}
OH634 Interview with Dr Linda Thomas
LH: My name's Lee Hutchinson, curator of history at M Shed in Bristol, and I'm with Dr. Linda Thomas, at her house in Somerset Street in Kingsdown.
LT: Hi, I'm Linda Thomas, and I'm an eco-fashion designer. And I've got a passion for upcycling. So the first thing I'll probably clarify is what upcycling is because it confuses a lot of people. So, recycling is when we break down something to make something new. So people are often familiar from their kerbside collections about when they get their bottles or their paper collected, and then that's broken down to make new bottles or paper or something else. Upcycling is when you take a hold of something and you actually take it further up the journey. So, generally, it uses much less water and electricity to create something new. And it’s often done or more of a bespoke level. So, often, it's making individual things rather than recycling, [which] is much more of a scaled-up production line – if I have to kind of over simplify it. So, I generally make wedding dresses and other individual pieces by upcycling nice, luxurious materials, so silks and things like that, where I've bought damaged things from charity shops, and I cut them up and redesign them. One of my other passions, though, is about the issue we have with ocean waste. So, a few years ago, I saw an image of a big stash of body boards on a beach in Cornwall. And all of these body boards had been collected in just a few months by some people from the volunteers working with Keep Britain Tidy. And in that one image there were 400 or 600 body boards. And each one of them had a polystyrene core, and covered in a plastic fabric outer. And lots of people will be familiar with these designs, you get dolphins on them, and sharks and mermaids and all kinds of images, and appeal particularly to children and very young children. And these boards, basically, their inner polystyrene part snaps.
[0:02:25] And that renders them pretty useless. Now, this sometimes happens within a few hours, but typically within a week or so. And, generally, they don’t last for more than one or two holidays if people are lucky. So, when I saw this image, I was horrified about how big this problem was. And it turns out that fourteen and a half thousand of these are dumped on just beaches in the south-west of England alone every year. So, I got to thinking, how could I kind of use my skills to get this information out there? Because I was already an eco-fashion designer, I thought, I wonder, could I create a dress, because in terms of the media, in terms of in papers, on the television, we love images of ladies and dresses, actually, you know, if you just look at the front of magazine covers and everything else, you get a woman in a dress – whether it's royalty, or something else, we love those images. So, I just thought could I create a dress from these. And that's how the story of my first ocean-waste dress began. So, the first dress was called the Wave of Waste dress. It was 22 metres long, and it was made from 100 of these dumped body boards, which were collected from just three beaches over a few months by the Beach Care South West team of Keep Britain Tidy. And I basically went to collect these body boards from them, strip them down, and… all of… every single part of it was all plastic. So you've got polystyrene – now, polystyrene, as a lot of us know, breaks up into very small pieces. The thing about polystyrene is it also attracts other toxins to it. So when it's in the sea, other chemicals and things get stuck onto these little polystyrene balls. And then they disperse quite widely, and can travel thousands of miles. So that's what's inside – if it starts to break down, it can actually go through the hole where the leash is normally attached. The leash is also another form of plastic. That breaks off. The outer covering itself is plastic. So it was all plastic. And when it's salt-damaged as well, you can't actually recycle any of that stuff. So, we were very lucky in this instance, in that there was a surf shack that was being built, and so they took the polystyrene for using in their insulation. And then I took all the outers together. After I kind of saw the size of the problem, it then came to this kind of magic number of 100. It was literally that was exactly how many were there, which I couldn't kind of quite believe. Once we'd been doing it for hours on end, stripping these boards off, I suddenly thought it'd be nice if it's going to be 100. So I hadn't really set out originally to make a 22-metre dress. But once I’d got these boards, and I'd got all this there, I felt like I wanted to do the most that I could. So, I basically laid them out in this lounge that I'm sitting in now for this interview, and I did sort of five to six metres at a time [and] tried to pattern coordinate. What I wanted to do was to create a dress that from a distance would catch the eye and people would go “Wow!” But my aim was that that “wow” would turn into an “eeugh” as people look closer. So I tried to really juxtaposition things that were a bit clashing. So I would have an image of a shark and a quite an aggressive image next to a very stereotyped girly or mermaid image. And I put the two together to kind of have this slight clash. I also tried to work with the colours so that there was this kind of gradation of the colours, from the blues to the oranges and yellows and pinks. And my son actually who, at the time, I think he was 10 or 11 years old, he actually would help me line them up across the floor as well to try and get these patterns really nice. Then I'd pin them up, and then sew them together with some organic cotton. And, in the end, it took me months and months to do this, which I wasn't expecting. And it took over my whole house in the end. So it literally went from the top of the house all the way down the bottom and out the back door by the time I'd finished. But it meant it was eye-catching. And so we launched that dress in Cornwall, and it –
LH: What year, sorry?
LT: It was launched in September 2016... I think. [Editorial note: The actual launch date was 22 September 2017, at Watergate Bay, Newquay]
[0:07:21]
I might have to check. It's all a bit of a blur now. And it was worn by Emma Skinner who's actually from a really famous surf family. And she's been a pro surfer herself in the past. And she was absolutely brilliant. And we then had her all made up really wild with eco hair and makeup. And on the beach the dress actually took off in the wind. So we've ended up with these really stunning kind of images with it afloat, kind of drifting across the sky, which was just one of those lucks where nature played with us nicely at the time. But that kind of started the whole thing. So I didn't set out to become a designer of ocean-waste dresses. … The long and the short of the story is I was an eco-fashion designer and I cared about the environment, but I didn't quite know that it was going to lead in this journey. But I think, as with many things, sometimes once the journey starts and you realize you can do something with it, you then can't let it go. So… my next dress after that was then the 99 Dead Balloon dress.
[0:08:44]
And I was actually contacted by one of my friends who saw that there was a children's author called Ellie Jackson, who was writing about ocean plastic in children's books, and her next one was actually going to be about balloons and the danger that they caused. And so I actually got in touch with her and said would she like me to help by creating a dress that she could use and reach out to the families and the children even more? So, she wrote Marli’s Tangled Tale and I then created the 99 Dead Balloon dress and cape to go with it – for her and her daughter to wear. Now that was also launched in Cornwall. But on the day that that got launched, we had almost thick rain that you couldn't see through. So it was quite a different scenario. But it was really great again, reaching out with lots of people of different ages, and I went into schools with the dress, and it really caught their imagination. So, again, this kind of visual impact where people see the dress and go like “Wow, what's that?” and then start to get the story. So my real aim with that dress is to try and hope that people will realize that all balloons, lanterns, whatever we choose to release up in the air will eventually come back down and land in the sea, or on elsewhere on the land, and it's killing our wildlife. So, whatever people do to kind of look for alternatives instead, just like with the body boards, where you can hire body boards, or you can get more solid construction ones, whether they are made of plastic, you can get ones that last decades rather than days, or even wooden ones as well.
[0:10:43] So that was the second one. And after that, the next one always takes a bit more explaining… because the next one was the panty-liner dress. And this was a real gift for me because the issue of ocean plastic in and how it originates from wet wipes and from menstrual products is something that I'm particularly passionate about. Probably because I have got a background in medicine – I was a GP for many years before this – and I was aware of these products being not that healthy for women and girls, and also for the environment at the same time. So, what happened with this was there was a wonderful woman as well – she still is – called Tony Doric. And she was recovering from breast cancer. And during this recovery process, she had started doing beach cleans every day. And while she was beach cleaning, she had spotted this tangled mass out at sea, but it was too far away and she was not well enough at the time to try and pull it out. But she gave it the eye and she said, I'm going to get you. And a year later, she was a bit further on in her recovery, and it was a bit closer to shore, and she saw it again. And she thought I'm going to get you now. And with just a handful of volunteers, she pulled out this tangled mass of a couple of tons worth of material. You see the video of it, it looks kind of almost like whales intestines or something. It looks really, really incredible – like, what is this, and it got kind of nicknamed the Cornish Sea Monster – it was a very strange looking mass. And through research and kind of investigating it, we came to understand that this was probably the top sheet that's used in the construction of menstrual products. So this is like with a panty liner or a menstrual pad, it's that very, very top layer, which is very, very similar to wet wipes – you almost can't tell the difference. And it actually can be made of about 90% plastic. So it looks quite soft and cottony. And so a lot of people, understandably, don't realize the plastic content of this stuff. But actually, the way that I knew how much plastic was in it is once I decided to try and make a dress from this I tried to iron a little bit on a very cool iron. And it immediately melted in a way that only plastic does. So bear in mind that even synthetic clothing often that you can iron still if it's a cool enough iron setting, and this stuff you couldn't iron it at all. So eventually I had to get clever about that. And with the help of my mother and old techniques, I used damp linen tablecloth… no, tea cloths to be each side of it so that I could cool line it, so that it could create more of a flat line on the dress. And that basically went on to be a real emblem that could be used for discussing this huge issue of ocean waste that comes from menstrual products. So the panty liner dress was made it originally for the launch of an ocean plastic conference in London, at the Royal Geographical Society. And after that it's then been used at City Hall for a meeting around menstrual plastic and plastic-free periods.
