It’s Halfway Through “Clean Out Your Closet Week” and Time to Learn More About Fast Fashion
This year, we celebrate National Clean Out Your Closet Week from March 11-17. While it is a great time to dust off those vintage or seasonal items and send or bring them to Oak Hill Dry Cleaners for a bit of TLC, you might also be tempted to pitch those things you haven’t worn for a while.
Hold on a second! There are good ways to get rid of unwanted items, and there are very bad ways to nix those out of date looks.
First things first, know if you are dealing with “fast fashion.” If so, be sure you are dealing with it in a wise, sustainable, and eco-friendly way.
What is it? As described by The New York Times in 1990, this is “cheap and low-quality clothing that are rapidly produced and are cycled in and out the market quickly to meet new trends.”
Manufacturers of fast fashion have been upping production to totally unsustainable levels. As we noted in our blog about Secondhand Wardrobe Week, “fast fashion [is] a business model which is a real problem. Today’s fast fashion lives up to its name; produced rapidly and wearing out quickly. This creates a one-two punch affecting everyone and everything involved. It’s crafted from low-cost (i.e. shoddy and cheap) materials carelessly and dangerously banged out by the tons and shipped around the globe. It also means that the garments are not made well or made to last and end up in the trash or landfill.”
When you decide to clean out the closet, you may worsen the issue if you simply toss out such garments. Rather than just making the choice to change your look or get an updated wardrobe in line with the latest trends, use some tips from SustainableBaddie:
1. Meditate on the process: Why are you clearing out the closet? Is it because it is full of things you bought and didn’t wear? Maybe you’re looking to totally change your style? “If your thought process involves replacing everything with new items, maybe reevaluate your reasoning for a closet cleanout. Being a sustainable baddie is not at all about adhering to trend cycles; in fact, trend cycling is likely the least sustainable reason to clean out your closet. At its core, your closet cleanout should begin a process that helps you build a wardrobe with pieces that will last a lifetime – and even longer once those pieces are handed down.”
2. Evaluate your wardrobe: Look at what you actually wear most. What have you never or infrequently worn? Can anything be upcycled by altering? Can you re-sell? The goal is to look at the entire collection of items rather than choosing spots that you’ll fill with replacements.
3. Sell and/or donate wisely: If you’ve got the stomach for an eye-opening documentary, take a look at The True Cost. In it, you see that many of us who donate in those charity boxes are just using a longer pathway to the landfill. This is because 90% of donated items end up in landfills. Not ALL organizations use that model, though, and the goal is to opt for those that partner up with recycling of anything not resold or upcycled.
4. Resell – Poshmark, ThredUp, the RealReal…you know the names. Now is the moment to choose your vendors. Though you may not get a ton of money doing this, you will be able to rest easy knowing your items are being handed down and worn rather than risking a long trip to the landfill. You can use a lot of real world, brick and mortar stores that specialize in secondhand sales, too. Just whip open good old Google and search for “secondhand clothing stores near me” or “clothing consignment stores near me”.
5. Swap them: Have you considered getting like-minded people together for a seasonal clothing swap? Whether it is just you and a neighbor or two, or the creation of a community event, it is an amazing way to see clothing re-homed and to prevent fast fashion from achieving its evil goals. Shareable has some great tips on making a clothing swap happen in your neighborhood or town.
6. Fixing, re-purposing, and upcycling: Go ahead and look online or in social media for ideas on re-purposing clothing. You will find an overwhelming number of creative ways to mend or reassemble items into something new and even trendy. If you don’t have the time or tools, you can always improve the local economy by supporting a cobbler to fix shoes and boots and a tailor to change or fix the clothing items. We steer our customers to Roy’s Shoe Shop in Portland and to Kim’s Alterations in South Portland. Remember, too, that items like beat up old t-shirts can become household rags or (if they have graphics you want to keep) can be trimmed and turned into colorful quilt toppers!
