5 Part Blog: The True Costs Of The Clothing We Wear Name ____________________________________By Nancy Judd of RECYCLE RUNWAY http://recyclerunway.com Date Due: May 21

READ one part of the blog per day. Write a reflection after reading each part.

Part 1: Eco Fashion Week and 81 lbs. of Waste per Person

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Part 2: The Story of Fast Fashion, Waste, and Pollution

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Part 3: The Cradle-to-Grave Pollution Cycle of a T-Shirt

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Part 4: Creating the Eco Fashion Week Collection

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Part 5: Put-on Your Principals, Wear Your Values, Slip into Your Standards

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Recycle Runway BlogEco Fashion Week and 81lbs of Waste per Person Published: 12.21.2016 at 8:37 am by Nancy JuddThe first in a series of blog posts about the true costs of the clothing we wear

Ask me to make a dress from a pile of trash and the inspiration flows! Ask me to make one from “normal” fabric and…it’s not quite that easy. Thus, it was an unusual challenge when I wasinvited to participate in a fashion week event last month in Seattle. Fashion? Couture maybe, but I have a dubious relation with fashion. However, this event was no normal fashion week. This was ECO FASHION WEEK (#EFW), the world’s largest sustainable fashion event happening, in 2016 for the first time, in Seattle Washington! Originally launched in Vancouver, BC, Canada in 2010, they sought to break into the international market by bringing the event to the US. Held over four days with two jam packed evenings, the event was filled with runway shows, a meet and greet, and a full day of presentations called the Collective Conversation. Meant to explore the environmental and social issues related to the fashion industry, I was invited to both participate as a panelist in the Collective Conversation and to share new work on the runway. The pace was thrilling and exhausting!

For the runway portion of EFW, I was one of 10 designers and stylists that participated in the Runway ReImagined: Project 8.1. So there I was in Value Village at 6 o’clock in the morning, standing toe to toe with the other clothing sorters except I was pulling clothing for fabric and labels, not for resale (hence my foray into creating a garment made solely from repurposed “normal” fabric). Individually, each of the 10 designers used 8.1 pounds of recycled clothing to create a small collection of garments. But collectively, we created couture weighing a total of 81 lbs. What is the significance of 81lbs, you may ask? It’s the staggering weight of textiles that the average North American discards annually! Hard to imagine isn’t it? The EPA estimates that 3.8 billion pounds of post-consumer textile waste goes into the landfill every year.1 Luckily most of these textiles we discard — even if they’re worn, torn, or stained — can be recycled! You can even recycle a single shoe! Items simply need to be clean and dry. There are lots of thrift stores happy to take your textiles, such as one of the main sponsors of the 8.1 challenge and Eco-Fashion Week: Value Village (aka Savers, Inc.). The clothing recycling market can reuse and recycle 95% of the enormous amount of apparel that we purchase and discard every year. About 45% of discarded clothes are usable clothing, however, because of the huge glut of clothing in the world only a small percent is resold in secondhand clothing stores. The rest is sent to developing countries for reuse. The other 50% of discarded clothes are turned into a variety of new products where 30% become wiping cloths (used in repair shops, construction, stores, and maintenance or custodial departments) and 20%, when processed back into fibers, are turned into paper, yarn, insulation and carpet padding.2 Unfortunately, of the 81lbs of clothes we throw away every year, the clothing recycling market is only capturing 15%. The rest goes into landfill.

However, the disposal of textiles is only one problem with the fashion industry. Let us pause here as our minds conger up images of slim models with hair blowing in the wind, garments unimaginably sleek, revealing sensuality, or audacious juxtaposition usually affordable only through extravagant expense. My first piece in the collection I created for ECO FASHION WEEK was meant to represent this notion of fashion and the opulence of conspicuous consumption. But let these realms stay in the pages of Vogue, Elle, W, and GQ. The thing is, when I talk about the fashion industry I am also referring to the sneakers worn by 8-year-old boys, T-shirts worn by the guy next door, and the bathrobe worn by your grandma. All our attire including coats, shoes, hats, and accessories are part of this mammoth industry. Which by the way, is the SECOND most polluting industry in the world after oil–YES, the second! This blog post starts a series about fashion and its critical role in the exploitation of resource use and in climate change. In the series, we will explore 81lbs of waste, pollution and mistreatment from fast fashion, the exportation and globalization of toxicity, and what steps we can take individually and collectively to combat our decreasing value of clothing. I will return to more about my ECO FASHION WEEK collection and performance piece in this series, but first I am going to share with you some of the information I learned in my research preparing for the project.

