The Impact of Unwanted Clothing
Did you know that in one year, the average American throws away 70 pounds of clothing and that more than 3/4 of our discarded clothing goes to landfills? Consider finding ways to reduce the amount of clothing waste your family has each year by sewing green.
A wonderful way to sew green is by using your discarded or outdated clothes and re-fashioning them into new designs that fit your kids. In some cases, simple repairs of second-hand kids clothes are all that is needed to renew an item. I covered some ideas on how to do this in a post last June.
Re-fashioning fashion and other fabric items into funky new kids’ clothes
There are a number of books and websites dedicated to giving clothing and other textile products new life, from making a skirt for your little girl out of a pillow case or making pint-sized tops out of your old sweaters to altering vintage clothing found at a thrift store – or grandma’s closet – for funky kids togs (Browse Etsy.com for ways that others have done this).
This type of green sewing is a great way to express your creativity, re-use materials that might otherwise wind up in a landfill, and give your child’s closet a boost on a limited budget. It can also allow you to add items to their closet that will not be found anywhere else.
Sew-Green.org, a community not-for-profit program out of Ithaca, NY that promotes sustainability through the creative reuse of fabric, fiber, and fashion offers these tips for sewing green fashion:
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Calculating your impact
If you are really hard-core about green fashion or reducing your overall impact on the environment, check out the Colour Connections Household Textile Environmental Impact Calculator offered on EcoTextileNews website. The calculator lets you enter in the number of various items you buy, throw away (bin), donate, use as rags, and recycle each year, as well as your laundry practices and then it calculates your water and energy consumption, pollution, and use of non-renewables.
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