How to calculate your carbon footprint before you shop

If you're asking yourself how to make your wardrobe more sustainable, then a good place to start is finding out how your shopping habits are impacting the planet, and a new tool by luxury e-tailer Farfetch is doing all the hard work for you.

Launching today, the fashion footprint tool lets you the tool allows consumers, when choosing to make a purchase, to consider which materials can reduce the environmental impact of their purchase, and to see the environmental savings of buying new versus pre-owned clothes (both of which you can purchase on Farfetch).

For example, if I want to buy a linen piece, I find out that 1kg of the fabric is equivalent to driving 60km in a car and filling 21 bathtubs full of water. The tool tells me that I should instead look for recycled or organic linen, which should have a lower impact.

Of course, the impact on the planet is reduced even further if I want to buy a vintage or pre-owned item. By adding six dresses to my basket I find out that I have saved the planet the equivalent of one flight from London to Paris for carbon, a 6 person hot tub for water and 3 average-sized pineapples for waste.

SHOP THE CONSCIOUS EDIT

If you don't have time to calculate all of this (though I do urge you to do it, it's highly insightful), then you can shop from Farfetch's Positively Conscious edit.

These have been highly rated by Good On You, an independent app - of which Emma Watson is the face - which lets consumers check the fashion credentials of brands.

The Conscious Edit includes items by the likes of Hunza G, Stella McCartney, Matteau, Ancient Green Sandals and more.

Penny Goldstone

Penny Goldstone is the Digital Fashion Editor at Marie Claire, covering everything from catwalk trends to royal fashion and the latest high street and Instagram must-haves.

Penny grew up in France and studied languages and law at the Sorbonne Nouvelle University in Paris before moving to the UK for her MA in multimedia journalism at Bournemouth University. She moved to the UK permanently and has never looked back (though she does go back regularly to stock up on cheese and wine).

Although she's always loved fashion - she used to create scrapbooks of her favourite trends and looks, including Sienna Miller and Kate Moss' boho phase - her first job was at MoneySavingExpert.com, sourcing the best deals for everything from restaurants to designer sales.

However she quit after two years to follow her true passion, fashion journalism, and after many years of internships and freelance stints at magazines including Red, Cosmopolitan, Stylist and Good Housekeeping, landed her dream job as the Digital Fashion Editor at Marie Claire UK.

Her favourite part of the job is discovering new brands and meeting designers, and travelling the world to attend events and fashion shows. Seeing her first Chanel runway IRL at Paris Fashion Week was a true pinch-me moment.