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Recycle Runway BlogThe Story of Fast Fashion, Waste, and Pollution Published: 01.04.2017 at 9:01 am by Nancy JuddThe second in my series on the true costs of the clothing we wear.

In my first post of this series on the price of fashion, I explained how I took a deep dive into the environmental and social impacts of our clothing through preparing new work for last year’s ECO FASHION WEEK. We ended with the shocking fact that the fashion industry is the SECOND most polluting industry in the world after oil. Let’s unpack this statement in a little more detail.

Much of this pollution is traced to the enormous amount of waste the clothing industry generates in order to increase their profits. You might think the word “waste” is used to refer to the refuse created in the manufacturing process, and the 81lbs of clothing the average American throws away, that I mentioned in my first post. However waste is also distributed into the air, water and soil as pollution, during manufacturing. Another form of waste comes with the discarding, or exploitation, of people in this process. Three ways this industry is able to increase profits is by relying on the lack of oversight in developing countries; making clothing cheap; and adding micro-seasons or trends. This basically describes the concept of “fast fashion”, which has changed the ENTIRE clothing industry.

Developing CountriesThe industry relies on the fact that many developing countries do not have the environmental laws in place that much of the western world has for industry. Without as strong legal protection for clean water, clean air, and toxicity the fashion industry saves money (and increases its profits) by sending its manufacturing to places like China, Bangladesh, and Mexico to name a few. These countries usually have fewer regulations for the protections of their workers too which results in low wages and poor working conditions. These are conditions that US companies have been taking advantage of since the 1990s when international trading agreements of opened up cheap global trade – we moved the sweatshops out of our backyard and into other countries. Many nations and their people are paying the price for our cheap fashion and its pollution. Of course nothing is all good or all bad, and there are people who have benefited from global trade for example, women who have been able to gain autonomy and help their families, sometimes even in respectful conditions. However, all too often working conditions are not fair or safe and US companies are taking advantage of social injustice to maximize their profits.

Making Clothing CheapWhen we talk about the new clothes we buy, we tend to focus on how inexpensive they are like: “I got this half price!” or, “I can’t believe I bought all this for $30.00!” or, “Le cheap, c’est chic…”1 Fashion design has fallen from the elite untouchable pedestal that it once stood on where the focus was what it was made from, who designed it, and where it was made. These are no longer of primary importance. The current focus on price, not design, means that our clothing is now reverse-designed starting with low cost as the goal. Interestingly by making clothing cheap, fast fashion, does have a way of democratizing the fashion industry but at the expense of what – people, environment, and planet? Are we literally buying into the very things that are harming us?

Micro-SeasonsAnother factor to consider is that fashions used to be introduced four times a year; now “micro-seasons” have expanded into every TWO weeks, or 26 times a year! Stores such as H&M, Forever 21, and Zara, sell limited quantities of new styles only available for short periods of time which keep consumers coming back regularly so as not to “miss out.” Fast fashion’s very short lived trends require that people pay very little for clothing while encouraging frequent purchases. Because prices are so low, we accept sub-standard quality, making quantity over quality the norm. Our clothing becomes a commodity of decreased value. This is the fickle finger that switches the fate of clothing, allowing us to become capable of discarding 81lbs of clothing every year. As

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mentioned above, this new landscape has impacted the entire industry, making it difficult for most brands to offer affordable clothing that is beneficial or even neutral for the environment and people. I will explore the issue of what we can do, as consumers, in the final post of this series.

This dress, worn inside out to expose the stories underneath our clothing, is covered with hundreds of labels and tags, forming long “prayer flags”. Clothing labels in addition to the price tags they are connected with tell us far more than just the brand, the designer, or the price. In fact, by revealing location, material, and cost they tell the stories of many of the issues we’ve just considered. What stories do you tell about your clothing? What might you guess from looking at the labels and tags in your clothes?

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Recycle Runway BlogThe Cradle-to-Grave Pollution Cycle of a T-Shirt Published: 01.19.2017 at 8:28 am by Nancy JuddThe third in a series of blog posts about the true costs of the clothing we wear.

