This week's Ecolution is another very special collaboration. This time with UNICEF.
UNICEF is the United Nations' agency for children's rights. It was Founded 75 years ago in the aftermath of World War II, to protect and advocate on behalf of children. Their work is informed by the UN's Convention on the Rights of the Child.
This may seem unrelated to Ecolution but, since Ireland signed up to the Convention in 1992, the World has changed. There’s now a clear need to view the climate crisis as a vital consideration in the rights of children.
In March of this year, UNICEF held a week long workshop. And seven of the attendees agreed to collaborate on an episode of Ecolution Una, Aisling, Laura, Amy, Deeya, Nicole and Fiona decided that the one thing they most wanted to investigate was Fast Fashion.
Fast Fashion has been on the rise for the past 30 years. Designers make clothes for the catwalk and then high street retailers respond rapidly by creating super cheap copies of those designs. The problem is that this leads to a huge amount of low quality clothing being dumped into landfill, decomposing and adding to our emissions problems.
The manufacturing often takes place in countries where adults and children work long hours, for very little pay, in order to keep the costs low. Not to mention the untold damage being done to the environment by the processing and dying of these textiles.
The pandemic has seen a huge leap in people buying fast fashion online, which offered all the more reason to talk about it now. Each member of the UNICEF group took one aspect of the topic to investigate, then wrote and recorded their part of the programme.
This episode is made by them, for you!
Huge thanks to all of the team. UNICEF's work to protect children's futures will continue, alongside their efforts to help young people openly discuss and make decisions around the climate crisis.
Visit unicef.ie for more information and resources.
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