Today, I'm wearing a cotton t-shirt, a ruffled black sweater that is 72 percent viscose and 28 percent nylon, and dark blue denim jeans. From a fashion perspective, I look okay. But by environmental standards, my outfit is a disaster.
The garment industry is a dirty business from start to finish - meaning my t-shirt and jeans' journey from cotton growing in field in Burkina Faso to my favorite local high street store, have had a major environmental impact.
Pesticides and chemicals aside, making the jeans and tee alone required around 13,000 liters of water. Nylon is a petrochemical, and viscose - made from wood-pulp - leads to deforestation.
That's bad news, considering it's become a near weekly ritual to scroll through all the fashion bloggers in my Instagram feed and then hit the shops to pick up a top or two to add to my already bursting-at-the-seams wardrobe.
I know, I know, I need to get a better hobby. Enter the #HowGreenAmI challenge.
Journey of discovery
Jennifer Collins in front of sales sign (Grace O'Malley)
Giving up sales: Torture for a fashion junkie
I vowed to give up shopping for *cough* a month and do some research on fashion's environmental impact to see if more knowledge would help me change my ways.
I know a month of not shopping is actually not a big deal for normal people - as my friend's have helpfully pointed out.
But to be clear, this isn't really about challenging myself to not shop: It's about using the time to understand the problems this resource-intensive industry has.
In the spirit of full disclosure, two days before the challenge started I went to my local shopping center in Dublin and bought new jeans, cheap earrings and two of the same dress from Penneys (the name for Primark in Ireland, which has the dubious honor of being the birthplace of the retail giant).
I didn't feel like trying them on in the store, and vowed I would return the one that didn't fit. Both are still sitting, unworn, in a bag at my mother's house.
Jennifer Collins in new clothes (DW/J. Collins)
This is what my fashion addiction looks like
But apparently, I'm not alone in my behavior. The rise of cheap, disposable "fast fashion" - led by retailers like Primark and Zara - has completely transformed the industry over the past 20 years.
"Fast fashion has fueled so much demand," says Amanda Ratcliffe, a lecturer in Marketing and International Retailing at Dublin Institute of Technology.
"The fashion cycle has become much shorter. Where before fashion retailers used to present maybe two collections a year on average, these days most of the fast-fashion retailers will have up to 20 collections a year.
"Zara, for example, manages to design, produce and supply in under 18 days," Ratcliffe told me.
What's the scale?
Some 80 billion pieces of clothing are purchased worldwide each year, up 400 percent from two decades ago. This according to "The True Cost," a devastating 2015 documentary that delves into the perils of the fashion industry for people and the planet.
In North America alone, 10.5 million tons of clothes end up in the landfill each year. The majority of those garments are made from petroleum-based textiles like polyester - which has long since overtaken cotton as the main material in clothing - so they don't biodegrade.
Of the clothes that are donated to charity and thrift stores, just 10 percent gets sold, while the rest ends up in landfills or floods markets in developing countries where it can destroy local clothing industries.
In fact, garment manufacturing is the second-most-polluting industry in the world - after oil. It accounts for 10 percent of global emissions. A quarter of the world's chemicals are used for textiles, which ends up in rivers and lakes.
