My niece – an up-and-coming fashion design student in the University of Cincinnati’s acclaimed DAP program – mentioned the other day that she had recently joined a UC sustainable fashion initiative aimed at finding ways to recycle all the fabric scraps which land on their cutting room floor. I’m so proud of her and others in her group for realizing the importance of wringing every useable drop from materials normally discarded as a by-product of manufacturing. Her generation is definitely leading the way.
But whew … these budding designers are facing a huge hurdle. The fashion industry is one of the top three polluters in the world. And while some efforts are being put into recycling, an article in Popular Science magazine points out why the net results are negligible:
Most clothing isn’t actually recycled; it’s reused. Some of it ends up on the shelves of local thrift stores and second-hand shops, but most of our iconic t-shirts and fashion missteps are shipped to countries in Asia and Africa, where development experts argue their influx hurts local textile markets. A smaller amount is cut down to make industrial cleaning rags and insulation, while an even smaller percentage is turned back into raw fiber elements, a process known as fiber conversion. Fabric conversion sounds fancy, but in practice it’s pretty barbaric.
Barbaric? That’s a bit hyperbolic. How about “ineffective” instead? Meanwhile, check out this link to the entire Popular Science article referenced above if you’re interested in learning how textile designers and scientists in Finland have come up with one solution. It’s one more reason to support the burgeoning Fibershed movements cropping up throughout the U.S.!