lisa Lake. She's the director of uts's Center of Excellence in Sustainable Fashion and Textiles, and I'm going to be speaking to her about the way her team is working to track the environmental impact of
borrowing and renting clothes. Before we get to that chat, Sam, it's making headlines.
The Australian Actual Commission has raised concern over an anticipated low turnout of voters at tomorrow's by election in the Sydney seat of Cook. The seat had been held by former Prime Minister Scott Morrison since two thousand and seven before he quit politics in February. Early votes are down eleven percent from the twenty twenty two federal election. It prompted the AEC to remind voters in the seat to
cast their ballot or risk being fined. Liberal Party candidate Simon Kennedy is expected to win Morrison's old seat.
US President Joe Biden has promised to back Israel if Iran launches an attack against the country. Biden said the US's commitment to Israel's security against threats from Iran and its proxies is quote ironclad, and that his country would do all it can to protect Israel's security. It comes after Iran accused Israel of striking its embassy in Damascus,
the capital of Syria, earlier this month. This week, Iran's leader Iotola alifhan Manis said when Israel attacked our consulate area, it was like they attacked our territory, and added that Israel will be punished.
New Soupales police have made the largest single seizure of pharmaceutical drugs in the state's history. Officers discovered seven hundred and twenty two kilograms of a drug sold under the brand name Xanax in a storage container in Western Sydney this week. The drugs were due to be sold on the black market for an estimated twelve million bucks. As part of the same investigation, police also seized one million dollars in cash from a truck in the Wogga region.
The twenty eight year old driver was arrested.
And the good news Researchers in Europe are a step closer to developing a successful urinary tract infection vaccine. A near decade long study at the UK's Royal Berkshire Hospital found a new spray based vaccine was able to successfully prevent UTIs in more than half of patients for up to time nine years. Scientists hope the vaccine could be used as a more long lasting alternative to antibiotic UTI treatments.
Important to note, though, the study is still in its initial phases and will present its final findings at.
The end of the year.
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Dive, Sam.
We have just finished what can only be called a marathon wedding season. Every single game with Buster, every single weekend might not be a wedding, but there's a wedding adjacent event. Whether it be a Hen's, a Bucks tea, whatever, it is an event that clothing clothing of the highest order. And I think that something my friends and I have been speaking about a lot is this pressure to have outfits for all of these.
Many, many occasions.
And that's why I was so interested when I saw that UTS had announced new research with The Vault, which is a company that does peer to peer renting of clothes. I've seen it before, a couple of my friends have used it, and so I was really interested to see what this research partnership was all about. Because these sorts of rental services where you can rent your clothes out and rent other people's clothes, they've been cropping up all over the place.
I've seen one in America called rent the run Way, which is a really big one, right.
Yeah, And there are many and they seem to be really growing in popularity. But now in the Vault, we've got a company who is actively working with an independent University to undergo thorough research on whether or not renting clothing is actually going to be better for the environment
than buying clothing. And I just want to stress that because I do you think it's really interesting they have commissioned this research and it might come out and suggest that it's not more environmentally friendly, which could undermine the entire business proposition of the vault.
I mean, it seems unlikely, but it's possible.
And so it's a really fascinating case study into these kind of new businesses that are being created to solve an environmental problem, but we don't necessarily have the data
to back it up yet. And now this is the first time that we're going to and I do just want to quickly set the scene for you as to why this is an important conversation to be having, because I think that there could be people that are listening to this, you know, the renting and buying of dresses, roll their eyes, say I don't care, doesn't matter to me, but it should.
I'll tell you why tell me so.
Australia is the world's second largest consumer of textiles WOW, and contributes over two hundred thousand tons of clothing to landfill each year. So we've got a problem in this country when it comes to the volume that we are assuming.
So how many items of clothing are you talking then?
So one point five billion new items of clothing are bought per year and about one in eight items are.
Reused, so that means seven of eight are not correct.
Good maths, thank you so much.
And more than half of new clothes born in Australia are made from synthetic materials, so things like polyester.
And the impact then is that they can't be reused as easily.
