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Relish Embellish Cafe: People Power Storyboard - Maggie

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Relish Embellish Cafe: People Power Storyboard - Maggie

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Relish Embellish Cafe: People Power Storyboard - Dhanbala

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Relish Embellish Cafe: People Power Storyboard - Dhanbala

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Relish Embellish Cafe: People Power Storyboard - Antonina

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Relish Embellish Cafe: People Power Storyboard - Antonina

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Relish Embellish Cafe: People Power Storyboard - Sue

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Relish Embellish Cafe: People Power Storyboard - Sue

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Relish Embellish Cafe: People Power Storyboard - Babs

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Relish Embellish Cafe: People Power Storyboard - Babs

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Relish Embellish Cafe: People Power Storyboard - Daria

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Relish Embellish Cafe: People Power Storyboard - Daria

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Relish Embellish Cafe: People Power Storyboard - Cyn

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Relish Embellish Cafe: People Power Storyboard - Cyn

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Relish Embellish Cafe: People Power Storyboard - Ophelia

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Relish Embellish Cafe: People Power Storyboard - Ophelia

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Relish Embellish Cafe: People Power Storyboard - Minerva

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Relish Embellish Cafe: People Power Storyboard - Minerva

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Relish Embellish Cafe: People Power Storyboard - Isabelle

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Relish Embellish Cafe: People Power Storyboard - Isabelle

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Relish Embellish Cafe @ St Luke's Community Centre - Storyboard No4

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Relish Embellish Cafe @ St Luke's Community Centre - Storyboard No4

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Relish Embellish Cafe @ The Arc Centre - Storyboard No3

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Relish Embellish Cafe @ The Arc Centre - Storyboard No3

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Relish Embellish Cafe @ Hilldrop Community Centre - Storyboard No2

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Relish Embellish Cafe @ Hilldrop Community Centre - Storyboard No2

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Relish Embellish Cafe @ Caxton House Community Centre - Storyboard No1

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Relish Embellish Cafe @ Caxton House Community Centre - Storyboard No1

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Relish Embellish Cafe e-Toolkit Resource: No5 - Workshop and Write-up Slide deck

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Relish Embellish Cafe e-Toolkit Resource: No5 - Workshop and Write-up Slide deck

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Brand your workshops and write-ups with this ready-made PPT which can be used to structure your workshop, give a presentation on your participants and their fantastic creations, or produce a report - it's so versitle.

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Relish Embellish Cafe e-Toolkit: Resource No4 - Workshop Discussion Themes

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Relish Embellish Cafe e-Toolkit: Resource No4 - Workshop Discussion Themes

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Stimulate your workshop discussions with this resource for you to use during your cafe workshops to create awareness of the environmental impact of textile production.

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Relish Embellish Cafe e-Toolkit: Resource No3 - Christmas Jumper Campaign

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Relish Embellish Cafe e-Toolkit: Resource No3 - Christmas Jumper Campaign

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Our Christmas Jumper Campaign e-Toolkit is just too big for our Padlet. If you want to get a copy of it, just get in touch!

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Relish Embellish Cafe e-Toolkit: Resource No2 - Newsletter Template

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Relish Embellish Cafe e-Toolkit: Resource No2 - Newsletter Template

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Use this newsletter template to share information, news, updates and stories.

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Relish Embellish Cafe e-Toolkit: Resource No1 - Template Flyer

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Relish Embellish Cafe e-Toolkit: Resource No1 - Template Flyer

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Brand your Relish Embellish Cafe activities with this ready-made flyer to promote your workshops, activities and events.

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The children really enjoyed making designs for transforming jumpers.
as one mum said it's good to have family workshops and think together about different ways we can make best use of the clothes we have.

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Minerva was very proud of learning to knit from scratch.
" I also learnt if you need to learn a new skill you can also watch a video on
you tube "

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" I am  decorating an old ‘posh' quality designer t shirt I bought for £2.00 from  Oxfam, a charity shop at the Angel .  Ive decided to transform it with beads ."