In my first post, I explained that through preparing new work for ECO FASHION WEEK, I took a deep dive into the environmental and social impacts of our clothing. In the second post we explored the world of fast fashion. Below I will use the journey of a simple T-shirt to underscore how the clothing industry is the second most polluting industry in the world after oil. Besides packing a landfill, other reasons the fashion industry is so polluting become clear when you think about the cradle-to-grave journey of a simple T-shirt. As we shall see, there are loads of instances where toxicity is released into the environment, populations of other countries are exploited and human dignity is compromised.

Most T-shirts are made of a blend of cotton and polyester.• Cotton uses more pesticides and fertilizers than most crops and this impacts the water, soil, air, AND people

who grow and pick the cotton. Some of the largest cotton fields in the world in Texas and India have significantly higher than normal rates of brain tumors and children born with physical and mental challenges.

• Polyester is made from petroleum and the pollution from the extraction, refinement, transportation, and use of petroleum defines the first most polluting industry in the world. From oil spills, to water contamination, to air and soil toxification, to increased methane release we see the effects of pollution in everything the oil industry touches. Additionally, creating fabric from petroleum is very energy and water intensive, from the extraction of the crude oil to the weaving of the materials from polymers and the fabric particles (think, the lint in your dryer) never completely break down and instead build up in the environment. These are showing up in municipal waste water treatment plants and waterways every-where, often referred to as contaminants of emerging concern or microplastics.

Graphic of chemicals used in each step of clothing manufacturing, from Chemical & Engineering News.

Next our fabric needs to be bleached and dyed. Dyes and dye effluent contain highly toxic materials like ammonia, heavy metals, and alkali salts such as caustic soda, caustic potash, and lye. Many of the chemicals that make dye are carcinogenic and regulated by the EPA due to their production of toxic waste. This is another VERY polluting process that uses and pollutes tremendous amounts of water impacting people’s water sources across the globe. Tirupur, India, a city with the population with over 444,000 people, is known for its dyeing and bleaching industry. Water pollution has gotten so bad there that neither citizens, nor local farmers can use it.4 And here’s a figure for water usage in the dyeing process; in order to produce enough dyed fabric for one ordinary sofa, you need 500 gallons of water.

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Our T-shirt now needs to be cut and sewn. Clothing production in the United States has fallen dramatically over the years as companies have found people across the globe willing to work for much less money, in often unfair and unsafe conditions. According to a public broadcasting report “The Lowdown,” produced by KQED of Northern California, we went from 95% of American garments made in the USA during the 1960’s to 2% made in the USA as of 2013.6 Hundreds of people have been killed in fires and unsafe working conditions so that we can have the satisfaction of buying inexpensive clothes and getting “good deals.” Bangladesh saw one of its factories, Rana Plaza, collapse during April 2013, where over 1,100 workers were killed. Prior to that in 2012 over 100 employees were killed in a fire at the Tazreen factory, also in Bangladesh. One of the reasons that foreign manufacturers are able to make our clothing so cheaply is their lack of regulation in many portions of the process. Many of these manufacturers employ children, and do not worry about the sanitation nor even safety of their workplaces. And they can be found engaging in both forced repression of unions as well as simple wage theft.

Photo by Jaber Al Nahian, Dhaka Savar Building Collapse (CC BY-SA 2.0)

Lastly, the entire business of clothing and textile manufacturing uses an enormous amount of energy and fuel. This process of growing/mining; processing/weaving; bleaching/dying; sewing; selling/buying; and wearing our clothing rarely happens in one place or region. Each stage requires transportation. Though global supply chains have the promise of efficiency to meet manufacturer and vendor deadlines without adding extra cost, they are transported by shipping containers on rail, truck, and ships using the worst of today’s polluting fossil fuels. Increases in transport by ships that consume fuel by tons per hour, coupled with their use of lower grade bunker fuel have increased the negative health effects to coastal and inland populations.

Beyond all this, here is a brief list of startling facts:• Making polyester uses 70 million gallons of oil each year.• To manufacture rayon and other fibers from cellulose, we harvest over 70 million trees a year.• 24% and 11% of insecticides and pesticides global manufacturing, respectively, is used to produce the

world’s cotton.• Textiles use ¼ of the world’s chemicals.• It takes 3,886 MJ (megajoules) of energy to produce enough nylon fabric to cover a couch (about 25 yards).

This is the quick story of a simple T-Shirt, imagine the process for more complicated items like shoes, rain coats, dresses with sequins, etc. Even clothing purchased from more “reputable” brands and stores are mostly created from the same problematic materials and in overseas factories that require a great deal of transportation. NOW, perhaps you can see why the clothing industry is the second most polluting industry in the world!

