A STITCH IN TIME
Every second across the globe, a rubbish truck full of clothes ends up in landfill. Tackling the problem head-on,companies the length and breadth of the country are giving lacklustre items a new lease of life, discovers
Upcycling and repurposing clothes and accessories is bang on trend
Aquick internet search yields a bleak picture of our addiction to fast fashion. The industry is the second largest polluter in the world; is responsible for more than a third of microplastics in the ocean; and produces more emissions than international plane travel and shipping combined. What’s more, as much as 25% of fast fashion garments – those bought and cast aside in rapid succession as trends develop – remain unsold, with just 1% of those made into new items. Synthetic fibres reign supreme, and the price to the natural world is colossal.
UK-centric statistics are just as stark. We buy more clothes per person than any country in Europe and send 300,000 tonnes of textiles to be burned or dumped in landfill every year. Such landfill sites are found in the likes of Accra, the capital of Ghana, where old party dresses, throwaway beachwear and unwanted shoes are piled tens of feet high, clogging gutters and spilling into rivers. Our high street brands release up to 52 collections a year to feed our ‘buy now, wear now’ habit. The way we are heading, this industry could be responsible for a quarter of the earth’s carbon budget by 2050.
Thankfully, though, a revolution is brewing. Championing a drive for change are some of fashion’s biggest names including Patrick Grant – the Scottish designer, director of bespoke tailors Norton & Sons of
Savile Row, and judge on The Great British Sewing Bee
– who regularly speaks out against a system that he says ‘is literally killing the planet’. Indeed The Sewing Bee, as well as programmes like the BBC’s Money For Nothing, Saved and Remade, and Stacey Solomon’s Sort Your Life Out, all suggest that the days of excessive waste are numbered.
This message is filtering down into fashion houses the length and breadth of the country, with companies like Arkdefo – an upcycling brand based in Glasgow that repurposes discarded denim into original clothes – tackling one of the worst offending materials out there. About two billion pairs of jeans are manufactured every year, and a typical pair takes 7,000 litres of water to produce. As well as leading the way to a more sustainable approach, owners Andrew and Elizaveta Bennett are teaching people the necessary skills to mend and remake their own clothes at home.
‘Skills like sewing are being lost,’ says Andrew, explaining that many UK charity shops are struggling to cope with surplus donations and items not fit for resale. ‘The landfill we are creating in Africa is horrendous. If our clothes had to stay in this country, there would be an absolute outcry. The national parks would just be a mountain of clothes, not a mountain of lovely hills.’
‘We hope to bring back the idea of creating an emotional connection with clothing,’ continues Elizaveta, who makes Arkdefo’s bespoke denim pieces and runs their online sewing and upcycling tutorials. ‘You buy an item because you truly fall in love with it. You take care of investment pieces – you don’t just buy them for one day.’
This sentiment is reverberating throughout Scottish communities, each doing their bit to bring back traditional skills. Eyemouth’s ReTweed, Cambuslang’s R:evolve Recycle, Edinburgh’s Remode Collective, and the Edinburgh Remakery, which rents out sewing machines to the public, are just a handful of social enterprises committed to diverting textiles from landfill.
Countless others are putting their creativity to the test, like Susan Finlay from Wee Susie’s Stitches, who is crafting teddy bears from pre-loved rugby tops. Meanwhile Aurélie Fontan, a fashion graduate from the Edinburgh College of Art, brought new hope to the zero-waste movement by growing her own bio-fabricated dress using a recipe of fermented kombucha, tea, sugar, bacteria and yeast.
Kombucha sorcery, however, isn’t the only way we can help. Purchasing from brands that employ sustainable production methods and long-lasting, natural materials is one way of reducing our carbon footprint. Pringle of Scotland, for instance, recently made one-off sweatshirts from chopped-up prototypes, vintage knitwear, and fabric swatches. Johnstons of Elgin, meanwhile, launched a campaign called EveryYarn, creating limited edition pieces from surplus yarn from their mills. They are also part of the Sustainable Fibre Alliance and ZDHC (zero discharge of hazardous chemicals) ensuring they are as gentle on the environment as possible.
It’s not just textiles that are being upcycled. The diamond
‘A typical pair of jeans takes 7,000 litres of water to produce’
industry was scrutinised after environmental impact research by Frost & Sullivan suggested 57kg of carbon is released into the atmosphere per carat of diamond mined. That may explain why jewellers like Lorna Hewitt Jewellery in Leith are seeing renewed interest in remodelling heirlooms.
‘I work with very old pieces that people have had for generations,’ says Lorna, who previously worked alongside famed jeweller Stephen Webster, creator of Madonna and Guy Ritchie’s wedding bands. ‘Reusing and reworking them is very ethical. You know where the materials have come from, you know the history behind the materials and the stones, and their stories are always fascinating.’
Repurposing pieces that date as far back as the Victorian era, Lorna hopes that this trend will increase the longevity of her customers’ sentimental pieces. ‘I do think that there is a new thought process in the whole jewellery business because we want to have sustainability and we don’t want to damage the earth. We want to do our bit as much as we can.’
I love a spot of retail therapy, but this ‘buy now, dump later’ culture has to stop. Besides, being mindful of where we shop, cherishing items we already have, and reworking those we love has never been more in vogue. Images of Kantamanto, where people are quite literally wading through our waste, speak for themselves. Suddenly that new polyester jumper in the shop window seems far less appealing.