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Isabelle has 3 daughters and is working on lots of projects to make clothes last longer "I am transforming  an adult cardigan of good quality made from Cashmere and silk that got shrunk making it into a cardigan for my young daughter. I am also extending my toddlers trousers to extend their usage because they are too short and it's sad not to still use as they are good quality cashmere wool."

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Everyone enjoyed putting together the exhibition and we've posted on instagram this short video put together using a free app called inshot. We hope it will raise awareness and encourage local people to join up to our next set of up- cycling and sewing classes

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We used https://wordart.com/ to create this image using words from participants to describe the project

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We learnt simple ideas on how to upcycle
t- shirts using hand stitching and frilling the edges of this beautiful batik material that had been donated

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We asked Ozgu what she was proud of and she said "I can now hand sew using basic stitches and I have learnt you can repair and fix old clothes"

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“ I am redesigning moth eaten large wool trousers  from a friend who was going to chuck them out - I’ve cut out the moth eaten bits and made them calf length. I’ve taken the seams into make them smaller.They are now 3 sizes smaller " Savitre

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Families and staff got creative transforming jumpers and James aged 9 decided to also make an old jumper into a woolly hat and scarf.

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We celebrated all the clothes we had transformed by making together an exhibition at the community centre. We shared key messages about textile waste and inspired local residents to join our up-cycling and sewing class.

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Caxton House Scheme of Work Relish Embellish

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Facts and Links: UK Textile Waste & Overview 

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Facts and Links: UK Textile Waste & Overview 

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Resource: Take Action Against Textile Waste Poster

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Resource: Take Action Against Textile Waste Poster

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Take Action Against Textile Waste Poster

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Resource: Recycling & Donating Clothes Map

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Resource: Recycling & Donating Clothes Map

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We put together a map for our participants showing locations of clothing banks, charity shops that take clothes donations and local community centres that may want clothes/fabrics.

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Dhanbala made a lovely warm scarf from odd bits of wool. Just to mention we also have a children's art project that uses anything that can be recycled from the bin. Including the little circle on top of a fresh bottle of milk. Old CD can make beautiful greetings cards or Christmas decorations.

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Not just jumpers we made stockings as well from old materials. All to be filled by Santa. Ho Ho Ho

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"I made this skirt from old materials and I am so proud of it. I will never have to buy clothes again. I have learned so much from this group and I was shocked at the amount of clothing that goes to landfill. It really makes you think. I have also made some lovely friends here and Prabhat is so helpful."

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Making and Measuring

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Another one of my favorites is this bag made from old clothing and so well made.

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Here is some quilting and using oddments and old clothes to create this beautiful quilt.

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My favorite garment made into an all in one jumpsuit from a blouse and trousers.
So creative.

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This lady loves knitting and will unwind odd bits of wool to make garments. Here she has made herself a warm and cosy snood from an old jumper.

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Cutting out, measuring and repurposing clothing. Exploring what you would turn a pair of trousers into.

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Learning how to use the sewing machines. the group have mixed abilities where some of the women are really experienced and some are new to using a sewing machine.

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Hand Made Cushion from an old dress.

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R & E I made this Cushion from an old Dress 1

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One of the Westminster Kingsway Students showing a member of the group how to jazz up an old Christmas Jumper.

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Not Just Jumpers try and apron for Christmas. Made in the Relish and Embellish Cafe. It looks so professional

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Our Fashion students from Westminster Kingsway, helping the group with repurposing garments into Christmas Jumpers. They created a template that the group could use and sew on.

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Our ladies are using surplus and unwanted wool to create new jumpers for newborn babies to keep them warm. These are donated to the Royal London Hospital Maternity Unit.

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Christmas Jumper campaign started in early December by our Fashion students from Westminster Kingsway College. They created a poster and stood outside local schools to promote our Christmas Jumper campaign.

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A great use for unwanted wool scraps is weaving or crochet. We learned how to crochet, knit and weave with various scraps and threads. We made objects and patches which could be used to decorate clothing.

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Students leaned embroidery, darning on wool or fabric, weaving, macrame, sashiko, Boro, crochet and knitting.
"We learned so many techniques we can upcycle almost any piece of clothing into something beautiful!" (Susan)

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Dead-stock Fabric into Colourful Weaving!

