The beginning of a new year and a new semester means it’s the perfect time to refresh your wardrobe. But according to the Council for Textile Recycling, the United States generates around 25 billion pounds of textiles each year. This figure includes clothing, shoes, accessories, linens and more. Around 15 percent of those textiles will get donated or be recycled, but the remaining 85 percent of those textiles end up in landfills across the nation. Keep this in mind while you change up your semester aesthetic and remember that there are lots of ways to build a better wardrobe this year that can be both stylistically and environmentally conscious.
The first step to revamping your wardrobe is to get rid of all of the clothes that do not fit, do not make you feel amazing or do not have special memories attached to them. Sell these not-quite-perfect pieces on eBay if you are looking to make some cash; if you want to get rid of them even more quickly, donate them to Goodwill, the Salvation Army or another local charity. Many high schools take old formal dresses to give to girls for prom through organizations like Becca’s Closet and Operation Prom, but they usually accept clean casual clothes to give to kids who need them as well. Animal shelters, including the Front Street Animal Shelter and the Humane Society in Binghamton, often take sweatshirts and T-shirts to use as bedding for the animals, so if you have stained or ripped garments, that is a great way to skip tossing them in the trash.
If you have clothes that do not quite fit or items you cannot wear but cannot bear to part with either, there are tons of ways to repurpose them. If you have a lot of T-shirts in your dresser, you can easily make a blanket with the help of many a YouTube tutorial. Jeans can be turned into cut-offs or pillows by sewing the legs and waist shut, or can be turned into a jean skirt by ripping out the seams and reworking them with a hot glue gun.
Clothing swaps are another great way to clean out your closet without really getting rid of clothes. Invite a bunch of friends over and ask them to bring some of their old clothes, which you can then trade with each other. You will be able to pawn off some of your old stuff, and acquire that cardigan you’ve been eyeing on your friend all last semester.
Once you’ve cleaned out your closet, it might look a little empty. To fill it with new clothes, you have plenty of green options in the Binghamton area. The Salvation Army on the East Side of Binghamton, the Thrifty Shopper on Upper Front Street and the Goodwill on the Vestal Parkway all offer great, inexpensive finds. When shopping in other stores, look out for brands that use recycled materials, commit to green practices, and donate portions of their proceeds to environmental causes. The brand Reformation makes their dresses out of surplus fabric and with processes that use less water than traditional methods. The outdoor gear brand Patagonia makes their fleece jackets out of old plastic bottles, and does a lot of advocacy work for water and natural land conservation.
Prove Kermit the Frog wrong this semester, and make being “green” not just easy, but fashionable, too.