How To Turn Waste Into Something Beautiful

According to the British Department for Environment (Defra) 2 million tonnes of textiles are consumed in the UK each year with approximately 50% destined for landfill. Of this over 1 million tonnes is clothing and 0.5 million tonnes is collected for reuse or recycling. Similar figures are true for Germany; the German organisation FairWertung estimates that German households dispose of approximately 1.5 million tonnes of textiles and clothing each year. This is a huge amount and doesn’t even include pre consumer waste, off-cuts and damaged fabrics that go to waste even before the new collections hit the stores.

Go Green Bag by Ecoist

But there is an increasing number of brands out there who utilise exactly this problem as the starting point for their collections. They give new life to unwanted clothing, disposed plastics and production leftovers. Among them are recycling pioneers From Somewhere and Junky Styling but also younger brands like Dirtball who make eco-friendly apparel for action sports, claiming that for every 100,000 pieces they produce they keep 700,000 water bottles out of landfills. English Retreads repurposes inner tubes collected from local truck stopps and turns them into eco-chic handbags and accessories. Ecoist works with major companies, such as Coca-Cola and Disney, and fashion and industrial designers to make handbags and other products from post-industrial waste, thereby preventing millions of candy wrappers from ending up in landfills. Mia fuses recycled second-hand clothing, that is imported from Europe and the US to be sold on Malawian street markets, with traditional Malawian textiles.

All of these brands convincingly demonstate that something that most of us would just regard as useless waste can actually be turned into something beautiful. Waste can reveal a huge potential and economic value if we rethink the way we deal with it. This is also the opinion of a research programme called The Waste of the World that examines how rethinking waste impinges on some of the core concerns of contemporary social science.

Ethical Fashion – what does the future hold?

I met Frans on his recent trip to London, when he visited the Ethical Fashion Forum, that I currently support as a volunteer. And this is my first contribution to the grass routes blog, hope you enjoy it.

Yesterday I went to the Ethical Fashion Forum’s monthly social networking event, which this time focused on ‘Ethical Fashion: What does the future hold?’. It was hosted by the Environmental Justice Foundation (EJF) in their lovely ethical fashion pop up shop on Carnaby Street. A perfect location to talk about green fashion surrounded by green fashion!

Almost 80 people – quite an increase from only 12 in January – joined in for this event, which started off with three inspiring presentations. EJF held a passionate speech about their latest campaign on climate refugees. Think Act Vote inspired us to think positively about our future and the votes we cast, and invited everybody to participate in their campaign by telling them what future you choose. And Forum for the Future introduced us to their Fashion Futures 2025 report.

I had already read the Fashion Futures report a month ago, but was again impressed with its thought-provoking scenarios of the world in 2025 and the role of the fashion industry within it. A world where resource shortages, climate change and population increase will challenge companies and consumers to explore new paths. I’d encourage everybody to have a look at the report or watch the animations as they are really inspiring and beautifully-designed.

After that much food for thought, most people treated themselves to a glass of organic wine, which also helped to encourage them to style themselves in ethical fashion and have their picture taken as part of an Ethical Fashion Photo Shoot. A lot of attention was drawn by Goodone’s beautifully designed dresses and tops, made from recycled garments mixed with end of line virgin cloth. I was tempted to buy one of the dresses myself, first because it really looked georgeous, second because I like Goodone’s approach of collaborating with retailers and big brands to create solutions for reusing or minimising their waste by turning it into beautiful clothes.

Whoever plans a trip to London is very welcome to join us at one of the next networking events every last Thursday each month!