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Dead-stock Fabric into Colourful Weaving!

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We learned to weave with deadstock thread and fabric. One of the clever items we made were these colourful patches which could be used as a coaster or stitched onto clothing.

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We learned to use Boro and Sashiko stitching to upcycle denim fabric like these jeans, creating a truly beautiful and unique garments.

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These key chains were woven from old clothing scraps. A simple way to reuse and upcycle fabric.

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We made old t-shirts into attractive Macrame plant hangers as part of our sewing project at The ARC! This one was made by Jayne!

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Saving, swapping and upcycling Christmas jumpers at Caxton Dec 2021.

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The amazing pile of donated clothes we started our Relish Embellish community quilt with - we still have plenty left of for future projects.

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Following on from our Relish Embellish Community Quilt we've been doing some recycled paper making! It's a really lovely and easy craft that uses up scraps of old paper.

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Making a fabric catch-all, great for scraps!

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Making a fabric catch-all, great for scraps!

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The rise of fast fashion is largely behind the growing amounts of clothing we buy and throw away each year (Credit: Press Association)

Fast fashion is leading to a mountain of clothing being thrown away each year and has a huge impact on the environment, so can we turn our unwanted garments into something useful?

Open your wardrobe and be honest. How long was it since you last wore some of those clothes? Do you think it might be time for a clear out?

Languishing in the back of cupboards and bottom of drawers are outfits that don't fit any more, items that have gone out of fashion, or even clothes that have never been worn. In fact, according to research conducted by sociologist Sophie Woodward at the University of Manchester, on average 12% of clothes in the wardrobes of women she studied could be considered "inactive".

If you were brutal, you'll probably manage to fill a bin-bag or two with clothes you no longer want or need. But what then?

Around 85% of all textiles thrown away in the US - roughly 13 million tonnes in 2017 - are either dumped into landfill or burned. The average American has been estimated to throw away around 37kg of clothes every year. And globally, an estimated 92 million tonnes of textiles waste is created each year and the equivalent to a rubbish truck full of clothes ends up on landfill sites every second. By 2030, we are expected as a whole to be discarding more than 134 million tonnes of textiles a year.

Millions of tonnes of clothing, shoes and other textiles end up in landfill every year because very little is sent for recycling (Credit: Alamy)

"The current fashion system uses high volumes of non-renewable resources, including petroleum, extracted to produce clothes that are often used only for a short period of time, after which the materials are largely lost to landfill or incineration," says Chetna Prajapati, who studies ways of making sustainable textiles at Loughborough University in the UK.

"This system puts pressure on valuable resources such as water, pollutes the environment and degrades ecosystems in addition to creating societal impacts on a global scale."

There are good reasons to seek out alternatives to chucking clothes in the bin - globally the fashion industry is responsible for 10% of all greenhouse gas emissions, with textile production alone is estimated to release 1.2 billion tonnes of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere every year. Vast amounts of water are also needed to produce the clothes we wear too and the fashion industry is responsible for 20% of global waste water. ( Read more about the impact our fashion addiction has on the planet.)

At the same time we are buying more clothes than ever - the average consumer now buys 60% more clothing than they did 15 years ago. More than two tonnes of clothing are bought each minute in the UK, more than any other country in Europe. Globally, around 56 million tonnes of clothing are bought each year, and this is expected to rise to 93 million tonnes by 2030 and 160 million tonnes by 2050.

While most clothes with care will last many years, changing fashions mean their lifespan is artificially shortened by consumers changing tastes. Industry figures suggest modern clothing will have a lifespan of between 2-10 years - with underwear and t-shirts lasting just one to two years, while suits and coats last for around four to six years.

Would recycling our clothes help to reduce the toll our fashion addiction has on the environment?

Currently just 13.6% of clothes and shoes thrown away in the US end up being recycled - while the average American throws away 37kg of clothes every year. Globally just 12% of the material used for clothing ends up being recycled. Compare that to paper, glass and plastic PET bottles - which have recycling rates of 66%, 27% and 29% respectively in the US - and it is clear clothing lags behind.

