3 creative ways to fix fashions waste problem Amit Kalra
A few years ago, I found myself
looking for the most
cost-effective way to be stylish.
So naturally, I wound up
at my local thrift store,
a wonderland of other people’s trash
that was ripe to be plucked
to become my treasure.
Now, I wasn’t just looking
for your average
off-the-secondhand-rack
vintage T-shirt to wear.
For me, real style lives
at the intersection of design
and individuality.
So to make sure that I was getting
the most out of the things I was finding,
I bought a sewing machine
so I could tailor the 90’s-style
garments that I was finding,
to fit a more contemporary aesthetic.
I’ve been tailoring and making
my own clothes from scratch ever since,
so everything in my closet
is uniquely my own.
But as I was sorting through the endless
racks of clothes at these thrift stores,
I started to ask myself,
what happens to all the clothes
that I don’t buy?
The stuff that isn’t really cool or trendy
but kind of just sits there and rots away
at these secondhand stores.
I work in the fashion industry
on the wholesale side,
and I started to see
some of the products that we sell
end up on the racks
of these thrift stores.
So the question started to work its way
into my work life, as well.
I did some research
and I pretty quickly found
a very scary supply chain
that led me to some
pretty troubling realities.
It turned out that the clothes
I was sorting though
at these thrift stores
represented only a small fraction
of the total amount of garments
that we dispose of each year.
In the US, only 15 percent
of the total textile and garment waste
that’s generated each year
ends up being donated
or recycled in some way,
which means that the other 85 percent
of textile and garment waste
end up in landfills every year.
Now, I want to put this into perspective,
because I don’t quite think
that the 85 percent
does the problem justice.
This means that almost 13 million tons
of clothing and textile waste
end up in landfills every year
in just the United States alone.
This averages out to be
roughly 200 T-shirts per person
ending up in the garbage.
In Canada, we throw away enough clothing
to fill the largest stadium
in my home town of Toronto,
one that seats 60,000 people,
with a mountain of clothes
three times the size of that stadium.
Now, even with this,
I still think that Canadians
are the more polite North Americans,
so don’t hold it against us.
(Laughter)
What was even more surprising
was seeing that the fashion industry
is the second-largest
polluter in the world
behind the oil and gas industry.
This is an important comparison to make.
I don’t want to defend
the oil and gas industry
but I’d be lying if I said I was surprised
to hear they were the number one polluter.
I just assumed, fairly or not,
that that’s an industry
that doesn’t really mind
sticking to the status quo.
One where the technology
doesn’t really change
and the focus is more so
on driving profitability
at the expense of a sustainable future.
But I was really surprised to see
that the fashion industry was number two.
Because maintaining that status quo
is the opposite of what
the fashion industry stands for.
The unfortunate reality is,
not only do we waste
a lot of the things we do consume,
but we also use a lot to produce
the clothes that we buy each year.
On average, a household’s purchase
of clothing per year
requires 1,000 bathtubs
of water to produce.
A thousand bathtubs of water
per household, per year.
That’s a lot of water.
It seems that the industry
that always has been
and probably always will be
on the forefront of design,
creates products that are designed
to be comfortable, designed to be trendy
and designed to be expressive
but aren’t really designed
to be sustainable
or recyclable for that matter.
But I think that can change.
I think the fashion industry’s
aptitude for change
is the exact thing that should make it
patient zero for sustainable
business practices.
And I think to get started,
all we have to do
is start to design clothes
to be recyclable at the end of their life.
Now, designing recyclable clothing
is definitely something
to leave to the professionals.
But as a 24-year-old
thrift store aficionado
armed with a sewing machine,
if I were to very humbly
posit one perspective,
it would be to approach clothing design
kind of like building with Lego.
When we put together a brick of Lego,
it’s very strong
but very easily manipulated.
It’s modular in its nature.
Clothing design as it stands today
is very rarely modular.
Take this motorcycle jacket as an example.
It’s a pretty standard jacket
with its buttons, zippers and trim.
But in order for us to efficiently
recycle a jacket like this,
we need to be able
to easily remove these items
and quickly get down to just the fabric.
Once we have just the fabric,
we’re able to break it down
by shredding it
and getting back to thread level,
make new thread that then
gets made into new fabric
and ultimately new clothing,
whether it be a new jacket
or new T-shirts, for example.
But the complexity lies
with all of these extra items,
the buttons, the zippers and the trim.
Because in reality, these items
are actually quite difficult to remove.
So in many cases it requires
more time or more money
to disassemble a jacket like this.
In some cases, it’s just more
cost-effective to throw it away
rather than recycle it.
But I think this can change
if we design clothes in a modular way
to be easily disassembled
at the end of their lives.