[0:14:46]
So basically can be used in both issues around ocean plastic and the issue around mental products. And the reason I say it was a bit of a gift is because obviously thinking of my health and safety, but also models and other people that are going to wear the dress, I couldn't actually think that it was going to be okay to use any of the menstrual pads or tampon applicators that I find on beach cleans to make into a dress, knowing that they’d come into contact with blood and other bodily fluids. But although this stuff was really dirty, it was dirty from sand and from mud and from seaweed and not any bodily fluids. So that's why it was a gift for me because it meant I could actually make this dress in a safe way, even if it was somewhat time-consuming. And it means that something that is normally hidden away and not talked about, it can actually bring into the public attention. That brings me on to the other subject, which is about bringing things into discussion that are maybe hidden away. And what we have to realize is that when we don't talk about stuff, it does actually benefit the people that are quite complicit in the destruction of the environment. So it suits them very much. If we take the issue of period plastic, it’s very convenient for there to be some kind of taboo around this, and that we don't talk about what we do ourselves or what we do with our children or other things in terms of our menstrual products. Because then it continues to be that no one knows there's so much plastic in them. And that there's so many chemicals, including hormone disruptors and things like that, that if we were just there talking in the playground or talking in the office about this, then we probably would have stopped using these products a while ago.
[0:16:51] So, I really like the idea of us starting conversations more – I have a bit of a phrase where I say, ‘we don't just need to walk our talk now, but we need to chat along the way’, which is probably a bit of a nonsensical sentence. But what I mean by that is we need to be true to our own ethics. So it's no use saying ‘you do this’ or ‘you do that’ while we don't actually do things ourselves. So I really believe that there's nothing I want to educate about or teach about that I don't want to be a part of myself. But I also feel if I just do that, but I do that silently and quietly, so in a corner, I’ve maybe stopped using these products myself, or I've made a lifestyle change, but I don't actually share it, then we fail to get that ripple effect. And the ripple effect is so important now, because that's how we can make change happen so quickly … We all know now that we need change to be really, really quick if we're going to avert the massive scale of the climate emergency that we're in, and this sixth mass extinction – we've got to have fast change. The thing about us sharing information is immediately once we start to know what we're dealing with, know what the solutions are, we can actually act really quickly. I can literally one week be buying menstrual products that are 90% plastic. And the next week I can be not doing that ever again from that point on in my life. If I share that information in a non-judgmental and kind way, then I could have, by the end of the week after that, that ten people have then stopped. If they then do it… and so on. And so this is how the wave of solutions can actually ripple out an incredible speed. And that's why sometimes people talk about in terms of change that you have this kind of slowly, slowly, slowly, slowly, and then suddenly, boom! it takes off. We are really on that kind of moment now. And yes, we’re realizing that this whole issue is so much worse than we could have possibly imagined. And so much information had been suppressed. But we are also on that escalating scale now where it stopped being slowly, slowly, slowly. And that's what gives me hope.
[0:19:19]
LH: You were talking about how people aren't only not aware of the issues around menstrual products, but also that there are alternative products out there.
LT: Yeah, yeah. So in terms of menstrual products, I switched over myself a long time ago to organic, washable menstrual pads. So you just soak them in cold water, like lots of women actually do soak their underwear when they have had period accidents. And we don't talk about that. But actually I've never met a woman who hasn't had to put pair of pants and soak them in some cold water. So you just soak them like that, then they go in the washing machine, and then hang them on the line or whatever. And then they're ready again for the next time. So I swapped over to those. There are now so many different styles and colours and patterns, and lots and lots of different ones, including how to cut and make your own one if you’ve got a sewing machine and you like to do that.
[0:20:22]
And then there's also the alternative of menstrual cups. So these are silicone-based cups that are worn inside the vagina, and they sit just below the cervix. And those can last for ten years plus, so, yes, although silicone is a form of plastic, you're talking about one small cup lasting ten years. So that's been a real breakthrough that's been in recent times. And those are taking off around the world and making huge differences, particularly in areas where we've got massive period poverty as well. And the other thing is for that, that not one size fits all, you know – we've got to be aware that different things are suitable for different people and at different points in their lives, so for some women, they may well need to be using tampons, as well, or multiple different things. And you can get organic tampons that don't have any plastic content in them at all. And they'll always be clearly labelled like that. So the way to spot it is when something says ‘with cotton’ or something like that may well be something called green-washing, which I'll get on to in a minute. But if it actually says ‘made with 100% organic cotton’ then you know what you're dealing with. And you can get disposable, hundred-percent organic-cotton menstrual pads as well. So there's such an array of stuff out there. So literally, you know, we could have a movement, where overnight, we actually just stopped that stuff. And the great thing about some of these alternatives, like menstrual cups or washable pads, is they save a lot of money as well. So, it's not one of those where I don't have the money to have that luxurious eco choice, which people can sometimes feel maybe in terms of buying organic food or something else. So it's something where it's a win-win, which is really great. And you're getting separated off and not getting close to those chemicals, which are also in those products. So I’m just going to touch on briefly what green-washing is.
[0:22:33]
So green-washing is when there is a deliberate attempt by a business or organization or politician, or an individual, to market the green or ecological aspect of what they're doing or what their product is – in order to deceive. So it's an eco-version of white-washing. So it means that, say there's a business that is 98% using slavery, but they have got 2% of their products where they have used fair trade organic cotton on them, let's say, for instance. So green-washing would be that they would promote their brand, not just that one product, but make it look as if that one product was their brand. So they would make that one thing synonymous. You saw their brand, and you thought, ‘Oh, they do that fair trade organic stuff. Whereas, actually, it was just a tiny, tiny bit of their business. So, in other words, ethically and morally in the substance of that company, they didn't actually care. They didn't actually want to eradicate slavery. What they wanted was to get the money associated with fair trade and organic. And so, in these times of change, we need to really watch out for green-washing. Because, the same as we're going to get the uprising of the great, we are also going to see the uprising of green-washing.
[0:24:11]
LH: And there's a surprising amount, isn’t there? Once you start looking into it – how many of these companies are doing that.
LT: Yes, there's a lot of companies doing green-washing. It's a big money maker. And the funny thing is, a lot of small businesses, like myself, you know, sometimes we don't actually name all the good things that we're doing, because it comes so naturally for us to do that, so we don't talk about that all the time. So, I think there probably needs to be more of a spreading of information where people who are genuinely doing the right thing, and companies genuinely doing the right thing, need to constantly be talking about that. And we need to make different standards and labelling and things like that – so it will make green-washing harder. But that’s a bit about why I'm an activist – I mean, having lived in Bristol now pretty much non-stop since 1991, apart from one year, I’ve been in a city that I am very, very conscious has, you know, formed a lot of its wealth on the back of slavery, and this is another big issue within fashion. So, although this is a moving slightly away from my ocean waste dresses, I actually believe the issues of climate change and climate degradation is strongly linked with the issues of slavery. So, if we look at what originally happened, particularly, you know, in the Americas, it was very much people and planet being molested at the same time. And we can't even begin to imagine what it must have been like for people who actually had come from backgrounds where they were deeply connected with Mother Nature, and they were having to read the land of its natural balance in order to plant crops in a way that was not sustainable, and was not what they had been brought up with themselves.