Indeed, most of the recycled polyester being used now by leading fashion brands in fact comes from bottles rather than old clothing.

Much of the problem comes down to what our clothes are made from. The fabrics we drape over our bodies are complex combinations of fibres, fixtures and accessories. They are made from problematic blends of natural yarns, mand-made filaments, plastics and metals.

"For example, a 100% cotton t-shirt contains many other components such as labels and sewing threads which are usually made from another material like polyester," says Prajapati. "Similarly, a typical pair of jeans are made from cotton yarn which is generally blended with elastane, and other components such as zips and buttons and polyester sewing thread and dyed using a range of dyes."

Sorting clothing by hand is a time consuming task made more complicated by the many blends of man-made and natural fibres used in modern garments (Credit: Getty Images)

This makes them hard to separate so they can be effectively recycled. Sorting textiles into different fibres and material types by hand is labour intensive, slow and requires a skilled workforce. Growing use of modern fabric blends in clothing also makes it hard to do this mechanically too, although European researchers have been developing techniques that make use of hyperspectral cameras - which can see light beyond the limits of human vision - to better identify different fabric types. Once sorted, the dyes that have been applied to the fabrics need to be removed in order for yarns to be reused.

Currently, however, very few of the clothes that are sent to be recycled are actually turned into new clothing - a process known as "material to material" recycling. Old wool jumpers, for example, can be turned into carpets, cashmere can be recycled into suits. But as of 2015, less than 1% of used clothing was recycled in this way.

While of course there is a healthy market in second-hand clothes being sold online, perhaps the most popular way of disposing of old clothes is simply to give them away so they can be reused through charity shops. Increasingly, however, clothes donations are being used as a way of simply passing on the textile waste problem to others.

At Oxfam's Wastesaver clothes sorting and recycling plant in Batley, Yorkshire, UK, 80 tonnes of old clothes pass through the factory every week. Lorraine Needham Reid, Oxfam's Wastesaver manager, has worked at the plant for over 10 years. Over that time, however, she has seen a real decline in the quality of clothes that are reaching them, particularly when it comes to the materials used to make the clothes.

These days, most of what reaches Wastesaver will end up never being worn again. Over a third - 35% of the clothes - go to Oxfam's partners in Senegal to be sold. Between 1-3% go back into Oxfam shops around the UK to be re-sold.

The majority is sent for recycling in some way, but about six tonnes of the garments are of such poor quality they are simply torn up so they can be used as industrial cleaning clothes and stuffing for mattresses or car seats.

Fibre recycling technologies do exist, but they are only used on a small scale. Generally, the techniques can be separated into mechanical and chemical recycling.

"Blends are most suitable for mechanical fibre recycling, where fabrics are shredded and pulled to transform them into fibres of shorter length," says Prajapati. Shorter fibre length produces fabrics of lower quality and strength, so the results from this kind of recycling can't be used for clothing. Instead these tend to then be "downcycled" to produce other composite fibre materials such as thermal insulation or carpet for use in the building industry. Some researchers have found ways of creating noise insulation from old textile fibres.

Chemical fibre recycling for fabrics with large quantities of one type of fibre, for example polyester and nylon are well established, says Prajapati. "However, they consist of multiple processes and additional chemicals, making the process and resulting yarn or fabric costly," she says.

Treating cotton-polyester blends with enzymes from fungi can recover the man-made fibres for reuse (Credit: Getty Images)

There has been success on a smaller scale to effectively separate natural and synthetic blends and capture both types of fibres, without losing either fibre in the process. However, scaling up this technology to an industrial scale remains the challenge.

One group of researchers led by Carol Lin, a chemical engineer at the City University of Hong Kong, has developed a technique for recycling fabrics made from cotton and polyester blends by feeding them to fungi. The fungi Aspergillus niger - which typically forms a black mould on grapes - produces an enzyme that can break down the cotton into glucose that can then be used turned into syrup. The remaining pure polyester fibres can then be reused to make new clothing, they claim. Poly-cotton blends are now among the most popular fabrics for use in cheap clothing, commonly used in t-shirts, shirts and even jeans.

