Rather than buying, try upcycling

And that’s just for one T-shirt. If you can imagine how large these numbers are for all of the items sold on Black Friday, it might be easier for you to understand why the fashion industry is the world’s second largest polluter, only behind oil.

As consumers who ultimately drive clothing sales, we have the power to reduce the apparel industry’s adverse environmental impact.

Upcycling, or taking old items and turning them into a new product of superior use and quality, would reduce the amount of waste, energy and pollution associated with the fashion industry. Upcycling is not a new concept. During the Great Depression, families turned empty tin cans into drinking cups. Today, people turn old stair posts into desks and mason jars into flower vases. In the fashion industry, upcycling involves taking old clothing items and turning them into unique, more fashionable garments. For example, a few old T-shirts could be cut and sewn into a summer dress, utilizing pre-existing items that alone were of little value. Even something as simple as repurposing zippers and buttons saves energy that would have been expended to create these small, yet necessary parts of clothing.

Research found that Americans throw away 70 pounds of clothing per year, and 85 percent of this clothing waste ends up in landfills. If people tap into the clothes collecting dust in their closets rather than buy new items, the number of textiles polluting landfills would decrease. Because the production of upcycled items does not require new materials, water and energy usage, pesticide and chemical dye contamination, and carbon emissions would all be reduced.

At the corporate level, integrating upcycling into business models poses a challenge to traditional fashion design thinking. Tasha Lewis, assistant professor in Cornell University’s Department of Fiber Science and Apparel Design in the College of Human Ecology, addresses this challenge through her research that looks to reduce textile waste with a business model solution that redesigns and upcycles used clothing. Lewis believes that upcycling requires a creative and technical skillset that sets out to maintain style and minimize waste.

Some businesses have already recognized the value of upcycling and fully implement it into their clothing lines. Reformation, a hip Los Angeles-based fashion company, uses deadstock fabric from fashion houses that over-ordered to create sleek and sophisticated styles. Beyond Retro, a vintage clothing company, creates upcycled clothes from exclusively secondhand fabrics by turning clothes that were never sold in stores into new items based on future fashion trends.   

To be sure, some articles of clothing, like suits and ball gowns, are difficult to upcycle. However, with more and more retailers adopting greener production methods, buying items from these sustainable retailers would still reduce the environmental impact associated with these new clothes. Re-wearing an item multiple times instead of purchasing a new one after one use would also decrease the harmful impact of fast fashion. Actress Emma Watson, who played the role of Hermione Granger in the Harry Potter movie series, is a staunch supporter of the #30Wears campaign, which challenges people to re-wear a clothing item at least 30 times before purchasing a new one.

So the next time you find yourself eyeing that new shirt or scarf, take a moment to check your closet for a similar item that can either be re-worn or upcycled into an even nicer garment with the resources you already have. With everyone’s cooperation, next year’s Black Friday could break a record for all-time low sales. 

Kiki Lo is a San Mateo High School graduate studying environmental engineering at Cornell University.