Textile waste

Are our donated clothes really being recycled? Landfills receive millions of tons of textile waste each year because there isn’t enough demand for donated clothing. So how can we reuse and repurpose our old fabrics?

Projects — Femke van Gemert I Waste Textiles Artist

There is a growing trend within the sustainability community towards upcycling, by taking waste materials and giving them purpose by turning them into something more usable. In order to prevent more waste & pollution from being created, upcycling materials is one of the best (and craftiest) ways that everyday people can help the environment!

Workers and the environment suffer as trendy, inexpensive clothes are swiftly mass produced in subcontracted factories and sold in chain stores world-wide

You may think you’re keeping old outfits out of the landfill when you donate them, but that’s not necessarily true.

Photographer Muntaka Chasant has documented thousands of washed-up clothes on a beach in Africa, laying bare the environmental impact of fast fashion.

Used or surplus clothing from Western countries often ends up in Africa. Whether that’s good remains open to question.

Worldwide, short product lifecycles, including cheaply made garments produced at high volumes, textile waste, and production waste byproducts occurring down the supply chain have resulted in 92 million tons of annual landfill and incinerated pollution. Beyond the physical waste produced, the exploitive working conditions in clothing manufacturing have broad social ramifications on human health and...

Saving the earth one reused item at a time. Together, we can make a fashion statement by making an environmental one, too.