Lin and her team have since refined the process so it can be done on a larger scale using industrially produced cellulose enzymes, and have been working with the clothing retailer H&M to examine what impact this recycling process might have on its textile waste.

Austrian researchers have also developed techniques using enzymes that allow them to turn old wool clothing into a material that can be used as a resin or adhesive.

But if we ever hope to make our clothing sustainable, more fundamental changes to the clothing industry will need to be made. Fabrics, fibres and garments will need to be designed in ways that make them easier to recover and recycle.

"Recycling needs to be incorporated into the current system to make it more circular," says Prajapati. "Therefore, the way we design clothes needs to change, it needs to facilitate recycling."

One option is to create new types of materials altogether, from different sources, that either won't have the same impact on the environment or might be easier to recycle. Some are even looking at turning other types of waste - such as off milk - into clothing.

When milk turns sour, it separates into whey at the bottom and protein flakes on top. When you remove the whey, you are left with a kind of cottage cheese.

"This cottage cheese is put into a machine that works like a noodle machine," says Anke Domaske, founder of QMilk, a company that has been developing new types of biodegradable fibres in Hemmingen, Germany. "Together with water you create a dough. At the end there is a spinneret with holes so fine that you do not end up with noodles, but fine fibres that are thinner than hair."

The company then spins these fibres into yarns, which it says have a silk-like texture. These can then be used to make jersey or woven fabrics, or other textiles like felt. Crucially, when a garment made completely from QMilk fibres is no longer wanted, it can simply be composted at home, Domaske says.

QMilk isn't the only company creating textiles from unusual sources.

The dye that is added to clothing also needs to be removed before it the yarn can be recycled (Credit: Getty Images)

After working for years at a design company in Germany, Renana Krebs saw behind the scenes how poor the textiles and clothing industry is for the environment. She vowed to do something about it and in 2016, she started Algalife, making fibres and dyes from algae.

Algae is already widely used in the beauty industry, in certain foods and it is used to make biofuels. "After learning about all those industries, and the benefits that we get from algae, we asked 'why not to do this for textiles?'" says Krebs.

One benefit is the algae are harvested in a closed system, meaning there is no freshwater used in the process at all. All the algae need to grow is water and sunlight. By extracting natural colourings from different types of algae, Krebs and her team have been able to combine these with enzymes and fixative agents - which help to bind the pigment to a fabric - from synthetic and natural sources, including oak galls, pomegranate rind and juniper needles.

They have also been able to produce fibres that can turned into yarns by purifying proteins from the algae or even using them to produce a bio-oil that can be turned into bioplastic fibres.

Prajapati has also been working with colleagues at De Montfort University to produce enzymes that could potentially make the clothes dying process more sustainable.

Currently most textiles are coloured using synthetic dyes, which are petroleum derivatives, and patterned with complex processes. These processes can require temperatures of up to 100C for cotton, nylon and wool, but higher for polyester and other synthetic fibres. On top of this, the process requires high pressures, long processing times and the use of additional chemicals such as acids and alkalis, which are harmful towards the environment in large quantities.

Prajapati and her colleagues have been developing processes that use enzymes so that textile dyes and patterning of fabrics can be done temperatures as low as 50C, at atmospheric pressure and pH conditions around neutral without the use of additional chemicals.

"The key advantages over conventional methods include simpler processing of textiles, the elimination of pre-manufactured dyes and opportunities for multiple colours to be achieved through simple alteration of processing conditions," she says.

Pigments made by Algalife have similar benefits, plus the added benefit of being created from renewable sources, says Krebs. You can even drink the dye they produce, she says. Algalife is now working with a major retail fashion brand and hope to have clothes made from algae in stores by 2021.

Other major brands across the fashion industry are starting to pay attention to the demand for more sustainable practices. Companies like Adidas, that recently announced a range of trainers made from ocean plastic. High street retailer Zara also announced in 2019 that it would be using only sustainable materials by 2025.

