Meet Erin Shea.
She is a full time model and full time university student studying Herbal Medicine, and is a fierce advocate for sustainable solutions. FibreTrace® found time in Erin’s hectic schedule to uncover the flaws in the fashion industry, share resources for sustainable living and learn how to make greener choices.
What first sparked your interest in environmentalism and environmental medicine? What has been your journey to now?
My dad was an old school farmer— so I grew up being outside a lot, in an environment that I equated to “nature”. My dad moved into doing more restoration work in places that were significantly more biodiverse, healthy ecosystems - which led me into an existential moment of realisation that many farms aren’t a healthy “natural” environment after all. So together, my father and I have been on a journey discovering how farmers can change their methods to have more positive outcomes on biodiversity, soil health ecosystem functioning.
Working as a model in the fashion industry - what problems have you seen and how do you wish the industry would change in the future?
I think the main difficulty is that there is not just one problem with a simple solution— we have an entire system of farming, manufacturing, dying, selling, and consuming that is riddled with systemic issues driven by profits. Consumers are paying less and less for fast fashion because so much of the production costs aren’t included in it’s price— its painstaking costs are often on the environment or on the humans manufacturing them.
I see the solution as a change in systems — we need to support the farmers who play a huge stewardship role in our soil health and ecosystem biodiversity. This is already starting with initiatives such as the Australian governments Agriculture Stewardship Pilot program. We also need to incentivise ethical manufacturing and wages at all levels of production.
We need to change what we all value so these systems can actually work— we need to value the health of our planet over what we can extract from it, paying workers a fair wage over getting a bargain, soil health over mass production, and accountability over our access to things we don’t really need.
You use your platform to speak a lot about carbon, climate change and the environment. Who are your favourite resources/ Instagram accounts for this kind of information?
There are SO many incredible people doing work in this space that I am constantly learning from and I’ve saved a lot of them in my story highlights if anyone wants to dig a little deeper.
You can find Erin on Instagram under the handle, @erinshea__
