On a late summer morning in 1983, my dad came back from town where he worked as a veterinarian in the county government with a monthly salary of about US$20. He brought something with him – two baby blue shirts for my sister and me (10 and 8 years old, respectively) as a gift to encourage us to walk to school in the village 10 kilometres away, high up in the mountains. It was a gorgeous shirt with velvet embroidery around the collar and shiny white buttons, and it was the first new piece of clothing I had ever owned. As the youngest child of six, I had only worn clothes outgrown by my sisters, sometimes even my brothers. At home, materials were kept in use for as long as possible and then converted for other uses. This was the norm in my village and was probably the same for the entirety of China, as the country’s annual GDP per capita was $225, equivalent to 1.4 percent of America’s, and less than half of Madagascar’s at that time.
A call for a lifestyle change to end plastic pollution