[0:26:22]
And I think similarly with us now trying to tackle the issue of climate breakdown, we can't do this in isolation without looking at what is happening to people as well. The issue of slavery is still very present in this modern world. And the knowing that there are more slaves in the world now than before the abolition of slavery is really, really important. As far as I'm aware, and somebody might be able to correct me, but, I don't think ever in the history of mankind have we ever labelled goods ‘made by slaves’. It's been something that has always been swept under the carpet and treated as if it's not there and looked the other way. I think one of the clues that we can always look for in terms of clothing, is, I just look at the label – what's it made of? And where was it made? And if it's made in a place with stuff that I don't recognize, then you have to question it may well be slavery. If it's not slavery, it should be easy to identify that it's not – so, either labelled that it's fair trade, or named that who made it. So my clothing, for instance, doesn't have a fair trade label on it, because I make all of it. But I clearly explain where I've got that fabric from. I explain that it's come from upcycling. So, I think we need to realize that almost as if there's an invisible label on goods, saying ‘this is made by slaves’, unless we can see the visible label that tells us otherwise. And so in terms of us empowering ourselves and each other, we really can make a difference when we start shopping differently in terms of clothing. And fashion is the second biggest polluter after the oil industry. So if you change the way that you shop for clothing, you are having a massive impact. And if you tell your friends, why you're changing the way you're shopping, you then have that ripple effect again. So you can see with my passion for ripple effects, why I got involved with ocean plastic!
[0:29:00]
LH: I think we should stress that connection – you know, what you were saying about between slavery and plastic pollution and the fashion industry … People aren't often aware of those associations and connections, are they?
LT: Yeah… yeah. And that leads me on to my next ocean-waste dress, which was the ghost-net dress. The ghost net dress, of all the dresses, changed me the most. And the reason it changed me the most is because I didn't know what gill net is. And gill net is the net that makes up the … skirt part of this dress. It's a very, very fine mesh of net. And it hangs vertically in the sea. So, if you imagine it, kind of, from the ocean surface, hanging down towards the bottom of the ocean. And it has floats at the top to stop it sinking. And it's called a gill net because it traps fish by their gills. And that's how it kills them. And, with gill nets, because they're hanging almost invisibly in the sea, if those gill nets are not brought back up, they then will trap bigger predators and then bigger predators. And what happens is, the whole net, through the weight of all the creatures trapped in it, will actually start to sink to the bottom. And when all of those creatures have then been degraded, the net will then actually float back up again, like a ghost rising, and the whole process starts all over again. And I say that the ghost-net dress changed me the most, because as I worked on the ghost-net dress, I would get trapped in it. Now I say trapped in it, because obviously I was okay, but actually I think I nearly broke a few limbs a few times, because I would just be working on one bit, and then I'd find out that my toe was actually completely trapped in it and it was tripping me up. And always what got me out was not struggling but getting my hands down and untangling myself. And I became so conscious that it was my hands with my ten digits that meant I could get free. And if I pulled against it, if I struggled, it just got tighter and worse. And so, at that moment, I just had this very small window into understanding how horrific this stuff must be. And it changed the way that I kind of viewed fishing.
[0:31:59]
I already was very aware about different marks that you can have on fish when you buy them, such as the MSC certificate, suggesting that it's not from fish where they've been overfished. But the process of making that dress made me realize that, actually, that is still quite meaningless in terms of having certain styles of net full-stop, and that these are all made of plastic. And I see them all the time on my beach cleans. So the particular net that's in the ghost-net dress was actually given to me by Fathoms Free, which is a group of divers, volunteer divers, that actually go down and dive down and try and get big chunks of ghosts net where it's actually in the sea still. They also paddle and kayak and things and pick it up as well. But the idea that – we all see it when we do beach cleans – there's so much ghost net and ghost line around, and I feel that with all of these problems the only way to tackle it is three-fold.
[0:33:20]
So there's three things that we really need to look at in my opinion when we're looking at any of these waste issues. And the first thing is we've got to see what is getting in there and stop it at source. So, in the case of these different dresses, I want us to stop putting these menstrual products, or the ghost net, or the body boards, or the balloons, into the environment in the first place. So that's the first thing – stop putting more stuff in. The second thing is, is that we must rescue and retrieve what we have already got in there. And that is in vast problem. And people are tackling this in the ocean in lots of different ways. But it is actually really essential we start to get this stuff out of the sea and as quick as we possibly can. Because when this stuff is in the sea, it is changing all kinds of things about how the sea behaves. It actually makes it warm up quicker as well, having all this pollution within it, as well as all the creatures that are being endangered for the longer it stays in there. But the third aspect is, is that, once we've actually rescued this stuff from the sea, or from the environment, I believe it's really important that we repurpose it in some way. So whether that's recycling, upcycling, mending, whatever it is that we're doing with it, I think it's really important to try and do that wherever possible. Because if we take this enormous amount of waste that we have in the sea, and we dump all of that in landfill, we are just going to replace one problem with another. And we know that landfill stuff, also we're running out of land for doing that, but also stuff leaches out of the land as well when we're doing that, so we just don't have that opportunity. The other thing is, a lot of these things that are in the sea, it's actually a valuable resource, because we need to stop using new fossil fuels in order to create plastics. If we've already got lots of this stuff in circulation, we can use that instead. So, in the case of ghosts nets, there's a fabric that's being made called econyl that's actually using the ghost net and other forms of plastic that's already in the environment to make a new fabric, rather than using new fossil fuels to make it. So I think things like that are really important and will make a difference in how we tackle this climate emergency.
[0:36:06]
LH: Can you just describe to me what you've already told me off-mic about the effects of the ghost net? So it can literally trap like hundreds of thousands of marine animals, including whales?
LT: Yeah.
LH: Seals, dolphins… the whole lot, isn't it?
LT: Yeah. Yeah, yeah.
LH: So do you want to say a little bit about that?
[0:36:23]
LT: The ghost-net dress, for me, was also a really important one, because of the amount of death and destruction that we are getting from ghost nets, ghosts lines, and other lost fishing tackle at sea. And some of it is lost accidentally, but some of it is deliberate as well. And I am going to come back to the same theme again, about people and planet together, in that we have got, on this planet, at the moment, at sea, we have massive-scale fishing vessels that are full of people entrapped in slavery. So they're doing unethical practices for people and planet at the same time. And so we must look at these things together. And we can't blame those people who are on the on the ship who are doing it, because they are entrapped themselves. So we got to go to a higher level to look at it. And in terms of the damage that we are having from ghost net, it's really enormous, so 100,000 large-scale animals at sea – so we're talking whales, dolphins, seals – are killed every year from ghost-net entrapment. So, if you can imagine, where we're already in this pressurized environment, we're in the sixth mass extinction, and then through our waste alone, we are killing those kind of numbers of large animals, before we've even got onto the small animals – then you've got what happens to this ghost net when it starts to break down, along with all the other plastics, and the micro plastics, is now going down into the very, very, very smallest thing that we can have at the very beginning of the food chain – so we've got the plankton – these tiny, microscopic things, which also are ingesting micro-plastics – so another reason why getting as much of this stuff out of the ocean as quickly as we can is really important. Now we're talking at the moment from Bristol, where I live, and you might think, well, I'm not that close to the sea, maybe I go, you know, once a year if I'm lucky or something like that. But actually all water leads to the sea eventually. So, whether that's your toilet, your sink, or the storm drain on your street, what goes into those places can all eventually lead to the sea. So, just last week, there were hundreds of beaches around England, Wales and Scotland that were not safe for bathing, because we'd had such a large amount of heavy rain that sewage was actually overflowing into the sea.
[0:39:27]
So you can never ever think, well because I've put this particular bit of plastic here or there that it is away, it is no more – so you absolutely need to consider everything to do with the water supply. So, in terms of your toilet, only, pee poo, and paper – so don't put anything else down there, because it could all end up in the sea eventually. Our sewage system cannot cope with the amount of stuff that gets flushed down that isn’t those three things. And so that's another thing that's easy for us to do – it's easy to go, I'm never ever going to do that again, I'm never going to flush anything down my toilet apart from those three things. And so we can immediately bring about change – tell everyone in your family, your friends – why are you doing that? And then you've got your ripple effect again. So if there's one take-home message that I'd love people to take on board it’s to really feel that every single one of us can be an activist. Every single one of us can make their change that they personally make much, much, much more powerful by sharing it, and kindly sharing it and non-judgmentally sharing it. I know I didn't know what a ghost net was two years ago. I know twenty years ago I didn't know what non-organic cotton was compared with organic cotton. So I know that I have been unaware of these things until I was aware of them. And so, if we remember that, we don't need to judge anybody, whatever it is that they're doing, because they have not yet become conscious of it. So if you can share it in that way, so don't suddenly go, “Ugh, you're awful, you're buying slave goods!” – try and kind of do it in a way where you're actually going, “I used to buy that as well, but I've just found this out.” And that way, hopefully, it makes us have a kind of environment where we're bringing about more change quickly rather than people getting antagonistic with each other.