In my next blog post, I will talk about how all this information informed the collection and performance piece I created for ECO FASHION WEEK, and in my last blog post we will explore what we can do as consumers to reduce the negative impacts of the clothing we purchase and wear.

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Recycle Runway BlogCreating the ECO FASHION WEEK Collection Published: 02.01.2017 at 10:19 pm by Nancy Judd

In my first blog post, I explained that through preparing new work for ECO FASHION WEEK, I took a deep dive into the environmental and social impacts of our clothing. In my second post I explored the world of fast fashion. In my third post  I used the journey of a simple T-Shirt to see how the clothing industry is the second most polluting industry in the world after oil.

This 4th post of my series will actually be the story of my experience participating in ECO FASHION WEEK last November. ECO FASHION WEEK, or #EFW, explores the environmental and social issues related to the fashion industry, and I was invited to both participate as a panelist in the Collective Conversation and to share new work on the runway.

I was one of ten designers and stylists that participated in a part of #EFW called: Runway ReImagined: Project 8.1. Individually, each of the ten designers used 8.1 pounds of upcycled clothing to create a small collection of garments. But collectively, we created couture weighing a total of 81 lbs, the astounding average weight of the clothing that each North American discards annually!

My first step in preparing for this project was to do a massive amount of research (which led to this five part blog series). You see, even though I am often mistaken for a fashion designer I have no background in the fashion industry. Indeed, the garments I create have another purpose altogether which is to open a dialogue, to educate, and to empower action about resource use and environmental negligence. I have chosen to not create fashion due to what I know about resource use and our throw away culture. So, I considered my invitation to be a participant in #EFW as an opportunity to deepen my understanding of fashion’s social and environmental impacts.

I knew that I wanted to create a body of work that would begin to address what I was learning visually, giving me a spring board to initiate conversations with people about the true cost of the clothing we wear. After a lot of reading I realized that much of story of these social and environmental impacts is told by the labels and tags found in our clothing. We can learn WHAT our clothes are made from and WHERE they were sewn, which can tell us WHO created them and HOW that person lives and works. Now that you’ve read the last three blog posts you can see a road-map to deciphering these stories.

I conceptualized and created a collection of three pieces for the show. Instead of being a collection with a coherent feel or look exclusively, each garment was designed to unfold the story of the true cost as a performance piece. My partner, Nicole, helped me to put together some of the nuances of staging and music. In a brilliant flash of inspiration, she chose, “Mercy, Mercy Me (the Ecology),” by Marvin Gay — released in 1971, sadly, the lyrics could not be more relevant today.

The first of the three “looks” (as each individual garment is called in a fashion show) is an opulent and elegant dress that flows gracefully and is trailed by a long, bejeweled train. The model wearing it walks down the runway while, almost unconsciously, dropping labels from her hands as she proceeds.

Here, I’m going to indulge myself a moment as I describe the process of making this dress – it was just SO MUCH FUN!! Beginning with a big black turtle-neck dress (thebase garment) I began creating a 3D “sketch” right on the dress-form, something within the fashion industry known as draping. I madly snipped and pinned away at garments that had little or no appeal to me carving them into a spectacular new design with great appeal!

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Next I cut up a maroon double layered dress using part of it as an embellishment around the hips to accentuate the small waist and incorporating a large portion of it as the back of the skirt. Additionally, I carefully snipped off a braided portion to wrap around the model’s neck which carried the weight of the train. Then I cut off a hem bejeweled with big black plastic rhinestones from a different black dress and draped it on either side of the plunging neck line down and around to meet at the back. The rhinestones incorporated both texture and shine to an otherwise muted bodice and replicated the shiny accents I would use in the train. I grabbed about 12 shirts, skirts and dresses with patterns, colors and textures that I liked, folded them into little strips, and laid then next to each other to form the Chapel train (a train trailing 3 to 4 feet). While molding this creation, I was looking at drawings of one of my very favorite designers Erte, from the 1930’s. His gravity defying art deco fashion designs have always enchanted me. And I love how he uses opulent fabrics to accent clean and dramatic lines. Within an hour this dress was designed and ready to be sewn together. It was such a fun and spontaneous experience!

