Last year’s national winner for Ireland, Castleisland Community School did some amazing work on the Fashionable Water Challenge.

They created a new look made from recycled wooden corks, bottle caps, thumbtacks, a sponge, matches, gloves, baby dolls, a mop, an apron and other household items. The school showcased this outfit as part of their fashion show. Their look, called “The Modern Man”, emphasising the jobs done at home that require water i.e. cleaning, washing dishes, moping the floor, making babies bottles, cooking and finally scrubbing the pots and pans!

Lots of local clothing shops as well as a charity shop called Second Chance took part in their fashion show. The charity shop was modeling six different outfits, emphasising the quality of clothes found in second hand shops and encouraging responsible consumption. The Fashionable Water Challenge allowed students to examine the amount of water that goes into producing clothes and think of alternatives to buying brand new clothes, like redesigning and upcycling old or second hand clothes.

Sustainable consumption and production aims for “doing more and better with less”, Castleisland Community School have shown that this is possible. With initiatives like this, they believe that they can substantially reduce waste generation through prevention, reduction, recycling and reuse by 2030.