[0:41:42]
LH: So I saw a couple of your dresses, I think the panty-liner one and the ghost-net one, at the Extinction Rebellion fashion event, which I think was called XR52, in Bristol, and they really stood out. And actually the models seemed to love wearing them and kind of being actively involved with the whole protest.
[Editorial note: XR52 was a series of direct actions to withdraw support from industries that exploit people and planet for profit. Hash-tagged #DisruptTheCircusOfExcess on social media, actions in Bristol took place in and around Cabot Circus on 1 June 2019]
[0:42:03]
LT: Yes, and actually a lot of people thought I had a couple on the catwalk – I actually had 14 dresses on the catwalk. But, basically, because the main issue about that was not about saying, ‘Oh, look, these are made by me’, it was about saying, ‘This is a different way of doing fashion and this is sustainable’. So I didn't have some big placard going, ‘This is Linda Thomas eco-design’ against every dress. So, actually, I had all four of those ocean-waste dresses in it. And also then I had my regular items, if you can say that, in that I had the themed black and pink colours of the Extinction Rebellion fashion-action group in upcycled silk. So I had kind of a mixture there. And it was a really great day of action in that we were trying to bring in lots of different elements. So there was the catwalk, but there were also a lot of things to try and show solution basis as well as the problem. So, there were talks and information and things like that, but there was also like a really big clothes swap, and places where people could learn about mending, about upcycling, about printing onto their T-shirts and things – so just a different way of looking at it. And one of the ways that I'm really passionate about us changing as a society is moving from competition towards collaboration.
[0:43:36]
And I think this idea about the sharing economy and circular economy is really important as well. So this idea that, you know, maybe you have a drill, but you only use it once a week… er, once a week, that'd be quite a lot! … once a year, you know – do you actually need to have your own drill, or actually could there be one drill for your street or for you and four or five neighbours or something like that? And so, similarly, you know, it could be that maybe there's one of your neighbours has a sewing machine, and they wouldn't mind you sharing the cost of buying it with them, or giving them a few pounds to borrow it, or something like that. So this idea that we can start to work together and share our skills – so I take for granted that I know how to darn, how to sew on a button, all these things, but lots of us haven't been brought up with that anymore – and so it's the idea that we can kind of form a little collective where we help each other how to do those things. So we can still have our individuality – I have always loved colour – always, always always. It makes me feel really happy to wear bright colours. So I'm not suggesting that because we are rebelling against fast fashion that we have to stop being decorative in any way. We just need to rethink how we’re doing it. And the idea [behind] the XR52 activism is basically saying, [for] 52 weeks we’re not going to be complicit, we're not going to play along with disruptive industries anymore – so fashion being one of them – they are not changing – they are not changing at a speed – so there's people, there's individuals, there's some good companies that are doing their best, but the huge, huge businesses have just done a bit of green-washing, or nothing, but they're not actually trying to eradicate slavery, or trying to have less damaging processes for how they manufacture their clothes. So the idea is that we as consumers – we can drive that change instead. And I think this argument about ‘it has to come from legislation’ or ‘it has to come from the individuals’ or ‘it has to come from the companies’ – that argument is dead as far as I'm concerned. Let's go at this from every direction we can. So let's do everything we can as individuals. Let's be activists to try and get as much done through legislation, and from changing businesses as well.
[0:46:07]
So don't just go at it from one angle, go at it from every single direction that we possibly can. And what happens is, is we actually feel great about it. So some of the best meetings I've been to, and events, have actually been where it's groups of people, through Extinction Rebellion, didn't previously know each other, from all kinds of different backgrounds, and they're sharing their stories, their experience, how they feel about the climate emergency, whether they're, you know, feeling lost or in grief or in sadness, or they've got hope – and the nice thing is, you can nearly always find someone who's at a slightly different stage that you are on that day. So sometimes I get really down about it.
[0:46:49]
And it's really great that I might find somebody who's actually had a really great experience just happened, so they're feeling hope, or the other way around. So when we get together again, by sharing our experiences, we can actually empower each other and move towards the change that we need at a much greater speed. So, in terms of some of the things that I did on that day – because of the theme that we had as well for the International Rebellion in April 2019 in London – Bristol's area for the rebellion was Oxford Circus in London – and some incredible activists from the arts group in Bristol were responsible for the pink boat that had emblazoned on it ‘Tell The Truth’ – and that boat was also named after a Honduran eco-activist called Bertha Cáceres – and I might be saying her name wrong because I'm not good on accents – but she was murdered for being an activist – and we need to recognize that in the global south four eco-activists are murdered every day – so we are in a really privileged position in the global north where, although it can get scary at times, it is relatively speaking safe for us to be activists – and so, in solidarity with our brothers and sisters in the global south, I feel being an activist is really, really important. In terms of on the fashion show for that day, I was really excited about keeping this pink and black theme up, so I actually made some jewellery from ghost net, and also some some rope that one of the Two Minute Beach Clean community called Pauline had found only a couple of days before, and she’d posted it on to Instagram under the #2minutebeachclean hashtag, and I'd seen it and I said, ‘Can you post that to me, I'm going to make something with it?’ So I made this black and pink and neck piece and bangle in order to be worn alongside the other upcycled things, especially for Extinction Rebellion, XR52.
[0:49:19]
I made a number of purely black ghost-line necklaces as well for that day. But these ones were particularly sentimental for me for a number of reasons. One is that I'm really – feel –very hopeful about things like the Two Minute Beach Clean community where people are just going, ‘I've seen that litter, I'm going to pick it up’. It's not about ‘That wasn't mine, I've never dropped that ever in my life’ – you just see it and you deal with it. And it's the way this community behaves with each other and the way that we support each other. So it just felt really special to me that I could just use that pink stuff in it. And it's not my most exquisite piece of jewellery I've ever made, you know, it's quite rough and ready, but I just liked that I just got on and just did it. And so that's why it felt really important to me. The other thing was that it was worn by a model that has modelled for me before, who is a physics student at the University of Bristol. And it felt just really nice that I’d kind of got that connectivity with somebody who is in Bristol, and is just going out of her way, even when she was studying, to just come and do this event. On the catwalk that day, we had people from lots of different backgrounds – most people have never modelled before – and people of different ethnic groups and different ages and different physical abilities – and I just that's a really important way that we need to be more representative in fashion as well. So, it’s going to see… if anyone’s managed to listen to a lot of what I talk about, it does seem to always come back to these same themes about just a genuine passion for people and planet – and that if we can just be really kind to ourselves and each other, the kindness that we can then have towards the planet just will come naturally because we will see ourselves as part of nature, not separate from it.
LH: That's one of the XR slogans isn't it? Empathy, humility, frugality…
LT: Yes.
LH: Or I might have got that the wrong way round!
LT: Yeah, no, you’ve got it right, absolutely, yeah, yeah.
[0:51:40]
And so the frugality comes back to things like, you know, the mending and not buying things that you don't need and stuff like that.
LH: And actually there was a pledge that went with XR52, wasn’t there, about not buying any new clothes for a year.
LT: Yeah, yeah. So it wasn't a particularly difficult pledge for me, because I've done that many, many times before. So I did pledge to not buy new clothes for a year as well. But it's pretty much what I generally do for the last 13 years anyway. So yeah, but it does make a difference. And people get aware of their consuming habits as well. Because when you make a commitment like that, you suddenly realize, oh, actually, I was about to go shopping now – why was I going shopping? And you start to realize was it actually because I was sad or angry?
LH: Yeah, it’s psychological.
LT: Was it actually a need or was it something else? So it’s really useful.
LH: And you start to realize – actually, I don't really need that… or that or that.
LT: Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. … I’ve got a frog in my throat now, so I don’t think I can actually do much more!
