Mr. Kumayl Mustafa:

Dia daoibh ar maidin. Is mór an onóir dom a bheith anseo chun an t-ábhar seo a phlé libh. I am an 18-year-old student representing Cork city Comhairle na nÓg. I begin by asking the committee members about the clothes on their backs.

Do the members know where they were made, what they are made from, what it took to turn them from them raw materials to the fabric scratching off their skin and what will happen to them once a small tear forms in the side? When they walk into a store, do they have any idea of what they are buying off the rack and their impact on the planet? When they pick up a bundle of bananas with a fair-trade sticker, the farmers are paid a living wage to grow them. When they see the Cruelty Free International leaping bunny symbol on a product they know no animals were harmed in the making of said product. When they pick up a shirt off a rack, shuffling through half a dozen tags to find one with the word "eco" on it underneath a green background, do they have any idea what it means? How can they make an informed decision on what to buy if the information out there is nigh impossible to sift through and what is there conflicts with each other?

Let us consider how textile mills generate one fifth of the world's industrial water pollution using thousands of chemicals, many carcinogenic, to create the clothes found on the High Street. Consider the half a million tonnes of microfibres that find their way into our oceans per annum or the 10% of global greenhouse gas emissions that come from the fashion industry. In the next 50 or so years how much of the oceans will be polluted by clothes someone wore once, clothes whose impact on the environment will outweigh their impact on the consumer from the moment they left the factory, let alone his or her house? How much clean water will there be to drink if we are already living through crises across the globe as countries lack water for sanitation and drinking when by 2030 the fashion industry is set to use around 8% of fresh water extracted? When all these problems lie at the root of clothes production, how can we as consumers fight them? When 82% of European citizens do not trust the claims made by companies about their impact on the environment, it is clear the current state of consumer awareness is abysmal.

In the face of all this, many are overwhelmed and buy whatever they wish. How can one be a good person in a bad system? Fast fashion brands pump clothes out at prices affordable to all but with a major toll to the environment, both in their production and long-term effects. We cannot stop the rampant consumerism destroying our modern world and as the planet does not have the resources to match the constant growth and massive volumes of waste produced every year, we need to make efforts to help people make better choices by giving them more information about how what they are buying was made.

An eco-label defines the sustainability and the environmental impact of a product by informing consumers on the product’s materials, production or the extent of its life cycle and its uses past what we would conventionally think. By introducing a standardised eco-label, we can make it possible for consumers to compare and contrast what they buy and who they buy it from. We need labels that can clearly and concisely convey the information to everyone, not only those who have the time to spend hours researching different brands and specific labels that apply only to them.

Greenwashing is a form of marketing in which green public relations, PR, and green marketing are deceptively used to persuade the public that an organisation's products, aims and policies are environmentally friendly. It runs rampant throughout our society, making it difficult for people to make an informed choice. It works mostly through selective disclosure, using symbolic actions as a facade for destructive practices.

A single standardised concise label would help aid the elimination of such action as well as eliminate the ambiguity behind eco-labels for the consumer by creating a new transparent system that provides a ranking of sustainability. This system is the quickest and most effective way to provide an accessible means for consumers to educate themselves on what they are buying in a way that is both efficient and clear. We need not only this but to take the opportunity to educate people on the true importance of being aware of their actions. Fast fashion’s culture of bulk buying cheap clothes to wear once is as unsustainable as it comes; flimsily made clothes within months will begin filling our waters with microplastics and lining the landfills plaguing our natural landscapes. Clothing is a human need and right; owning 20 different pairs of pants that differ slightly in colour is not. When the justification for fast fashion and clothes that are cheaply made is that their target markets focus on those who cannot afford to pay for high quality, sustainable clothing, all while these companies know these are the very same people who will be disproportionately affected by disruptions to our environment, how can we stand by and do nothing?

Changes need to be made to stop the cycle plaguing the vulnerable and the first step is to stop using their exploitation as a scapegoat for not doing what needs to be done. What we need to focus on is changing the ways in which we see clothing – going back to our roots of mending and repairing clothes – rather than treating them as disposable items. The Government needs to take the time to support those who cannot afford quality sustainable clothing, those targeted by the fast fashion companies. With proper regulations on advertising and labelling of such products, perhaps we can take the first step in fighting the rampant consumerism plaguing our society. I believe it is time to empower the consumer so he or she can make an informed choice, as is his or her right. We need to take the time to educate consumers to shop around and buy clothing that lasts. As long as brands can continue to advertise their products under a facade of greenness and low pricing, just for those products to last less than six months before they end up clogging our waterways, our tendencies will lead us to a planet that is lifeless and desolate, akin to "WALL-E", a movie released when I was just four years old predicting a future that what was once green has now turned brown by material waste.

The time for hoping things will change has long passed. I hope the contributions members of the committee will hear today will motivate them, both as lawmakers and in their everyday lives as citizens of our planet, to introduce the changes necessary to save ourselves and our planet. Gabhaim buíochas libh as an éisteacht a thug sibh dom.