Upcycling

Image from Wearable Art: Upcycling Goes High Brow

The fashion industry is one of the top five most wasteful industries in the world. From the growth of the crops which are then used to produce the fabric, to the spinning, dyeing, weaving, cutting and sewing, packing, and distribution the waste and squandering of resources simply accumulates constantly. However, the greatest cause of waste withe fashion industry is at the end of the product life cycle.

In the world of fast fashion, people have become so caught up in having the latest and the greatest at incredibly low prices. While a godsend to college students on an incredibly tight budget, the reality is that by purchasing these fast fashion and fad items, fad can be described as any item with a short product life cycle, a huge amount of resources and money are wasted. At the end of the cycle, the item is no longer in style, no one wants to wear it anymore, and the item is discarded, often ending up in landfill.

This isn’t restricted to fad items however. What happens when your clothes give out? Do you spend hours fixing a rip? Or do you simply throw out the garment with your weekly trash? More often then not, these unwanted garments end up in landfill. Landfill that ever increasingly becomes scarcer and scarcer, and the resources which were used to create the garments are left to decompose, if they can, wasting away.

What is the solution to the? What can be done to prevent this from happening?

Upcycling, or re-purposing, etc. Every year a new buzz word appears to help explain what should be done to reduce waste, and usually it boils down to the same meaning; take the old and turn it into something new. Sounds easy enough right? But really it’s nothing that hasn't been said before. So what is preventing upcycling from happening.

For one, there is a lack of knowledge regarding the potential for upcycling. Not a whole lot of people really sit down and think about where it is that their discarded items are going. Secondly, there is a lack of industry infrastructure to begin to capitalize on using discarded products as a resource for new items. For example, a system to evaluate discarded items would need to be implemented, these items would then have to be collected and sent on to companies with the capabilities to break down the finished product, return it to a pure mixture, and recreate it into a new product.

What does this mean? BUSINESS OPPORTUNITY! If one man’s trash is one man’s treasure, or millions in this case; why can’t it be yours?

So what are some of the potential business that could come from this? For example, fabric from cutting room floors in apparel producing factories could be taken, and shredded and reproduced into wallpaper or as ikea-esque furniture. Or a clothing collection company could be started, so that no more unwanted clothing will end up in the landfill, and clothing could be carefully resorted and treated so that minimal waste will occur.

Have any ideas of your own? Feel free to share them in the comment section below!