LH: Well, we've covered quite a lot, so that’s great. Thanks Linda.
[0:52:49] [Ends]
LT: Hi, I'm Linda Thomas, and I'm an eco-fashion designer. And I've got a passion for upcycling. So the first thing I'll probably clarify is what upcycling is because it confuses a lot of people. So, recycling is when we break down something to make something new. So people are often familiar from their kerbside collections about when they get their bottles or their paper collected, and then that's broken down to make new bottles or paper or something else. Upcycling is when you take a hold of something and you actually take it further up the journey. So, generally, it uses much less water and electricity to create something new. And it’s often done or more of a bespoke level. So, often, it's making individual things rather than recycling, [which] is much more of a scaled-up production line – if I have to kind of over simplify it. So, I generally make wedding dresses and other individual pieces by upcycling nice, luxurious materials, so silks and things like that, where I've bought damaged things from charity shops, and I cut them up and redesign them. One of my other passions, though, is about the issue we have with ocean waste. So, a few years ago, I saw an image of a big stash of body boards on a beach in Cornwall. And all of these body boards had been collected in just a few months by some people from the volunteers working with Keep Britain Tidy. And in that one image there were 400 or 600 body boards. And each one of them had a polystyrene core, and covered in a plastic fabric outer. And lots of people will be familiar with these designs, you get dolphins on them, and sharks and mermaids and all kinds of images, and appeal particularly to children and very young children. And these boards, basically, their inner polystyrene part snaps.
[0:02:25] And that renders them pretty useless. Now, this sometimes happens within a few hours, but typically within a week or so. And, generally, they don’t last for more than one or two holidays if people are lucky. So, when I saw this image, I was horrified about how big this problem was. And it turns out that fourteen and a half thousand of these are dumped on just beaches in the south-west of England alone every year. So, I got to thinking, how could I kind of use my skills to get this information out there? Because I was already an eco-fashion designer, I thought, I wonder, could I create a dress, because in terms of the media, in terms of in papers, on the television, we love images of ladies and dresses, actually, you know, if you just look at the front of magazine covers and everything else, you get a woman in a dress – whether it's royalty, or something else, we love those images. So, I just thought could I create a dress from these. And that's how the story of my first ocean-waste dress began. So, the first dress was called the Wave of Waste dress. It was 22 metres long, and it was made from 100 of these dumped body boards, which were collected from just three beaches over a few months by the Beach Care South West team of Keep Britain Tidy. And I basically went to collect these body boards from them, strip them down, and… all of… every single part of it was all plastic. So you've got polystyrene – now, polystyrene, as a lot of us know, breaks up into very small pieces. The thing about polystyrene is it also attracts other toxins to it. So when it's in the sea, other chemicals and things get stuck onto these little polystyrene balls. And then they disperse quite widely, and can travel thousands of miles. So that's what's inside – if it starts to break down, it can actually go through the hole where the leash is normally attached. The leash is also another form of plastic. That breaks off. The outer covering itself is plastic. So it was all plastic. And when it's salt-damaged as well, you can't actually recycle any of that stuff. So, we were very lucky in this instance, in that there was a surf shack that was being built, and so they took the polystyrene for using in their insulation. And then I took all the outers together. After I kind of saw the size of the problem, it then came to this kind of magic number of 100. It was literally that was exactly how many were there, which I couldn't kind of quite believe. Once we'd been doing it for hours on end, stripping these boards off, I suddenly thought it'd be nice if it's going to be 100. So I hadn't really set out originally to make a 22-metre dress. But once I’d got these boards, and I'd got all this there, I felt like I wanted to do the most that I could. So, I basically laid them out in this lounge that I'm sitting in now for this interview, and I did sort of five to six metres at a time [and] tried to pattern coordinate. What I wanted to do was to create a dress that from a distance would catch the eye and people would go “Wow!” But my aim was that that “wow” would turn into an “eeugh” as people look closer. So I tried to really juxtaposition things that were a bit clashing. So I would have an image of a shark and a quite an aggressive image next to a very stereotyped girly or mermaid image. And I put the two together to kind of have this slight clash. I also tried to work with the colours so that there was this kind of gradation of the colours, from the blues to the oranges and yellows and pinks. And my son actually who, at the time, I think he was 10 or 11 years old, he actually would help me line them up across the floor as well to try and get these patterns really nice. Then I'd pin them up, and then sew them together with some organic cotton. And, in the end, it took me months and months to do this, which I wasn't expecting. And it took over my whole house in the end. So it literally went from the top of the house all the way down the bottom and out the back door by the time I'd finished. But it meant it was eye-catching. And so we launched that dress in Cornwall, and it –
LH: What year, sorry?
LT: It was launched in September 2016... I think. [Editorial note: The actual launch date was 22 September 2017, at Watergate Bay, Newquay]
[0:07:21]
I might have to check. It's all a bit of a blur now. And it was worn by Emma Skinner who's actually from a really famous surf family. And she's been a pro surfer herself in the past. And she was absolutely brilliant. And we then had her all made up really wild with eco hair and makeup. And on the beach the dress actually took off in the wind. So we've ended up with these really stunning kind of images with it afloat, kind of drifting across the sky, which was just one of those lucks where nature played with us nicely at the time. But that kind of started the whole thing. So I didn't set out to become a designer of ocean-waste dresses. … The long and the short of the story is I was an eco-fashion designer and I cared about the environment, but I didn't quite know that it was going to lead in this journey. But I think, as with many things, sometimes once the journey starts and you realize you can do something with it, you then can't let it go. So… my next dress after that was then the 99 Dead Balloon dress.
[0:08:44]
And I was actually contacted by one of my friends who saw that there was a children's author called Ellie Jackson, who was writing about ocean plastic in children's books, and her next one was actually going to be about balloons and the danger that they caused. And so I actually got in touch with her and said would she like me to help by creating a dress that she could use and reach out to the families and the children even more? So, she wrote Marli’s Tangled Tale and I then created the 99 Dead Balloon dress and cape to go with it – for her and her daughter to wear. Now that was also launched in Cornwall. But on the day that that got launched, we had almost thick rain that you couldn't see through. So it was quite a different scenario. But it was really great again, reaching out with lots of people of different ages, and I went into schools with the dress, and it really caught their imagination. So, again, this kind of visual impact where people see the dress and go like “Wow, what's that?” and then start to get the story. So my real aim with that dress is to try and hope that people will realize that all balloons, lanterns, whatever we choose to release up in the air will eventually come back down and land in the sea, or on elsewhere on the land, and it's killing our wildlife. So, whatever people do to kind of look for alternatives instead, just like with the body boards, where you can hire body boards, or you can get more solid construction ones, whether they are made of plastic, you can get ones that last decades rather than days, or even wooden ones as well.
[0:10:43] So that was the second one. And after that, the next one always takes a bit more explaining… because the next one was the panty-liner dress. And this was a real gift for me because the issue of ocean plastic in and how it originates from wet wipes and from menstrual products is something that I'm particularly passionate about. Probably because I have got a background in medicine – I was a GP for many years before this – and I was aware of these products being not that healthy for women and girls, and also for the environment at the same time. So, what happened with this was there was a wonderful woman as well – she still is – called Tony Doric. And she was recovering from breast cancer. And during this recovery process, she had started doing beach cleans every day. And while she was beach cleaning, she had spotted this tangled mass out at sea, but it was too far away and she was not well enough at the time to try and pull it out. But she gave it the eye and she said, I'm going to get you. And a year later, she was a bit further on in her recovery, and it was a bit closer to shore, and she saw it again. And she thought I'm going to get you now. And with just a handful of volunteers, she pulled out this tangled mass of a couple of tons worth of material. You see the video of it, it looks kind of almost like whales intestines or something. It looks really, really incredible – like, what is this, and it got kind of nicknamed the Cornish Sea Monster – it was a very strange looking mass. And through research and kind of investigating it, we came to understand that this was probably the top sheet that's used in the construction of menstrual products. So this is like with a panty liner or a menstrual pad, it's that very, very top layer, which is very, very similar to wet wipes – you almost can't tell the difference. And it actually can be made of about 90% plastic. So it looks quite soft and cottony. And so a lot of people, understandably, don't realize the plastic content of this stuff. But actually, the way that I knew how much plastic was in it is once I decided to try and make a dress from this I tried to iron a little bit on a very cool iron. And it immediately melted in a way that only plastic does. So bear in mind that even synthetic clothing often that you can iron still if it's a cool enough iron setting, and this stuff you couldn't iron it at all. So eventually I had to get clever about that. And with the help of my mother and old techniques, I used damp linen tablecloth… no, tea cloths to be each side of it so that I could cool line it, so that it could create more of a flat line on the dress. And that basically went on to be a real emblem that could be used for discussing this huge issue of ocean waste that comes from menstrual products. So the panty liner dress was made it originally for the launch of an ocean plastic conference in London, at the Royal Geographical Society. And after that it's then been used at City Hall for a meeting around menstrual plastic and plastic-free periods.