We could redesign this jacket
to have a hidden wireframe,
kind of like the skeleton of a fish,
that holds all important items together.
This invisible fish-bone structure
can have all of these extra items,
the zippers and the buttons and the trim,
sewn into it and then
attached to the fabric.
So at the end of the jacket’s life,
all you have to do
is remove its fish bone
and the fabric comes with it
a lot quicker and a lot
easier than before.
Now, recycling clothing
is definitely one piece of the puzzle.
But if we want to take
fixing the environmental impact
that the fashion industry has
more seriously,
then we need to take this to the next step
and start to design clothes
to also be compostable
at the end of their lives.
For most of the types of clothes
we have in our closet
the average lifespan is about three years.
Now, I’m sure there’s many of us
that have gems in our drawers
that are much older than that,
which is great.
Because being able to extend the life
of a garment by even only nine months
reduces the waste and water impact
that that garment has
by 20 to 30 percent.
But fashion is fashion.
Which means that styles
are always going to change
and you’re probably going to be wearing
something different than you were today
eight seasons from now,
no matter how environmentally
friendly you want to be.
But lucky for us, there are some items
that never go out of style.
I’m talking about your basics –
your socks, underwear, even your pajamas.
We’re all guilty of wearing these items
right down to the bone,
and in many cases
throwing them in the garbage
because it’s really difficult
to donate your old ratty socks
that have holes in them
to your local thrift store.
But what if we were able
to compost these items
rather than throw them in the trash bin?
The environmental savings could be huge,
and all we would have to do
is start to shift more of our resources
to start to produce more of these items
using more natural fibers,
like 100 percent organic cotton.
Now, recycling and composting
are two critical priorities.
But one other thing
that we have to rethink
is the way that we dye our clothes.
Currently, 10 to 20 percent
of the harsh chemical dye that we use
end up in water bodies that neighbor
production hubs in developing nations.
The tricky thing is
that these harsh chemicals
are really effective
at keeping a garment a specific color
for a long period of time.
It’s these harsh chemicals
that keep that bright red dress
bright red for so many years.
But what if we were able
to use something different?
What if we were able to use something
that we all have
in our kitchen cabinets at home
to dye our clothes?
What if we were able to use
spices and herbs to dye our clothes?
There’s countless food options
that would allow for us to stain material,
but these stains change color over time.
This would be pretty different
than the clothes that were dyed harshly
with chemicals that we’re used to.
But dyeing clothes naturally this way
would allow for us
to make sure they’re more unique
and environmentally friendlier.
Let’s think about it.
Fashion today is all about individuality.
It’s about managing your own
personal appearance
to be just unique enough to be cool.
These days, everybody has the ability
to showcase their brand
their personal style,
across the world, through social media.
The pocket-sized billboards
that we flick through
on our Instagram feeds
are chock-full of models and taste-makers
that are showcasing their individuality
through their personal microbrands.
But what could be
more personalized, more unique,
than clothes that change color over time?
Clothes that with each wash
and with each wear
become more and more one of a kind.
People have been buying
and wearing ripped jeans for years.
So this would just be another example
of clothes that exist in our wardrobe
that evolve with us over our lives.
This shirt, for example, is one that,
much to the dismay of my mother
and the state of her kitchen,
I dyed at home, using turmeric,
before coming here today.
This shirt is something
that none of my friends
are going to have on their Instagram feed.
So it’s unique,
but more importantly, it’s naturally dyed.
Now, I’m not suggesting
that everybody dye their clothes
in their kitchen sink at home.
But if we were able to apply this
or a similar process
on a commercial scale,
then our need to rely on these
harsh chemical dyes for our clothes
could be easily reduced.
The 2.4-trillion-dollar fashion industry
is fiercely competitive.
So the business that can provide
a product at scale
while also promising its customers
that each and every garment
will become more unique over time
will have a serious competitive advantage.
Brands have been playing
with customization for years.
The rise of e-commerce services,
like Indochino,
a bespoke suiting platform,
and Tinker Tailor,
a bespoke dress-making platform,
have made customization
possible from your couch.
Nike and Adidas have been mastering
their online shoe customization platforms
for years.
Providing individuality at scale
is a challenge that most consumer-facing
businesses encounter.
So being able to tackle this
while also providing
an environmentally friendly product
could lead to a pretty
seismic industry shift.
And at that point,
it’s not just about doing
what’s best for our environment
but also what’s best for the bottom line.
There’s no fix-all,
and there’s no one-step solution.
But we can get started
by designing clothes
with their death in mind.
The fashion industry
is the perfect industry
to experiment with and embrace change
that can one day get us
to the sustainable future
we so desperately need.
Thank you.
(Applause)