Why ABC's Ginger Zee Stopped Buying New Clothes for 2 Years and What She Learned About Waste (Exclusive)

When ABC viewers watch Ginger Zee deliver a forecast or report from the scene of a natural disaster Good morning Americaone of the first things you notice is her outfit.

That’s the reality for everyone who works on the air in TV news — which doesn’t sit well with the chief meteorologist and climate correspondent.

“I never went into this to do a fashion show, that wasn’t my intention,” Zee tells PEOPLE in this week’s issue.

“There was always one part that didn’t seem to fit,” she says.

So about two years ago, she decided to try Remake’s #NoNewClothes Challenge, a social justice group in the clothing industry, with the hope of alleviating the environmental impact of mass-produced fashion and learning more about how to spend less while still looking stylish.

The statistics that Zee (43) learned through the non-profit organization were alarming, such as the fact that fashion is the third largest industry that contributes to greenhouse gases that warm the planet. Moreover, according to the US National Institute of Standards and Technology, 85% of discarded fabric ends up in landfills.

“There’s such beauty in fashion,” she says, “but man, we have a broken system.”

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What started as a 90-day goal for her – no shopping trips, no internet splurging – turned into a lifestyle. “I said, ‘I can rent less, buy consignment less,'” says Zee. “Less, less, less.”

This means she had to unleash her creativity to keep her wardrobe fresh.

One morning in May, “We started for [Arizona] for my sister-in-law’s wedding, I realized we had a huge miscommunication. She didn’t have a formal wedding, but I didn’t have a dress [she expected]”, recalls Zee.

Since she didn’t have time to rent, her producer suggested she reach out to her network of meteorologists and see if anyone had a dress in the color she needed.

“Sure enough, I had four offers within 30 minutes,” says Zee. “It was such a refreshing reminder that there are lots of clothes out there and we don’t have to buy new ones every time.”

Often, Zee doesn’t have to turn to her wider network and instead relies on the women in her ABC News family for support. Crediting friend Lara Spencer and chief medical correspondent Dr. Jennifer Ashton, she says she’s created a lot of fun looks — and funny anecdotes — from their borrowings.

Lara Spencer/Instagram

“Dr. Jen was cleaning out her closet and left me a shirt and a skirt. The next week the dress showed up, and I walked out, and Lara said, ‘I’ve got that dress.’ I realized our dresser had accidentally put it in my room,” Zee tells PEOPLE with a laugh.

“It became this joke: We share so much that I even steal it.”

As Zee has learned more about the effects of increasingly “fast” fashion on a global scale — and how it can reduce the quality of clothes and the treatment of those workers who make them — she’s eager for others to join her on the journey, telling PEOPLE that “the least I can do is just raise awareness”.

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“We don’t want to take away the creative license and beauty of fashion,” she says, “but there’s a real choice between need and want without much thought about what it does to the world.”

While Zee doesn’t plan on participating in the challenge forever, the lessons will last.

“Now I’m starting to ask, ‘Where can I put that spotlight? Who can I put that spotlight on? A designer who hasn’t been elevated yet, who hasn’t had that opportunity? Is there someone I can support who is recycling clothes that have been thrown into the trash?’ Absolutely,” she says.

“There are so many places we can go to express this, and hopefully someone will hear. If we can bring about mass change, then companies that make clothes can change the way they do it,” she continues. “Because I don’t want fashion to stop. We don’t want it to just die. It’s important.”

For more on Zee’s story, pick up the latest issue of PEOPLE on newsstands Friday or subscribe here.

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Source: HIS Education