[0:14:46]
So basically can be used in both issues around ocean plastic and the issue around mental products. And the reason I say it was a bit of a gift is because obviously thinking of my health and safety, but also models and other people that are going to wear the dress, I couldn't actually think that it was going to be okay to use any of the menstrual pads or tampon applicators that I find on beach cleans to make into a dress, knowing that they’d come into contact with blood and other bodily fluids. But although this stuff was really dirty, it was dirty from sand and from mud and from seaweed and not any bodily fluids. So that's why it was a gift for me because it meant I could actually make this dress in a safe way, even if it was somewhat time-consuming. And it means that something that is normally hidden away and not talked about, it can actually bring into the public attention. That brings me on to the other subject, which is about bringing things into discussion that are maybe hidden away. And what we have to realize is that when we don't talk about stuff, it does actually benefit the people that are quite complicit in the destruction of the environment. So it suits them very much. If we take the issue of period plastic, it’s very convenient for there to be some kind of taboo around this, and that we don't talk about what we do ourselves or what we do with our children or other things in terms of our menstrual products. Because then it continues to be that no one knows there's so much plastic in them. And that there's so many chemicals, including hormone disruptors and things like that, that if we were just there talking in the playground or talking in the office about this, then we probably would have stopped using these products a while ago.
[0:16:51] So, I really like the idea of us starting conversations more – I have a bit of a phrase where I say, ‘we don't just need to walk our talk now, but we need to chat along the way’, which is probably a bit of a nonsensical sentence. But what I mean by that is we need to be true to our own ethics. So it's no use saying ‘you do this’ or ‘you do that’ while we don't actually do things ourselves. So I really believe that there's nothing I want to educate about or teach about that I don't want to be a part of myself. But I also feel if I just do that, but I do that silently and quietly, so in a corner, I’ve maybe stopped using these products myself, or I've made a lifestyle change, but I don't actually share it, then we fail to get that ripple effect. And the ripple effect is so important now, because that's how we can make change happen so quickly … We all know now that we need change to be really, really quick if we're going to avert the massive scale of the climate emergency that we're in, and this sixth mass extinction – we've got to have fast change. The thing about us sharing information is immediately once we start to know what we're dealing with, know what the solutions are, we can actually act really quickly. I can literally one week be buying menstrual products that are 90% plastic. And the next week I can be not doing that ever again from that point on in my life. If I share that information in a non-judgmental and kind way, then I could have, by the end of the week after that, that ten people have then stopped. If they then do it… and so on. And so this is how the wave of solutions can actually ripple out an incredible speed. And that's why sometimes people talk about in terms of change that you have this kind of slowly, slowly, slowly, slowly, and then suddenly, boom! it takes off. We are really on that kind of moment now. And yes, we’re realizing that this whole issue is so much worse than we could have possibly imagined. And so much information had been suppressed. But we are also on that escalating scale now where it stopped being slowly, slowly, slowly. And that's what gives me hope.
[0:19:19]
LH: You were talking about how people aren't only not aware of the issues around menstrual products, but also that there are alternative products out there.
LT: Yeah, yeah. So in terms of menstrual products, I switched over myself a long time ago to organic, washable menstrual pads. So you just soak them in cold water, like lots of women actually do soak their underwear when they have had period accidents. And we don't talk about that. But actually I've never met a woman who hasn't had to put pair of pants and soak them in some cold water. So you just soak them like that, then they go in the washing machine, and then hang them on the line or whatever. And then they're ready again for the next time. So I swapped over to those. There are now so many different styles and colours and patterns, and lots and lots of different ones, including how to cut and make your own one if you’ve got a sewing machine and you like to do that.
[0:20:22]
And then there's also the alternative of menstrual cups. So these are silicone-based cups that are worn inside the vagina, and they sit just below the cervix. And those can last for ten years plus, so, yes, although silicone is a form of plastic, you're talking about one small cup lasting ten years. So that's been a real breakthrough that's been in recent times. And those are taking off around the world and making huge differences, particularly in areas where we've got massive period poverty as well. And the other thing is for that, that not one size fits all, you know – we've got to be aware that different things are suitable for different people and at different points in their lives, so for some women, they may well need to be using tampons, as well, or multiple different things. And you can get organic tampons that don't have any plastic content in them at all. And they'll always be clearly labelled like that. So the way to spot it is when something says ‘with cotton’ or something like that may well be something called green-washing, which I'll get on to in a minute. But if it actually says ‘made with 100% organic cotton’ then you know what you're dealing with. And you can get disposable, hundred-percent organic-cotton menstrual pads as well. So there's such an array of stuff out there. So literally, you know, we could have a movement, where overnight, we actually just stopped that stuff. And the great thing about some of these alternatives, like menstrual cups or washable pads, is they save a lot of money as well. So, it's not one of those where I don't have the money to have that luxurious eco choice, which people can sometimes feel maybe in terms of buying organic food or something else. So it's something where it's a win-win, which is really great. And you're getting separated off and not getting close to those chemicals, which are also in those products. So I’m just going to touch on briefly what green-washing is.
[0:22:33]
So green-washing is when there is a deliberate attempt by a business or organization or politician, or an individual, to market the green or ecological aspect of what they're doing or what their product is – in order to deceive. So it's an eco-version of white-washing. So it means that, say there's a business that is 98% using slavery, but they have got 2% of their products where they have used fair trade organic cotton on them, let's say, for instance. So green-washing would be that they would promote their brand, not just that one product, but make it look as if that one product was their brand. So they would make that one thing synonymous. You saw their brand, and you thought, ‘Oh, they do that fair trade organic stuff. Whereas, actually, it was just a tiny, tiny bit of their business. So, in other words, ethically and morally in the substance of that company, they didn't actually care. They didn't actually want to eradicate slavery. What they wanted was to get the money associated with fair trade and organic. And so, in these times of change, we need to really watch out for green-washing. Because, the same as we're going to get the uprising of the great, we are also going to see the uprising of green-washing.
[0:24:11]
LH: And there's a surprising amount, isn’t there? Once you start looking into it – how many of these companies are doing that.
LT: Yes, there's a lot of companies doing green-washing. It's a big money maker. And the funny thing is, a lot of small businesses, like myself, you know, sometimes we don't actually name all the good things that we're doing, because it comes so naturally for us to do that, so we don't talk about that all the time. So, I think there probably needs to be more of a spreading of information where people who are genuinely doing the right thing, and companies genuinely doing the right thing, need to constantly be talking about that. And we need to make different standards and labelling and things like that – so it will make green-washing harder. But that’s a bit about why I'm an activist – I mean, having lived in Bristol now pretty much non-stop since 1991, apart from one year, I’ve been in a city that I am very, very conscious has, you know, formed a lot of its wealth on the back of slavery, and this is another big issue within fashion. So, although this is a moving slightly away from my ocean waste dresses, I actually believe the issues of climate change and climate degradation is strongly linked with the issues of slavery. So, if we look at what originally happened, particularly, you know, in the Americas, it was very much people and planet being molested at the same time. And we can't even begin to imagine what it must have been like for people who actually had come from backgrounds where they were deeply connected with Mother Nature, and they were having to read the land of its natural balance in order to plant crops in a way that was not sustainable, and was not what they had been brought up with themselves.
