Tips on how to Upcycle Your Activewear for Cash (And the Planet)

The time period “upcycle” sounds rather a lot like what it means, which is to repurpose or reuse discarded supplies or objects. In relation to upcycled clothes, the underside line function of each upbiking and rebiking occurs: the clothes is given one other leg of life.

The emergence of thrift shops and consignment outlets have been the early methods to go inexperienced together with your used clothes. Right here, shoppers are capable of finding rather more inexpensive choices for used versus new clothes. If you donate your previous garments to a thrift retailer, you might be recycling these garments. If you promote your garments in a consignment retailer, you might be upcycling them.
 

92 million kilos of garments find yourself in American landfills every year.

 
For recycled clothes, suppose thrift shops, and for upcycled clothes, suppose consignment shops. Each are wonderful methods to be extra environmentally acutely aware together with your clothes.
 

The Significance of Upcycled Clothes, Circularity, and Sustainability

There’s an idea referred to as circularity that you will have examine because it pertains to sustainability. Whereas sustainability is the broad effort to be extra environmentally pleasant, circularity focuses particularly on decreasing (waste), reusing, and recycling.

Why ought to we as shoppers care? As a result of as shoppers, we’re additionally residents of this planet, of which we solely get one. The quantity of assets – from water, to carbon, to waste – that go into making a single garment is staggering. So whereas it’s necessary to concentrate on this reality, it’s much more necessary to behave on it.

Listed here are a number of extra attention-grabbing details from WRAP concerning the energy of upcycling, reusing, and repurposing our activewear (and past):

• Reusing a garment as an alternative of shopping for a brand new one cuts down carbon emissions by 51%
• Maintaining a garment in use for an additional 9 months reduces the water, carbon and waste footprint by a mean of 25% (think about if it was stored in use even longer!)
• Shopping for or promoting used (upcycled) clothes extends that garment’s life by roughly two years
• All of this drastically reduces waste and society’s reliance on virgin supplies and assets

Quick vogue is actually killing the planet. Do you know that quick vogue, or textile waste, is answerable for 10% of the worldwide carbon emissions? Thousands and thousands of kilos of garments find yourself within the landfills every year. 92 million tons to be precise.

Earth.org provides the most effective visible of this monumental drawback: image a rubbish truck dumping a full load of discarded garments into the landfill each second. That’s what number of tens of millions of kilos of clothes finally ends up discarded in trash dumps.

As one of many world’s main environmentally-forward corporations, Patagonia shares, “The manufacturing of any piece of clothes requires utilizing scarce pure assets. Shopping for used gear means one much less new merchandise that needed to be made, lightening the load on our planet.”
 

Shopping for or promoting used (upcycled) clothes extends that garment’s life by roughly two years.

 
The typical American will throw away practically 90 kilos of clothes yearly.

It takes over 10,000 gallons of water to make only one pound of cotton. Since 2005, the variety of occasions a garment has been worn earlier than being discarded has dropped by 35%.

What makes all of those scary statistics even worse is that quick vogue is barely gaining momentum. Statistics present that whereas the style business is answerable for 20% of the world’s waste water, quick vogue clothes manufacturing has doubled prior to now 20 years.

In 2020 alone, on-line clothes returns within the US created as a lot emissions as 3.5 million vehicles on the highway would for one 12 months.
 

Upcycle Your Activewear: The Planet and Your Pockets Will Thank You

What the statistics above show is the facility of the buyer. Shoppers have the facility to create an enormous ripple impact on the planet – for higher or worse.

We’ve seen the detrimental results of quick vogue waste and throwaway tradition. However these results additionally show that collectively, we’ve got the facility to create a distinct impact – one that’s sustainable and round.

And there are business leaders who’re already making strides in upcycling clothes for a extra sustainable method to activewear.

Not surprisingly, Patagonia is on the prime of this checklist! Patagonia’s Worn Put on is dedicated to extending the life of drugs to in flip lengthen the lifetime of our planet by elevating consciousness, chopping down on consumption, and getting extra use out of the activewear we have already got.

Worn Put on helps Patagonia lovers “take mutual duty to increase the lifetime of the merchandise Patagonia makes and prospects buy.” Their upcycling initiative gives “important assets for accountable care, restore, reuse and resale, and recycling on the finish of a garment’s life.” It’s all with the mission of maintaining this clothes out of landfills.

Clients can commerce of their worn Patagonia for retailer credit score. It’s a good way to commerce in and receives a commission (through extra Patagonia activewear). Along with trade-ins, you can too store the Recrafted Assortment (which is upcycled clothes constituted of different used garments), and the Seconds Assortment (which is new activewear with slight imperfections).

It’s nice for returning prospects who need to earn cash in the direction of new gear, and it’s equally as nice for patrons who need a low cost and need to assist upcycling practices.

One other chief within the activewear business that’s normalizing upcycled clothes is Lululemon. Lululemon’s activewear upcycling initiative is known as Like New. In line with their web site, they incorporate the same 3 R’s: rethink, revive, rediscover. Like Patagonia’s Worn Put on, Lululemon’s Like New permits Lulu lovers to promote again their frivolously used activewear for credit score in the direction of new gear.

Like New’s income go in the direction of Lululemon’s sustainability initiatives beneath their Affect Agenda. It’s motivating to see large manufacturers creating upcycled clothes initiatives, as a result of it signifies that different corporations and types will observe, and the development will unfold.

Don’t store at Lululemon or Patagonia? Need to develop your upcycling efforts past these two manufacturers? Apps like Poshmark allow you to store sustainably (which means you don’t have to go away your house) and promote your garments for money (which means they get an extended life cycle)! There are various apps for reselling and upcycled clothes. Do a little analysis to see which most closely fits your wants.

0——0—————November 2, 2022