The shredding process used by mechanical recycling methods leads to shorter, weaker fibres that cannot be resued to make clothes (Credit: Alamy)

"Using recycled, rather than virgin, materials offers an opportunity to drastically reduce non-renewable resource inputs and the negative impacts of the industry, like CO2 emissions, water and chemical use," says Prajapati.

But some are sceptical about how committed some large brands are to sustainability, accusing them of "greenwashing", which the companies deny.

Zara was one of the original inventors of the fast fashion system as we know it, says Clare Press, Australian Vogue's sustainability editor-at-large and author of the book Wardrobe Crisis. "Let's not pretend people shop at Zara for heirlooms to pass down through the generations," she says. "In the last 20 years the fashion system has changed completely, moving away from seasonal drops towards near-instant gratification. Waiting six months for a runway look seems crazy to a new generation of fashion fans raised on Instagram and 'see now, buy now'."

So while recycling and more sustainable fabrics will be a key part of the solution, consumers too will need to change their behaviour if we hope to lessen the impact that the fashion industry is having on our planet.

"We need to slow down, take a little time to reconnect with our clothes and appreciate them again," says Press. "Remember that whatever you are wearing, it took both physical and creative resources to make it."

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Fast fashion is leading to a mountain of clothing being thrown away each year and has a huge impact on the environment, so can we turn our unwanted garments into something useful?

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Recycling Clothes: Useful facts for participants

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Recycling Clothes: Useful facts for participants

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Facts on Clothes Recycling – Clothes Aid

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The UK could save around £3billion per year from the cost of the resources we use to make and clean clothes if we changed the way we supplied, used and disposed of clothing. This would reduce the carbon, water and waste footprints of clothing consumption by 10-20% each. Being part of the Wrap 2020 C…

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How to sew a lined Zipper Pouch--great for Beginners!

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Learn The Basics of Visible Mending | Made by Me | Better Homes & Gardens

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Trying to get Londoners to recycle their clothes

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Trying to get Londoners to recycle their clothes

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Trying to get Londoners to recycle their clothes – BBC London

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How does fashion impact the climate?

According to Fashion on Climate, the fashion industry contributes approximately 2.1 billion tonnes of greenhouse gas emissions in a single year, equivalent to 4% of all global emissions. This staggering figure is comparable to the annual GHG emissions of France, Germany and the United Kingdom combined. These estimates are based on data from 2018, but the industry is expected to continue to grow in the future.
This means that if our efforts to reduce fashion's impact are not rapidly accelerated within the next 10 years, emissions are predicted to rise to 2.7 billion tonnes a year by 2030.
The colossal carbon impact of clothing happens at every stage of the fashion supply chain and product life cycle, but 70% of fashion's emissions originate from upstream activities such as raw material production and processing. Despite this, most major brands still fail to take basic steps towards environmental due diligence at their supplier sites. Generally speaking, dyeing and finishing, yarn preparation, and fibre production tend to be the most carbon-intensive phases. These processes are massively underrated by fashion brands, who mostly only account for the emissions from their own operations, like transport and retail.
Fashion's impact on the climate crisis is not just about carbon emissions, but water, chemicals, deforestation, textile waste, microplastics and more.
As our 2021 Fashion Transparency Index found, the world's largest brands and retailers talk a lot about their sustainability efforts, but there remains a lack of transparency on actions and outcomes across key environmental indicators. If brands don't measure and disclose their data throughout all operations, we cannot hold them accountable to their climate targets. The entire fashion industry needs to be bolder and more transparent about what they're doing to address the scale of the global climate challenge, especially when it comes to environmental impacts in the supply chain and the consequences of unsustainable production and consumption.

Environmental data collection is standard practice in many industries and, given the social and environmental ramifications of the climate crisis, this is an urgent issue for the global fashion industry considering its significant impacts on the planet. Brands cannot demonstrably reduce their environmental impacts if they do not track and share this data to enable better understanding among all stakeholders and the public on what work is being done and where more effort is needed.

