Where does it all go?

I have been hearing so much more about the topic of fast fashion and textile waste recently and it has gotten me thinking about my own part in this.

On average, Australians purchase 27kg of new textiles each year and then discard around 23kg into landfill — annually. This means that 6,000kg of textile waste is being disposed of in Australia every 10 minutes.

If those numbers don’t totally freak you out, you might need to read them again! OMG 6 thousand kilograms of textile waste every TEN minutes?! 36,000 kilograms per hour, 864,000 kgs per day. And this is just in Australia!! We really need to change our behaviour. Like NOW!

Over the coming year I am hoping to work on this in my own life and hopefully my business too and thought I would share every now and then what I am up to.

So there was been “WARDROBE CLEAN OUT” on my to-do list all year and this week it was finally time.

I started taking out all the lovely clothes in my wardrobe that sadly I no longer fit into… and there is no hope of me ever fitting back into (I’m looking at you size 10 gorgeous little black dress!). I should have taken some pictures of the beautiful things … oh well.

And then I started making piles.

TO KEEP: things that fit me and don’t look too bad.

TO DONATE: those that are clean and still in great condition that will give someone some more great wear out of (if they are a size 10 or 12 that is!).

TO CLEAN: there were a few things that had some spots on them or marks that I am going to try and wash and clean before making the decision as to whether they are good enough to donate.

TO UPCYCLE: too good to throw out, but not good enough for someone to wear. What to make / do with these?

TO THROW AWAY: not good enough for anything in my mind!

I put up a quick reel on Instagram of the piles in the UPCYCLE section asking what do people do with these? And I got some really interesting responses!

There were suggestions on where to take them to be recycled including @ahrecyclinggroup and @hm (H&M) both of which take items in Melbourne (nearest city to me). However the AH Recycling Group say on their Instagram page

By collecting over 20,000 kgs a week of pre-loved clothing, shoes, bags, toys and Linen/bedding from Victorian doors to send to Africa and Middle East, we aim to impact both domestically and internationally.

After seeing some videos of places in Africa that the western world is dumping all our textile waste on, I decided very quickly that this was NOT the way to go. The cost of shipping our waste around the world to dump on someone else’s doorstep, to make them deal with it and get left with the final dregs just sounds horrific from every perspective! When they say “we aim to impact both domestically and internationally” I don’t think that is what they meant!

H&M are a bit similar (website https://www2.hm.com/en_au/sustainability-at-hm/our-work/close-the-loop.html ) – I found a video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Py4NMzGNk9c of some Swedish people put some airtags into the clothes they donated and then followed them around the globe, and yes, some of them ended up in Africa again!

I feel that we need to be way more responsible for finding ethical solutions to our textile waste. We create the waste, we need to deal with it.

So where does this leave me and my piles of clothes? I approached my local Op Shop and they were very happy to take good clean clothes that still have a good amount of wear on them. So my TO DONATE pile went to them and they were excitedly opening up the bags as I was leaving!

I split my UPCYCLE pile into four sections:

POLYESTER:

The furry pink jumper (which was a favourite of mine for some years!) is going to become a cuddly cushion cover. I researched some other places that could deal with various types of textiles and @upparelofficial kept popping up (website is https://upparel.com.au/ ). Their statement on their website and Instagram is

Our team sorts through thousands of items every day, with ready-to-wear clothes going straight to our 450+ charity partners across Australia. For the garments that have reached the end of their usable life, we turn them into a range of circular materials – from filler fluff for couches to acoustic panelling for offices. Nothing that comes through our door ends up in the landfill and is all processed onshore in Australia.

So they take the items that come in and if they are still wearable, they go to Op Shops to sell. Thinking about it, that is probably a better way to get items to Op Shops as they then don’t have to deal / handle the items that don’t quite make the grade. Next time!

And I like that we are dealing with things here in Australia.

It does cost to send your items to Upparel, and I actually think that is really good. It shouldn’t be free. It costs money to deal with all that waste and to find solutions for it and create new usable textiles. If it makes us think twice about that cheap t-shirt from TEMU, that won’t be fashionable next season, then that might be a good thing!

SYNTHETIC MIXES:

These will also be going to Upparel, as this can be made into their Uptex ‘fabric’.

DENIM:

I actually found a few more old pairs of jeans after this picture and for the moment I am going to keep these to make repairs to other pairs of jeans. Some of them are not just plain denim, but a mix with elastine or something stretchy. I will do some more research about these and these *may* become a different kind of sewing creation at some point.

COTTON:

There were some wonderful suggestions on what to do with the cotton items left including:

patchwork bags, rag rugs, cleaning rags, coil mats and shopping bags.

I went researching a little bit and found some great tutorials on how to cut up cotton t-shirts to make t-shirt yarn which can then be used for rag rugs and baskets etc. I am definitely going to be trying this! And I have some great colour t-shirts that can be used, so the finished items might look pretty cool!

I’ll definitely be blogging and videoing about these experiments in the New Year!

THROW AWAY PILE: after finding Upparel I have decided that even those I deemed should be thrown away might get added to the box.

I will first check that they are things that Upparel accept.

And did you notice that they also take ‘fabric off-cuts and sewing scraps’? Something to think about for another day!

Hopefully this has gotten you thinking about the clothes in your house and what you will be doing with them when they reach the end of their life with you.