Upcycled Fashion: The New Normal

by Maylyn Wilson 

Student at Thomas Jefferson University

Currently, the practice of upcycling is becoming more popular in the fashion industry and even more popular to everyday people. Upcycling fashion is taking old, worn out, or damaged clothing and transforming it into something new. Clothes that don’t fit, are torn, stained, or have any type of damage to them can be refreshed and refashioned into a new product. However, It should be noted that upcycling is far off from recycling clothing. When upcycling clothing you are reusing the same fabric from the item and turning it into a new product. Recycling on the other hand, is breaking down materials before they are reconstructed into something else. This is sometimes done mechanically (shredding,etc) or chemically (treated with fibers or chemicals). Recycling uses lots of resources whereas upcycling isn't damaging to our environment and uses natural resources, not harmful chemicals that could affect us.

Today, there is a more harmful fashion technique in the industry called fast fashion. Fast fashion is a design and marketing method focused primarily on producing height columns of clothing. Unfortunately, it's not the best choice to use. They use synthetic fabrics to replicate good clothing lines by using low quality material. These cheaply made clothing items result in overwhelming amounts of consumption. The clothing production used in the fast fashion industry requires a large amount of energy and resources to make. It depends on toxic fabric dyes and a lot of chemicals, as if it wasn't bad enough fast fashion has had a big impact on the environment the most in the past few years. This is caused by carbon emissions. The fashion industry alone is responsible for 10% of global carbon dioxide emissions every year. This is more than airplane and maritime shipping together. Fast fashion being as harmful as it is, it's affecting our earth more and more everyday. Lots of materials are being thrown away and wasted when they can be used for something entirely different. Now, whether it's bad for our environment or not, many brands continue to use this industry trend because of their profits. So many people are biased on this topic and others shift from one side to the other. Is fast fashion bad? Yes, it is bad because it brings lots of harm to our planet. On the other hand, it does bring lots of profit to clothing brands.

There are huge opportunities for brands and retailers to shift towards more sustainable materials for clothing and footwear that are less damaging to the environment. The Covid-19 pandemic has made an impact on upcycling clothing, shoes, and other fashion wear. In the UK Fashion and Sustainability Market Report 2021, Tamara Sender, a senior fashion analyst, had spoken on upcycling fashion and how it could help our environment. Sender stated, “As protecting the environment becomes more of a priority for consumers and awareness of the importance of sustainability in fashion grows, fashion retailers and brands will need to be transparent and ensure that their approach to sustainability covers all elements of their business and that they effectively communicate this with their customers” (Sender, 2021). The benefits our environment gets from upcycling is having reduced pollutants in the air and also saving materials from landfill. Most landfill being seen are wasteful clothing items that could be upcycled into new and improved wearable items. Our landfills could have less debris in them if people were to stop throwing away clothes and give them away to people or try and restyle them instead.

Aware of the benefits that come along with upcycling, many known brands and boutiques have started to base their clothing lines on renewable clothing. One clothing brand, Synergy Organic, has been creating organic clothing since 1993. The majority of their clothing line is dedicated to women items such as jackets, dresses, sweaters, and more. Synergy uses lots of upcycled and recycled synthetic to get that quality that regular cotton in clothes just can get. Another clothing line, Outerknown, has participated in reusing clothing items to create new and fun items. This brand uses sustainable jeans and shirts with high quality natural materials to create wide ranges of outdoor clothing that can be worn anywhere. One of their most outstanding upcycled clothing from their brand is their recycled ocean plastic Econyl swimwear and their recycled polyester shorts. Outerknown is a certified brand who is trusted, so we know that their manufacturing does not include harmful chemicals that could affect people wearing their clothes. A well known clothing line, H&M, recently started offering recycling services at more than 4,200 locations. They do this to prevent their customers from filling up landfill with their unwanted clothes. H&M’s goal is to help stop the landfills from being filled up and upcycle the unwanted clothing. Another big contribution to upcycling that people do is thrift. Thrifting is where people give their old clothes that they don't want anymore to stores like Goodwill, Salvation Army, and other thrift stores. These stores then place the items at lower prices for others to afford and get clothing they can restyle. Thrifting is very eco-friendly because you're giving something so ordinary a new life instead of wasting it in the landfill. You can save lots of money by doing so as well. Thrifting clothing essentially keeps clothes and their components in circulation for longer. This reduces the manufacturing for new clothes and prevents pollution.

Throwing away garbage on a daily basis is a part of human nature. Yearly, on average a person generates 2x the amount of waste than they buy and recycles about 20% of the total waste. This leads to the rest of that 80% of the waste in a landfill or in the ocean. This makes the earth an unlivable place. All of this waste has a negative impact on the ecosystem and climate change through releasing excess greenhouse gasses, thickening the atmosphere. In the article, The Current National Picture, they had stated that the total solid waste back in 2018 was 292.4 million. That means there was 4.9 lbs of trash per day being wasted on average. Almost 94 million tons of that waste had the ability to be upcycled/ recycled but instead were trashed and put into landfill. In the last 20 years, the amount of clothing Americans alone throw away has doubled, going from 7 million to 14 million tons. What people don't realize is that throwing away clothes and not upcycling them is doing more harm than good. Most people think getting rid of clothes is a good way to free up space, however, there also come consequences when it's not done the right way. Most people just don’t care or don't even consider these things happening which is sad because you would think humans would care more about the planet they live on. Upcycling can help better our planet in lots of ways. If more people began upcycling instead of wasting their clothes, we could have more fashionable items to style & recreate on social media and also help keep our planet clean.

Sites sourced: 

https://www.roadrunnerwm.com/blog/textile-waste-environmental-crisis#:~:text=The%20volum e%20of%20clothing%20Americans,total%20MSW%20generation%20that%20year https://www.thegoodtrade.com/features/what-is-fast-fashion https://www.sustainablejungle.com/sustainable-fashion/recycled-upcycled-clothing/ https://www.epa.gov/facts-and-figures-about-materials-waste-and-recycling/national-overview-fa cts-and-figures-materials https://store.mintel.com/report/uk-fashion-sustainability-market-report https://immago.com/upcycling-clothes/#:~:text=Upcycling%20clothes%20is%20to%20take,refas hioned%20into%20a%20new%20product. 

https://www.mckinsey.com/industries/retail/our-insights/the-future-of-sustainable-fashion