Yes, and that that's worse for the environment.
So it's in that context, and it's in that landscape that these rental companies are unsurprisingly popping up more and more. And I think it is going to be really significant to see what the research does say about whether renting is better or the same as buying new clothes. It seems to you know, for my unqualified research, it seems to me that the more life you can get out of an item, the better for the planet it will be. Yeah, but is there much data actually on this topic.
No, I mean, in terms of this specific idea of rentals, there's not a heap of independent data we do know that the Vault, So again that business that is partnering with UTS, the Vault itself has released some data that's not from uts's own research. They haven't begun that yet, but from that data, we know that one dress rented to thirty nine users instead of thirty eight additional purchases of the same garment save the equivalent carbon emissions of
five hundred and seven trees. So again that's not university led research. That is a company saying that that's what they've found using a publicly available calculator, but gives you a sense of the numbers.
And the vulgme that we're talking about.
So now I want to go to the chat that I have with Lisa. She's the director of uts's Center of Excellence in Sustainable Fashion and Textiles, and we ch added a bit about what this partnership is, about why it's important, and what they're hoping to find through and what it might mean for the industry. I know that a lot of my friends will be really interested in this chat. So without further ado, here's doctor Lisa. Lisa, thank you so much for joining the Daily As today.
Now I do want to just start at the beginning. You have announced in your research partnership. Can you just tell me a bit about it and why it has come to be in the first place.
Yeah. Absolutely, really, I'm so excited about this partnership. It's with a company called the Vault, and they are what we call a peer to peer rental company. That basically means we've got just regular people who own some gorgeous designer gowns that rent them to other people for various points of time. This is a real example of a circular economy business model where you're sharing the same thing over and over with a lot of different users, if
you will. So what this research is going to do is, first of all, take some environmental measurements to say is this really a more sustainable business model or not.
We all assume that it is.
We all assume that because you're using the same thing over and over and it's not going into the landfill too soon, we're not all buying a dress for every occasion, that there will be a positive environmental benefit. But what the Vault is doing by engaging us in this research is really just testing that to make sure it's possible.
And I'm really king to understand you spoke there about actually having the evidence the metrics to go by to understand whether this is a more sustainable way to go about, you know, acquiring new clothing. What are those metrics that you're measuring. How do you actually do that analysis?
Yes, so we have a team of very talented economists and they're looking at things like where the garment originated, where the material originated, where the various inputs, so the materials, the energy, the labor that go into making that garment. They're looking at those types of figures to get basically like a footprint for that garment, and then also looking
at what we call the use phace. So when that dress is being used and being worn, how far is it traveling between each renter, How is it being laundered, so is it being hand washed, is it being dry cleaned.
If it's being dry cleaned, what.
Chemicals are being used, And then also what are the steps that are being taken to maybe even extend the life of that dress further through mending and repairs.
So they're really taking this full.
Glance at everything that goes into making that dress from the beginning through its kind of useful life, if you.
Will, and are there any initial findings that you can point to, like, do we know whether it is a good thing?
Yeah, well, the Vault has done some initial research using a calculator tool that's available for businesses to hire, and we do know that the more that you rent a dress, absolutely the better impact it has on the environment. So I don't know what, you know, what the break even point is for exams. Every garment will be a little
bit different. But when you see some of the dresses that are being rented or being rented twenty times, thirty times, fifty times, it's undeniable that you're saving carbon and you're saving water in those scenarios.
And are there any example, because we're talking here more about high end fashion, but obviously there are some cost of living pressures and all of these things. How does that balance between I guess the economics of it all versus the sustainability, Like, how are you thinking about that?
That's a really important question.
The analysis we're doing does incorporate economics as well, so it'll be looking at the cost of those garments. And one of the things we're hoping comes out of the research, but we will have to wait and see, is that those garments that are made of a better quality, made of stronger materials, made with better quality stitches and buttons, and for us that those are going to be able
to stay in circulation for longer. And in that case you may be able to well, you will you are able to rent a dress for a lot less than buying that same dress. So there's an environmental aspect, absolutely, but there's also for somebody who loves fashion or loves dressing, there is that kind of avenue for joy of wearing a really well made garment that you can access via rental rather than ownership.