The second “look”, is a simple black shift worn inside out. The woman wearing the shift is of Asian descent and has no makeup, plain shoes, and a simple haircut. (Though not a new idea, I liked the symbolism of turning fashion inside out and exposing the story under the garment.) The dress is bound by hundreds of labels sewn together, appearing like mini prayer flags or laundry hanging on lines between old tenement buildings. As the model walks down the runway, she picks up the labels dropped by the first model. In the 1990s during my last year of college I had a solo senior art show of photographs called “In the wake of our Steps” which explored the degradation of the California landscape due to over development. That line kept running through my mind as I imaged the model wearing the label strewn dress picking up the labels littered by the first model.

The third “look” is a simple man’s T-shirt which has letters from other T-shirts sewn to it reading: “Labels, what stories do they tell?” The labels we use for anything always tells us more about what lies underneath than the mere name. To tie this tale of international exploitation back to our current national social justice issues I requested a model of African American descent for this piece. To me all three of these pieces reference each other. You guessed it! The first piece of the performance was conspicuous consumption, the second was the hidden story of exploitation, and the final piece tells you where to find the story. The video below was created by #EFW where you can see samples from all the fabulous designers that participated. My collection and the performance piece begins at 1 minute, 38 seconds and has been powerfully abbreviated into 16 seconds of footage.

1. Seattle 11th Season Highlights ECO Fashion Week 2:17

http://recyclerunway.com/wp-content/uploads/Eco-Fashion-Week-_-11th-Season-Highlights-_-Seattle.mp4

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Creating this collection was a new and exciting experience for me in several ways. I had never participated in a fashion week before, nor had I ever created a performance piece, and I really took on the challenge with music, performers, and costumes. Also, it was the first time I used exclusively fabric– no rusty nails, broken glass or car parts! What a relief, no dramatically unmallable objects! Whew! Lastly, this was the first time I have directly explored the price of fashion in my work. I really enjoyed this project and as well as the flow of inspiration that inevitably comes when a good challenge is put before me.

I also spoke in the Collective Conversation, a full day symposium on the last day of #EFW that explores solutions and innovations to develop a more sustainable and responsible fashion industry. Ideas such as zero-waste production, environmentally-conscious textile treatment and development, as well as shifts in overall consumption were discussed. As a panelist, one of my contributions to the conversation was to remind the audience that we were sitting on land that originally belonged to the Duwamish and Suquamish people (descendants of Chief Seattle) who have lived in the Americas for around 10,000 years. In the comparatively short 200 years that colonists have been here, we have (thanks to the consumptive patterns discussed in this series) made this planet arguably unlivable for many plants and animals, including humans. Today more than ever we have much to learn from Native Americans, and in the fashion industry there are native designers leading the way. A few to check out are: Ginew (brilliant, young, insightful designers and are both medical doctors), Sho Sho Esquiro, Bethany Yellowtail, Jamie Okuma, Alano Edderza, Dorthy Grant, and Louie Gong of 8th Generation (he has a shop in Pike Place Market in Seattle).

Thank you to all the organizers and sponsors of ECO FASHION WEEK for inviting me to participate; you were all a delightful group of people to work with!In my last post of this five part series I will explore way that we as consumers can reduce the environmental and social impacts of the clothing we wear.

Garments and jewelry before they were incorporated into Look 1.

 

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Recycle Runway BlogPut-on your Principals, Wear your Values, Slip into your Standards Published: 02.14.2017 at 12:51 am by Nancy Judd

In this fifth and final post of this series I give some ideas about what YOU CAN DO to reduce the environmental and social impacts of the clothing you wear.

To recap my series, the first blog post, explained how through preparing new work for ECO FASHION WEEK, I took a deep dive into the environmental and social impacts of our clothing. The second post explored the world of fast fashion. My third post used the journey of a simple T-Shirt to see how the clothing industry is the second most polluting industry in the world after oil. The forth blog post shared my experience creating the ECO FASHION WEEK collection/performance piece that led to this blog series.

AN EASY 5 POINT PLAN TO GREEN YOUR WARDROBE

1. STOP buying new clothes!

I know this may seem kind of radical and maybe very difficult, but do you really NEED that new shirt or pair of shoes? If you count how many pieces of clothing you currently have in your closet and drawers, you will see that you could live for a long time without adding anything new to your wardrobe. Americans purchase an average of one new piece of clothing a week 1. If you fit into this average category but my solution feels farfetched, then at least try to reduce how much you buy. Here are some ways to do this:• Wait a week before making any new purchase• Clothing moratorium – try not buying new clothes for 1 or 2 weeks, or even 3 months• Avoid the sale racks - most sale racks are designed to convince us to purchase something we don’t need• Set a monthly spending limit – pick a low number and stick to it.