[0:26:22]
And I think similarly with us now trying to tackle the issue of climate breakdown, we can't do this in isolation without looking at what is happening to people as well. The issue of slavery is still very present in this modern world. And the knowing that there are more slaves in the world now than before the abolition of slavery is really, really important. As far as I'm aware, and somebody might be able to correct me, but, I don't think ever in the history of mankind have we ever labelled goods ‘made by slaves’. It's been something that has always been swept under the carpet and treated as if it's not there and looked the other way. I think one of the clues that we can always look for in terms of clothing, is, I just look at the label – what's it made of? And where was it made? And if it's made in a place with stuff that I don't recognize, then you have to question it may well be slavery. If it's not slavery, it should be easy to identify that it's not – so, either labelled that it's fair trade, or named that who made it. So my clothing, for instance, doesn't have a fair trade label on it, because I make all of it. But I clearly explain where I've got that fabric from. I explain that it's come from upcycling. So, I think we need to realize that almost as if there's an invisible label on goods, saying ‘this is made by slaves’, unless we can see the visible label that tells us otherwise. And so in terms of us empowering ourselves and each other, we really can make a difference when we start shopping differently in terms of clothing. And fashion is the second biggest polluter after the oil industry. So if you change the way that you shop for clothing, you are having a massive impact. And if you tell your friends, why you're changing the way you're shopping, you then have that ripple effect again. So you can see with my passion for ripple effects, why I got involved with ocean plastic!
[0:29:00]
LH: I think we should stress that connection – you know, what you were saying about between slavery and plastic pollution and the fashion industry … People aren't often aware of those associations and connections, are they?
LT: Yeah… yeah. And that leads me on to my next ocean-waste dress, which was the ghost-net dress. The ghost net dress, of all the dresses, changed me the most. And the reason it changed me the most is because I didn't know what gill net is. And gill net is the net that makes up the … skirt part of this dress. It's a very, very fine mesh of net. And it hangs vertically in the sea. So, if you imagine it, kind of, from the ocean surface, hanging down towards the bottom of the ocean. And it has floats at the top to stop it sinking. And it's called a gill net because it traps fish by their gills. And that's how it kills them. And, with gill nets, because they're hanging almost invisibly in the sea, if those gill nets are not brought back up, they then will trap bigger predators and then bigger predators. And what happens is, the whole net, through the weight of all the creatures trapped in it, will actually start to sink to the bottom. And when all of those creatures have then been degraded, the net will then actually float back up again, like a ghost rising, and the whole process starts all over again. And I say that the ghost-net dress changed me the most, because as I worked on the ghost-net dress, I would get trapped in it. Now I say trapped in it, because obviously I was okay, but actually I think I nearly broke a few limbs a few times, because I would just be working on one bit, and then I'd find out that my toe was actually completely trapped in it and it was tripping me up. And always what got me out was not struggling but getting my hands down and untangling myself. And I became so conscious that it was my hands with my ten digits that meant I could get free. And if I pulled against it, if I struggled, it just got tighter and worse. And so, at that moment, I just had this very small window into understanding how horrific this stuff must be. And it changed the way that I kind of viewed fishing.
[0:31:59]
I already was very aware about different marks that you can have on fish when you buy them, such as the MSC certificate, suggesting that it's not from fish where they've been overfished. But the process of making that dress made me realize that, actually, that is still quite meaningless in terms of having certain styles of net full-stop, and that these are all made of plastic. And I see them all the time on my beach cleans. So the particular net that's in the ghost-net dress was actually given to me by Fathoms Free, which is a group of divers, volunteer divers, that actually go down and dive down and try and get big chunks of ghosts net where it's actually in the sea still. They also paddle and kayak and things and pick it up as well. But the idea that – we all see it when we do beach cleans – there's so much ghost net and ghost line around, and I feel that with all of these problems the only way to tackle it is three-fold.
[0:33:20]
So there's three things that we really need to look at in my opinion when we're looking at any of these waste issues. And the first thing is we've got to see what is getting in there and stop it at source. So, in the case of these different dresses, I want us to stop putting these menstrual products, or the ghost net, or the body boards, or the balloons, into the environment in the first place. So that's the first thing – stop putting more stuff in. The second thing is, is that we must rescue and retrieve what we have already got in there. And that is in vast problem. And people are tackling this in the ocean in lots of different ways. But it is actually really essential we start to get this stuff out of the sea and as quick as we possibly can. Because when this stuff is in the sea, it is changing all kinds of things about how the sea behaves. It actually makes it warm up quicker as well, having all this pollution within it, as well as all the creatures that are being endangered for the longer it stays in there. But the third aspect is, is that, once we've actually rescued this stuff from the sea, or from the environment, I believe it's really important that we repurpose it in some way. So whether that's recycling, upcycling, mending, whatever it is that we're doing with it, I think it's really important to try and do that wherever possible. Because if we take this enormous amount of waste that we have in the sea, and we dump all of that in landfill, we are just going to replace one problem with another. And we know that landfill stuff, also we're running out of land for doing that, but also stuff leaches out of the land as well when we're doing that, so we just don't have that opportunity. The other thing is, a lot of these things that are in the sea, it's actually a valuable resource, because we need to stop using new fossil fuels in order to create plastics. If we've already got lots of this stuff in circulation, we can use that instead. So, in the case of ghosts nets, there's a fabric that's being made called econyl that's actually using the ghost net and other forms of plastic that's already in the environment to make a new fabric, rather than using new fossil fuels to make it. So I think things like that are really important and will make a difference in how we tackle this climate emergency.
[0:36:06]
LH: Can you just describe to me what you've already told me off-mic about the effects of the ghost net? So it can literally trap like hundreds of thousands of marine animals, including whales?
LT: Yeah.
LH: Seals, dolphins… the whole lot, isn't it?
LT: Yeah. Yeah, yeah.
LH: So do you want to say a little bit about that?
[0:36:23]
LT: The ghost-net dress, for me, was also a really important one, because of the amount of death and destruction that we are getting from ghost nets, ghosts lines, and other lost fishing tackle at sea. And some of it is lost accidentally, but some of it is deliberate as well. And I am going to come back to the same theme again, about people and planet together, in that we have got, on this planet, at the moment, at sea, we have massive-scale fishing vessels that are full of people entrapped in slavery. So they're doing unethical practices for people and planet at the same time. And so we must look at these things together. And we can't blame those people who are on the on the ship who are doing it, because they are entrapped themselves. So we got to go to a higher level to look at it. And in terms of the damage that we are having from ghost net, it's really enormous, so 100,000 large-scale animals at sea – so we're talking whales, dolphins, seals – are killed every year from ghost-net entrapment. So, if you can imagine, where we're already in this pressurized environment, we're in the sixth mass extinction, and then through our waste alone, we are killing those kind of numbers of large animals, before we've even got onto the small animals – then you've got what happens to this ghost net when it starts to break down, along with all the other plastics, and the micro plastics, is now going down into the very, very, very smallest thing that we can have at the very beginning of the food chain – so we've got the plankton – these tiny, microscopic things, which also are ingesting micro-plastics – so another reason why getting as much of this stuff out of the ocean as quickly as we can is really important. Now we're talking at the moment from Bristol, where I live, and you might think, well, I'm not that close to the sea, maybe I go, you know, once a year if I'm lucky or something like that. But actually all water leads to the sea eventually. So, whether that's your toilet, your sink, or the storm drain on your street, what goes into those places can all eventually lead to the sea. So, just last week, there were hundreds of beaches around England, Wales and Scotland that were not safe for bathing, because we'd had such a large amount of heavy rain that sewage was actually overflowing into the sea.
[0:39:27]
So you can never ever think, well because I've put this particular bit of plastic here or there that it is away, it is no more – so you absolutely need to consider everything to do with the water supply. So, in terms of your toilet, only, pee poo, and paper – so don't put anything else down there, because it could all end up in the sea eventually. Our sewage system cannot cope with the amount of stuff that gets flushed down that isn’t those three things. And so that's another thing that's easy for us to do – it's easy to go, I'm never ever going to do that again, I'm never going to flush anything down my toilet apart from those three things. And so we can immediately bring about change – tell everyone in your family, your friends – why are you doing that? And then you've got your ripple effect again. So if there's one take-home message that I'd love people to take on board it’s to really feel that every single one of us can be an activist. Every single one of us can make their change that they personally make much, much, much more powerful by sharing it, and kindly sharing it and non-judgmentally sharing it. I know I didn't know what a ghost net was two years ago. I know twenty years ago I didn't know what non-organic cotton was compared with organic cotton. So I know that I have been unaware of these things until I was aware of them. And so, if we remember that, we don't need to judge anybody, whatever it is that they're doing, because they have not yet become conscious of it. So if you can share it in that way, so don't suddenly go, “Ugh, you're awful, you're buying slave goods!” – try and kind of do it in a way where you're actually going, “I used to buy that as well, but I've just found this out.” And that way, hopefully, it makes us have a kind of environment where we're bringing about more change quickly rather than people getting antagonistic with each other.