Ultimately, we need to see tougher legislation internationally that mandates transparency and environmental due diligence, so that brands have no choice but to take action on conserving and restoring the environment throughout their supply chain.

Climate justice and social justice are interconnected, as climate change will continue to have devastating socioeconomic impacts on people across the world. We believe that human rights and the rights of nature must be addressed in tandem, and for the fashion industry, this means radically transforming the dominant narrative of overproduction and overconsumption, and the business model built on exploitation, extraction and waste.
We know the science. We have the solutions. The time is now for climate action.
We cannot continue to extract dwindling resources from an already stressed natural world, pollute our land and our oceans, fall far short of climate change targets and dump our waste on the shoulders of countries we have culturally depleted. Nor can we continue to allow big business to profit whilst supply chain workers struggle to live in dignity.
As fashion lovers, fashion consumers and most importantly, global citizens, it's time to come together to slow down the fashion system and prioritise real sustainability for generations to come.

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Taking action on fashion and the climate crisis : Fashion Revolution

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We love fashion, but we don’t want our clothes to come at the cost of people or our planet.

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Upcycling, Downcycling and Recycling Explained

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Upcycling transforms waste into new and better products. Both upcycling and downcycling are examples of recycling, but not all recycling is created equal.

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Social and Political Research Foundation

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The fashion industry is the 3rd most polluting industry in the world.

A large amount of waste happens at both the production stage, as our clothes are made, and the consumer stage, as we throw away or overly wash our clothes.

Dive into this sustainable fashion facts list to learn more about how and why eco-friendly fashion is so important.

The complete list of eco-friendly fashion facts

General sustainable fashion facts

As much as 20% to 35% of all primary source microplastics in the marine environment are from synthetic clothing, according to academic estimates.

Production stage

7,000 liters of water are used in the making of a pair of jeans.

Under 1% of the material used to produce clothing is recycled into new clothing at the end of its life.

59 major textile, apparel, and retailers - including Adidas, Dibella, Eileen Fisher, Gap Inc., H&M, Lindex, MetaWear, Target, and Timberland- aim to increase their use of Recycled Polyester (rPET) by at least 25% by 2020.

A polyester shirt has more than double the carbon footprint of a cotton shirt (5.5 kg CO2e vs. 2.1 kg CO2e).

The fashion industry is projected to use 35% more land for fibre production by 2030-an extra 115 million hectares that could be left for biodiversity or used to grow crops to feed an expanding population.

Textile production is a major contributor to climate change. It produces an estimated 1.2 billion tonnes of CO2 equivalent (CO2e) per year - more than international flights and maritime shipping combined.

Cotton farming is responsible for 24 per cent of insecticides and 11 per cent of pesticides despite using only 3 per cent of the world's arable land (source)

Consumer stage

Worldwide clothing utilization has dropped by 36% compared to how much we used our clothes 15 years ago.

Extending the life of clothing by an extra nine months could reduce carbon, waste and water footprints by around 20-30% each.

Approximately 1,130,000 tonnes of clothing were purchased in the UK in 2016, an increase of almost 200,000 tonnes since 2012.

Sustainable fashion facts takeaways and recap

At both the production and consumer stage, there are huge improvements that can be made that will help create a more sustainable and eco-friendly fashion industry.

I hope these eco-fashion facts help show you some of the things you can change, and reasons to advocate for and purchase from sustainable fashion brands.

We also collected a complete list of the best TED Talks on Sustainable Fashion currently out there, which is a great resource to learn more.

If you have any interesting facts that we should include here, leave a comment (and the source of the information!) below.

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20+ Interesting Sustainable Fashion Facts & Statistics - ecothes

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The fashion industry is the 3rd most polluting industry in the world. A large amount of waste happens at both the production stage, as our clothes are made, and the consumer stage, as we throw away or overly wash our clothes.

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Old Clothes Fashion Upcycled Activity Pack

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Use this activity pack to give you and your child tips on how to upcycle clothes. From making a bag from an old T-shirt to creating a bowl from denim materials, your child will have lots of fun doing these textile-based activities while using old clothes for purposeful tasks.

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The life cycle of a t-shirt - Angel Chang