When you do purchase new clothing try to: Support sustainable practices (for example organic cotton) and fair trade organizations. Check out these resources for environmental and ethical clothing:- Project Just- The Fashion Transparency Index 2016 [PDF]- Remake- KnowTheChain.org- FairTradeUSA.org- GoodGuide.com

Buy durable and well made items that you know will last and avoid fast fashionSupport local and small scale designers whose designs are locally made, meaning less environmental impact from shipping items halfway around the world to hang in your closet. Many small-scale designers are more ethical in their choices about fabrics, manufacturing, and worker’s rights. However, it is a good thing to investigate before assuming…

2. Repair what you already own

The idea of darning a sock feels as antiquated as the horse and buggy, but across the globe the art of repairing our clothing and other possessions is making a comeback. Fix-It-Fairs take place throughout the Portland area where I live. You can bring all kinds of items to these community events and citizens with sewing machines, tool kits and the “know-how” will fix your stuff. If you don’t have a fix-it-fair in your area or want to learn to “do-it-yourself”, check out www.ifixit.com. This is a wiki-based site that teaches people how to fix almost anything. Anyone can create a repair manual for a device, and anyone can also edit the existing set of manuals to improve them. The site empowers individuals to share their technical knowledge with the rest of the world. They even have a clothing page https://www.ifixit.com/Device/Clothing that teaches you basics like sewing a button or mending a rip, to more complicated tasks like repairing a zipper.REPAIR has been added to the “Reduce, Reuse, Recycle” phrase as an important way of reducing our waste. Additionally, I really appreciate the act of repairing because it respects the resources that went into creating that item. Plus, repairing items can add character to your clothing! An interesting patch or, visible mending, can

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liven up a boring pair of pants, a shirt, or a coat!

3. Purchase second-hand clothes or go to clothing swaps

Have you noticed how many more thrift and consignment stores there are compared to just 15 years ago? According the Association of Resale Professionals the number of resale shops increases 7% every year.2 They attribute this to people being more interested in recycling/reuse, which could be true, and because people love shopping and getting bargains, which for good or bad we know is true. But I also think it has to do with the glut of clothing (and other STUFF) in our world because of fast fashion. Whatever the reason, purchasing gently used clothing instead of buying new clothes is very impactful in terms of reducing your carbon footprint!And if you have never been to a clothing swap, they are an amazingly fun, and economical, way of getting rid of clothes you don’t wear anymore and picking up new items you need. My closet has many clothing swap scores!Remember though to always give your unwanted clothing to thrift/consignment stores or take them to clothing swaps. In my first blog in this series I mentioned that the average American throws away 81lbs of clothes every year and the clothing recycling market is only capturing 15% of that, the rest goes into the landfill! Even ripped and torn clothing and fabric can be used for industrial rags and building insulation.

4. Caring for your clothing

I was surprised to learn that up to 80% of our clothing’s impact during its lifecycle comes while we wear them. This is because it takes a lot of energy to heat the water for washing and a lot energy to keep the dryer running. So there’s a huge opportunity to decrease your environmental footprint, by simply greening your laundry habits. The following list, borrowed from an article in TreeHugger, shows fabulous ways to do this:• Wash your clothes only when neededThe Levi Strauss CEO Chip Bergh actually promotes NEVER

washing your jeans!  That might be a bit radical for most, but we can all wash our clothes far less than we do. Except for the obvious items that need washing after one wear, I use the sniff test on shirts and visually inspect my clothes to determine if they need to be washed yet. Washing clothing after one wear is definitely unnecessary in most cases and degrades the colors and the fabric!

• Use green laundry detergent• Conventional detergents can contain ingredients that aren’t good for you, your clothes, or aquatic

ecosystems where the dirty water we wash down the drain can end up. Phosphates in conventional laundry soaps can cause algal blooms that negatively affect ecosystems and marine life. To shop for more eco-friendly detergents, look for labels that indicate a product is readily biodegradable and phosphate-free, and made from plant- and vegetable-based ingredients (instead of petroleum-based), which means they’re healthier for the planet, from production to rinse cycle.