[0:41:42]
LH: So I saw a couple of your dresses, I think the panty-liner one and the ghost-net one, at the Extinction Rebellion fashion event, which I think was called XR52, in Bristol, and they really stood out. And actually the models seemed to love wearing them and kind of being actively involved with the whole protest.
[Editorial note: XR52 was a series of direct actions to withdraw support from industries that exploit people and planet for profit. Hash-tagged #DisruptTheCircusOfExcess on social media, actions in Bristol took place in and around Cabot Circus on 1 June 2019]
[0:42:03]
LT: Yes, and actually a lot of people thought I had a couple on the catwalk – I actually had 14 dresses on the catwalk. But, basically, because the main issue about that was not about saying, ‘Oh, look, these are made by me’, it was about saying, ‘This is a different way of doing fashion and this is sustainable’. So I didn't have some big placard going, ‘This is Linda Thomas eco-design’ against every dress. So, actually, I had all four of those ocean-waste dresses in it. And also then I had my regular items, if you can say that, in that I had the themed black and pink colours of the Extinction Rebellion fashion-action group in upcycled silk. So I had kind of a mixture there. And it was a really great day of action in that we were trying to bring in lots of different elements. So there was the catwalk, but there were also a lot of things to try and show solution basis as well as the problem. So, there were talks and information and things like that, but there was also like a really big clothes swap, and places where people could learn about mending, about upcycling, about printing onto their T-shirts and things – so just a different way of looking at it. And one of the ways that I'm really passionate about us changing as a society is moving from competition towards collaboration.
[0:43:36]
And I think this idea about the sharing economy and circular economy is really important as well. So this idea that, you know, maybe you have a drill, but you only use it once a week… er, once a week, that'd be quite a lot! … once a year, you know – do you actually need to have your own drill, or actually could there be one drill for your street or for you and four or five neighbours or something like that? And so, similarly, you know, it could be that maybe there's one of your neighbours has a sewing machine, and they wouldn't mind you sharing the cost of buying it with them, or giving them a few pounds to borrow it, or something like that. So this idea that we can start to work together and share our skills – so I take for granted that I know how to darn, how to sew on a button, all these things, but lots of us haven't been brought up with that anymore – and so it's the idea that we can kind of form a little collective where we help each other how to do those things. So we can still have our individuality – I have always loved colour – always, always always. It makes me feel really happy to wear bright colours. So I'm not suggesting that because we are rebelling against fast fashion that we have to stop being decorative in any way. We just need to rethink how we’re doing it. And the idea [behind] the XR52 activism is basically saying, [for] 52 weeks we’re not going to be complicit, we're not going to play along with disruptive industries anymore – so fashion being one of them – they are not changing – they are not changing at a speed – so there's people, there's individuals, there's some good companies that are doing their best, but the huge, huge businesses have just done a bit of green-washing, or nothing, but they're not actually trying to eradicate slavery, or trying to have less damaging processes for how they manufacture their clothes. So the idea is that we as consumers – we can drive that change instead. And I think this argument about ‘it has to come from legislation’ or ‘it has to come from the individuals’ or ‘it has to come from the companies’ – that argument is dead as far as I'm concerned. Let's go at this from every direction we can. So let's do everything we can as individuals. Let's be activists to try and get as much done through legislation, and from changing businesses as well.
[0:46:07]
So don't just go at it from one angle, go at it from every single direction that we possibly can. And what happens is, is we actually feel great about it. So some of the best meetings I've been to, and events, have actually been where it's groups of people, through Extinction Rebellion, didn't previously know each other, from all kinds of different backgrounds, and they're sharing their stories, their experience, how they feel about the climate emergency, whether they're, you know, feeling lost or in grief or in sadness, or they've got hope – and the nice thing is, you can nearly always find someone who's at a slightly different stage that you are on that day. So sometimes I get really down about it.
[0:46:49]
And it's really great that I might find somebody who's actually had a really great experience just happened, so they're feeling hope, or the other way around. So when we get together again, by sharing our experiences, we can actually empower each other and move towards the change that we need at a much greater speed. So, in terms of some of the things that I did on that day – because of the theme that we had as well for the International Rebellion in April 2019 in London – Bristol's area for the rebellion was Oxford Circus in London – and some incredible activists from the arts group in Bristol were responsible for the pink boat that had emblazoned on it ‘Tell The Truth’ – and that boat was also named after a Honduran eco-activist called Bertha Cáceres – and I might be saying her name wrong because I'm not good on accents – but she was murdered for being an activist – and we need to recognize that in the global south four eco-activists are murdered every day – so we are in a really privileged position in the global north where, although it can get scary at times, it is relatively speaking safe for us to be activists – and so, in solidarity with our brothers and sisters in the global south, I feel being an activist is really, really important. In terms of on the fashion show for that day, I was really excited about keeping this pink and black theme up, so I actually made some jewellery from ghost net, and also some some rope that one of the Two Minute Beach Clean community called Pauline had found only a couple of days before, and she’d posted it on to Instagram under the #2minutebeachclean hashtag, and I'd seen it and I said, ‘Can you post that to me, I'm going to make something with it?’ So I made this black and pink and neck piece and bangle in order to be worn alongside the other upcycled things, especially for Extinction Rebellion, XR52.
[0:49:19]
I made a number of purely black ghost-line necklaces as well for that day. But these ones were particularly sentimental for me for a number of reasons. One is that I'm really – feel –very hopeful about things like the Two Minute Beach Clean community where people are just going, ‘I've seen that litter, I'm going to pick it up’. It's not about ‘That wasn't mine, I've never dropped that ever in my life’ – you just see it and you deal with it. And it's the way this community behaves with each other and the way that we support each other. So it just felt really special to me that I could just use that pink stuff in it. And it's not my most exquisite piece of jewellery I've ever made, you know, it's quite rough and ready, but I just liked that I just got on and just did it. And so that's why it felt really important to me. The other thing was that it was worn by a model that has modelled for me before, who is a physics student at the University of Bristol. And it felt just really nice that I’d kind of got that connectivity with somebody who is in Bristol, and is just going out of her way, even when she was studying, to just come and do this event. On the catwalk that day, we had people from lots of different backgrounds – most people have never modelled before – and people of different ethnic groups and different ages and different physical abilities – and I just that's a really important way that we need to be more representative in fashion as well. So, it’s going to see… if anyone’s managed to listen to a lot of what I talk about, it does seem to always come back to these same themes about just a genuine passion for people and planet – and that if we can just be really kind to ourselves and each other, the kindness that we can then have towards the planet just will come naturally because we will see ourselves as part of nature, not separate from it.
LH: That's one of the XR slogans isn't it? Empathy, humility, frugality…
LT: Yes.
LH: Or I might have got that the wrong way round!
LT: Yeah, no, you’ve got it right, absolutely, yeah, yeah.
[0:51:40]
And so the frugality comes back to things like, you know, the mending and not buying things that you don't need and stuff like that.
LH: And actually there was a pledge that went with XR52, wasn’t there, about not buying any new clothes for a year.
LT: Yeah, yeah. So it wasn't a particularly difficult pledge for me, because I've done that many, many times before. So I did pledge to not buy new clothes for a year as well. But it's pretty much what I generally do for the last 13 years anyway. So yeah, but it does make a difference. And people get aware of their consuming habits as well. Because when you make a commitment like that, you suddenly realize, oh, actually, I was about to go shopping now – why was I going shopping? And you start to realize was it actually because I was sad or angry?
LH: Yeah, it’s psychological.
LT: Was it actually a need or was it something else? So it’s really useful.
LH: And you start to realize – actually, I don't really need that… or that or that.
LT: Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. … I’ve got a frog in my throat now, so I don’t think I can actually do much more!
LH: Well, we've covered quite a lot, so that’s great. Thanks Linda.
[0:52:49] [Ends]