I am really curious as part of this research, will participants be asked why they have chosen to rent, because you know, there are these two very key reasons, and I think will be really interesting to understand which one is coming out on top. Whether you know, we know young people care about the environment, but equally they're most affected by this cost of living crisis. So curious to understand how that can be monitored.
Yeah, absolutely, we're calling them the borrow yesers who are interviewed definitely are being asked about their motivations for why they're renting, So it's they'll be asked a range of questions from motivations through the experience, and is there kind of a like is it a net positive benefit to their lives? Is it helping or is it or is it not to really understand their motivations.
Are there any environmental downsides to this peer to peer borrowing? Are there any unintended or perhaps unforeseen emissions like even you know, the use of the internet. Are there any environmental impacts that you weren't expecting to say play out in this Well.
I think we're just at the beginning of our research, but what we've seen in research in other rental markets is really looking at whether that garment was going to be used or not, and is it genuinely replacing a purchase. So what we do know from previous research is that occasion wear, which is what these dresses are, occasionwear, is absolutely a category that you're getting positive environmental impact from renting because that's something most of us have done it.
I'm guilty of it. You have an.
Event coming out, I have a wedding every weekend.
Exactly, you don't want to wear the same thing. Who wants to wear the same thing? You just don't, So you go quickly buy something whatever's in your budget is what you're going to buy where once, maybe twice if you're lucky, and it might then just sit in your closet for a really long time, or you'll donate it. So we do know from previous research that occasionwear is
an amazing place to get positive environmental benefits. I think the things that I'm curious to find out with this research is the transportation effect, So where the garment is traveling, how far are they traveling across Australia. We've got a huge country, so like a geographically huge country, so it's going to be interesting to see what those environmental measurements
are for the transportation in particular. Laundering often gets queried when people start thinking about this, well, what's the impact of the dry cleaning, But whether that's actually different to somebody who owns a dress and goes and cleans it anyway is probably negligible. But again we're going to be looking at those types of measurements.
And lastly, as an expert in this area, do you see this as the future of fashion or is it a phase? Do you think that this is something that will really take hold in Australia.
I do think that it is an area for the future. I think there's going to be a lot of interesting new business models coming out, But I genuinely think rental and shared ownership is one hundred percent going to be a trend for a really long time, especially because we're at this really unique point of the ultra fast fashion companies coming up at a time when we know that we need to make some significant changes to the white closer are made and purchased and worn and all of that.
So this rental really allows that, like the fun side of fashion to be enjoyed still because at the end of the day, yes, we all need to wear clothes for a whole lot of various reasons, but we also love to express ourselves and sharing ownership of garments allows us to change our style, to try different things without having to own everything. And as you mentioned before, there's environmental benefits to those of us borrowing the clothes, you know, which might be a huge financial outlay to buy a
designer dress, but still enjoy it. So I genuinely think so. But I think it's also about getting these models right.
Thank you so much for joining us on the daily Oslice. I really appreciate it.
Yeah, anytime.
Thank you so much, a really fascinating chat. That's all we've got time for on today's edition of The Daily os and that's all we have for you this week. We'll be back again in your ears on Monday morning. If you want to help us out over the weekend, I suggest you play our game picture. This is the new emoji craze taking over tda's community. I'm loving it. It's slightly frustrating. It's gotten to the point now where I don't know the answers to quite a few of them, which is quite fun.
It's going to the point now where my mum messages me every morning telling me her thoughts on it, so.
Be like my mum. We hate every day.
We had two thousand people hit the leaderboard yesterday, so it's pretty fine. I'll put the link to the game in today's show notes. Have a great weekend and we'll speak to you on Monday. My name is Lily Maddon and I'm a proud Arunda Bungelung Calcottin woman from Gadigol Country. The Daily oz acknowledges that this podcast is recorded on the lands of the Gadighl people and pays respect to all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Island and nations.
We pay our respects to the first peoples of these countries, both past and present.