• Wash in cold waterA whopping 90 percent of energy used for washing clothes goes to heating the water, costing you $100 or more every year. With more and more detergents specialized for cold-water washing, your whites will still get white without the hot (or warm) water. Next, be sure to wash only full loads of laundry, which ensures that your machine is operating at peak efficiency. If you can’t manage to fill ‘er up, the “load size selector option” (if you have one) ensures that smaller loads use less water.

• Hang it out to dry Designer Henry Wanjala, photo Nicole MorrisThere are upward of 88 million dryers in the U.S., each emitting more than a ton of carbon dioxide per year. Because dryers uses so much energy, skipping it altogether can make a real difference. While some homeowners’ associations and municipalities oppose hanging clothes out to dry, the pro-line drying movement, headed up by Right to Dry, is putting up a good defense for your right to harvest free solar energy. Added bonus? Clothes last longer when you line dry because there’s less wear and tear than when you use the dryer.

• Maximize your dryer• Line-drying doesn’t have to be an all or nothing choice. If you’re sticking with the dryer for part (or all) of the

time, cleaning the lint filter frequently will increase efficiency and shorten drying time. If your dryer has a moisture sensor, use it. This will automatically reduce the amount of drying time or shut off the machine when it senses that clothes are dry, which reduces wear and tear on your threads and saves lots of energy. A good moisture sensor is the best thing to look for if you’re shopping for a new clothes dryer. As of this year, Energy Star began to rate dryers, so make sure to check for their stamp of approval.

• TreeHugger also recomends ditching the dryer sheets, which can be full of cancer-causing chemicals and

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neurotoxins such as toluene and styrene. They also break down organic fibers, shortening the life of your fabrics. Instead, toss a sachet of dried organic lavender in the dryer for a healthy, sweet scent.

• Don’t iron if you don’t have to• Not only is ironing a tedious chore, it also consumes energy and can deteriorates fabric. Still, no self-

respecting environmentalist wants to look ruffled, right? To avoid looking haggard, simply hang clothes up immediately after the wash cycle is complete. The water still in them will work with gravity to pull most wrinkles out. For wrinkle-prone clothing such as linen, cut the final spin cycle, which will leave even more water in the garments, creating yet more pull. Then fold dry clothes where you want creases to be, and place them under other clothes in your dresser, which will further help to press them.

• Don’t bother with dry cleaning• Conventional dry cleaning is a decidedly un-green process; most businesses use the chemical

perchloroethylene (also called “perc”), which research studies have shown may be dangerous to our health. Exposure to this chemical has been linked to increased risks of bladder, esophageal, and cervical cancer; eye, nose, throat and skin irritation; and reduced fertility; among other effects. Yikes!

• Luckily, there are alternatives. For starters, if you want to eliminate dry cleaning from your life, start by buying clothes that don’t require it–it’s wise to read labels before making purchases. Also, recognize that many delicates and other garments, including those made from cashmere and lambs’ wool, can be safely and easily hand washed. 3

 5. Reclaim fashion as a form of personal creativity!

Lastly let me just say that I hate to be manipulated and the fashion industry, by definition, is all about dictating what we should and should not wear any given year. They guide our purchasing decisions to benefit their bottom line— not to benefit the consumer, the workers, or the planet and that MAKES ME MAD!If you enjoy fashion, then I encourage you to create your own sense of style. Though I don’t go clothing shopping very often anymore, when I do I love shopping at thrift stores, I find that it encourages creative dressing. You can discover interesting items and combine them in unusual ways that reflect your personality and lifestyle! I have included photos throughout this blog post from other ECO FASHION WEEK  stylists and designers that exemplify creative fashion play at its best. We have come to the end of this long look at the impacts of the clothing that we wear. And as you probably realize, many of these same facts hold true for most items in our lives, not just our clothing. From basketballs to frying pans, most of the things we buy are made outside of the country by people working in unfair conditions that we would NEVER accept for ourselves or our family. And they are made from mined and manufactured materials that are harmful to the planet, that use a lot of energy to make, fuel to transport and that pollute the air, water and soil in the process. Reducing our consumption, and reusing EVERYTHING in our life is essential!

I would love to hear what was most useful in this series to you, and how you might change your actions based upon what you have read here or elsewhere. You can respond below or send me a private message at Nancy@RecycleRunway.com. And thanks for taking this journey with me!

This series was co-researched and co-written with Nicole Morris.

 

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