Hello One Eighty fam,

This is our first blog! How exciting. We thought we would dive straight in and give you some more detail around who, what and why we started one eighty. The purpose of this blog is to go into further depth through undertaking our own research on the topics and challenges we are going to tackle on our Instagram. The blog will give more of a storyline behind each journey we’ve been on and give helpful suggestions.

But first, some background on us. Grace studied Fashion Knitwear and Meg studied International Fashion Business, both at Nottingham Trent. Whilst our courses did do a collab on a knitwear project, we actually met through our church student small group. We quickly bonded, and recognised that we had shared passions within social and environmental justice around the fashion industry. During the thick of covid times throughout our final year at uni, we would meet up for hours on long walks and always end up circling back to our frustrations with the climate crisis and consumer mindset.

So here we are 3 years later doing something about it!

It’s clear that your 20s are a very confusing time of life and no one ever really talks about it. You’re kinda just expected to know what to do, how to spend your money and live independently. So, we want to muddle through life in our 20s and figure out how the heck we are meant to live life more sustainably, especially on a budget and just starting out in the working world. We are not perfect and still have a long way to go, but with one small change at a time, we believe that a big impact can be made!

Why a sustainable lifestyle? Well, climate change is real my friends and we're not going to sugar coat it but we want to be able to take the weight of the crisis and break it down for you. So as we learn, we'll teach you and try to make this sustainable living thing much more enjoyable.

Let’s start with the greenhouse effect:

Greenhouse gases such as, Carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide and water vapour, are necessary to make our Earth liveable. They form a protective layer to help trap heat in our Earth’s atmosphere stopping the earth from freezing. Where we’ve gone wrong, is through burning fossil fuels, we have added excessive amounts to the greenhouse gas layer which is trapping more heat.

(Diagram from British Geological Survey)

This heat is causing the climate to change faster than living things are able to adapt. Eventually causing extreme weather changes.

Currently, the worlds temperature is at 1.2 degrees. However, the state of emissions presently being generated by all countries across the world set us on path for 2.4 degrees by 2030, if no change occurs. This is problematic because if the world goes above 2 degrees, it will cause even more devastation than we are seeing now;

· 99% of coral reefs would be destroyed

· Sea levels will rise between 1 and 2.3 feet by 2050

· And extreme weather will become more frequent, eg. Intense storms and longer droughts

With all this in mind, we know change needs to happen imminently so that our generation and the ones to come, stand a chance.

So, join the journey with us!

Let’s make a 180!

Love Meg and Grace