7. Textile recyclers: If you know that remaining pile of items is probably not going to sell if donated or put up for sale through a reseller app or site, and you don’t need the rags or scraps, consider textile recycling. In our area of Maine, we have Apparel Impact. What is that? “Apparel Impact started in 2014 as a New England textile recycler and community support company. Within 5 years, Apparel Impact became the fastest growing textile recycler in the northeastern U.S.; growing from a small regional provider to a multi-state business with over 1,250 partners and customers ranging from small businesses, non-profit organizations, government partners to Fortune 500 companies.
Apparel Impact is a Family and Veteran Owned operated business that focuses on the recovery of textiles and the support of communities throughout the country and is a highly regarded, family owned, veteran owned recycling company that truly understands the value of giving back and supporting their communities while having a primary mission to reduce waste and improve the environment.” You can use their online tool to find the bins nearest to you here.
You can also do as Yale University suggests and turn to a few other “recycling programs for clothes… Recycle denim at Levi’s stores, Nike’s Reuse a Shoe program for worn out sneakers, and TerraCycle Fabrics and Clothing Box for a paid service that upcycles or donates your old textile products.”
8. Find the right manufacturers: You will want to visit sites like Sustain Your Style or read articles from Going Zero Waste and Good Trade.
Okay! You have all the resources to clean out a closet AND do it sustainably. Remember, though, as a consumer, we are all being driven to buy more.
As one writer noted, “please, please, stop clearing out your wardrobe because you just learned about sustainable fashion… I understand the urge to do this, it’s the exact same trend that occurred when people started watching the minimalists documentary. You suddenly feel inspired to live with less. So you want to go on a huge binge and become the ultra-minimal, zen-like creature you know has always been inside of you, just dying to get out. This totally comes from the right intentions, but the thing is, it’s not actually the sustainable choice.”
Instead, it is more of a disposable approach than a sustainable one. If you narrow down your closet using the most sustainable resources outlined above, you must then start to change your mindset. Why?
Ultimately, the most sustainable of all wardrobes is the one that is also the most durable.
The fast fashion, bulk producers don’t want to make durable because it costs. If you are just getting rid of your stuff and looking to replace it with more, you also need to replace things with well-made, thoughtfully chosen items.
As that same writer explains so aptly: “If you start chucking everything away to replace it with more ethical options, that’s still increasing the demand for more. If you transfer your fast fashion consumption rates over to secondhand stores only to get rid of those pieces after a few wears, that’s still sustaining a culture of overconsumption and disposability… I’m not saying don’t treat yourself occasionally and never ever do a clear out of your things. But I do want to emphasize that climate disaster and human rights violations aren’t problems we can solve by buying more stuff. We have a huge trash problem. Constantly consuming and regularly throwing stuff away is only going to make it worse. Especially seeing as most of our donated clothes won’t be bought by someone else, they’ll become another piece of waste.”
The answer is to begin building a capsule wardrobe full of staple items you will wear on repeat each year. The answer also includes only onboarding new items when they are a replacement for something entirely worn out. The answer comes in knowing how to properly care for those investment pieces in your capsule wardrobe.
And you guessed it! That is where Oak Hill Dry Cleaners comes into the equation. As the folks at Save Your Wardrobe explain: We should focus on promoting eco-friendly dry cleaners that use non-toxic products for the environment, and for the health of the workers. Respecting the Earth, and the people that surround you should be the goal of every company.”
Cleaners like Oak Hill are among the “eco-friendly companies that offer the environmental and human considerations that we should all look for in a dry-cleaning company. They do not soak the clothes in toxic chemicals, but use a technique called “wet-cleaning”, that has been shown to be respectful to all fabrics, while respecting the workers and the environment. It is easy on your clothes, and does not shrink or damage wool, as some solvents tend to do…Change can come with every small decision you make. Switching to an eco-friendly dry cleaner could head-start your journey to a sustainable wardrobe.”
Why not celebrate National Clean Out Your Closet Week by evaluating your wardrobe, designing a workable capsule wardrobe full of things you already have, responsibly and sustainably eliminating pieces you don’t wear, and bringing your best items to Oak Hill Dry Cleaner.