Episode 98: Nothing is Disposable (with Liz Ricketts of the OR Foundation), part II

Welcome to Clotheshorse, the podcast that tries to stomp out greenwashing like a high stakes game of whack a mole!

I’m your host Amanda and this is episode 98. It’s still September, which means we are continuing to focus on the theme of NOTHING IS DISPOSABLE. And this is part two of three about the OR Foundation and its work in Ghana, where an endless flow of discarded fast fashion from the Global North is having terrible environmental and economic repercussions for the people of Ghana…and really for all of us around the world. We ultimately breathe the same air and use the same water…the ocean and the atmosphere connect us all. So while this waste colonialism may allow us to continue the delusion that over production and overconsumption have no impact on us…we get to pretend that out of sight and out of mind is just fine….eventually this waste is going to become everyone’s problem. And I hope this is the moment where we all begin to take it seriously!

This week the CBS Morning show did a segment on Kantamanto–that’s the secondhand clothing market in Accra–and this feels like a MAJOR moment for me! Like finally, more and more people are hearing the truth about where all of our barely worn, barely wearable clothing is ending up. I’m going to share a link to the segment in the show notes because I think it’s very valuable for you to see the market, the beaches, the ocean, the people who are trying their hardest to make a living off of the 15 million secondhand garments that arrive in Accra, Ghana each week.

The main event in today’s episode is the second half of my conversation with Liz Ricketts, the director of the OR Foundation . We are going to talk more about what we as consumers, as good people who care about the planet and its people can do to help. We’ll also continue to unpack the impact of our secondhand clothing on the people of Ghana, as we hopefully shatter the delusion of clothing recycling as it exists today.

Before we jump back into that conversation, I want to talk a little bit about clothing recycling and circularity. We talk about greenwashing a lot around here…and if you’ve been listening long enough, you’ve memorized the list of terms that brands are using in bad faith to sell us stuff. Sustainable. Conscious. Eco-friendly. Green. Organic. Natural. We know now that while these words make us feel good when we hear/see them attached to something we are about to buy, in most cases they mean nothing. Because there’s no “legal” measurement required to use these words. Organic is an exception, but a certified organic fabric can be dyed with petroleum based color and then sewn into a garment with polyester thread…completely negating a lot of the positive attributes of organic fabric. We are learning together to trust these claims a lot less while asking a lot more questions.

And the thing is…retailers and brands know that. They know that we’re wising up. And so they have to push the envelope, introduce new words that haven’t been completely destroyed yet. And right now that means “clothing recycling” or “recycled fabric” and circularity.

Let’s start with clothing recycling. We’ve talked about that here on the show in the past. I remember when Jade of fashion without trashion described clothing recycling companies as more like logistics companies…basically sorting and baling clothing for different destinations, whether it’s a place where they will be shredded, another place where they might be sold off to resellers in our own country, or shipped overseas.

We all have this vision of clothing recycling: a dump truck full of our unwanted clothing pulls up to the end of one factory, unloads the clothes, they travel through a series of machines, and at the end, a bolt of brand new fabric appears. H+M’s Loooooop machine reinforces this delusion. But as a reminder, the Looooop machine can only recycle four garments per day. That means it would take that machine 3.75 million days to recycle the clothing that arrives in Accra in one week. That’s more than 10 million years. For one week of the clothing that arrives in Accra.

Until a few years ago, I really thought that clothing recycling was happening. As in, clothes were being disassembled, unraveled into thread, and then rewoven or knit into new fabric. It sounds so easy, right? Hmmm okay well spoiler it’s not.

I started working with one of my clients on a 100% fiber-to-fiber recycled collection. Meaning: fully recycled fabric, no additional new materials. We saw some samples of fabric and they looked horrible. The color was weird, the texture was terrible, and it was super expensive. Because the technology was moving slowly. None of the big brands were willing to invest the money required to fund this innovation. There were a few companies that were on the verge of sort of cracking the code of fiber to fiber recycling, but they needed a lot more money to keep going. And while there were plenty of small brands in the sustainability space that wanted this technology to become a reality, they weren’t the kind of companies that had money to fund it. And the big clothing companies literally just did not care. Unless it was going to be as cheap as the brand new fabrics they were churning out every day, they weren’t interested. We’ve talked about this before, I just say it again: when brands are selling us clothing for so cheap, they have to cut every single corner to eek out every last penny. That means squeezing factories on pricing and using the cheapest fabrics and trims, along with skipping through the fit process. Fast fashion is a business model that has said “we would rather make a few pennies off of millions of garments than a few dollars of of thousands of garments.” and in that pennies game, investing in textile recycling technology is just not an option.

Our failure to create a fully recycled clothing line was the moment I began my journey of learning the truth about clothing recycling, unpacking my own delusions about what was happening with my unwanted clothing. The “recycled” fabrics brands have been selling us are made of recycled plastic bottles, not recycled clothing. We talked about that back in January with Jess of Fab Scrap. Even those fabrics–made of recycled bottles–require some virgin fibers to lend some level of durabilty and nice, soft hand feel. And when clothes are made of recycled bottles, that’s the end of the line…there is no more recycling in the future.

True clothing recycling is hampered by more than just the cost of developing the technology.

For one, most clothing in 2021 is a blend of cotton, polyester, or other fibers. And blends are difficult if not impossible to recycle. And there is an almost infinite variety of blends being used by brands because they are less concerned with the future of a garment (okay, let’s be honest…completely unconcerned) and more concerned with the cost and the hand feel of a fabric. Will a customer like it? Does it feel “more expensive” than it really is? That’s what matters to buyers and designers. Not whether or not the fibers can be easily recycled.

Clothes must be completely disassembled in order to be recycled. That means removing the buttons, zippers, tags, any embroidery, lining, pockets…all of the things that make clothes clothes and not just a sheet of fabric. The thread holding it together must also be pulled out because it is often made of a different fiber than the rest of the garment. This is time consuming and difficult work…which makes it expensive in the eyes of an industry that wants to squeeze out every penny of profit. Completely disassembling a garment into all of its individual components is so time consuming that it’s hard for me to imagine how any company engaging in this could come close to processing the massive volume of garments we are discarding every day.

And I think that is an important thing to call out here…a fact that can be difficult or uncomfortable for us to accept: that yes, this technology needs to be developed. That’s not our responsibility as consumers. And yes, brands need to be using fabrics and trims that are more easily recycled. And getting them to do that will involve government policy because they definitely aren’t going to make that decision on their own!

But. And this is a big all caps B-U-T recycling is not a solution that gives us a blank check to buy tons of clothes, wear them a few times, and then send them off to the recycling plant. Because recycling requires a lot of energy. A lot of transport clothes here and there. A lot of equipment and washing, bleaching, redyeing, water. Think of all of the electricity and gas used to make this happen. Recycling is not a solution on its own…we must change our habits with clothing. We must buy less. We must make things last longer by caring for them, and mending them. We must normalize repeating outfits, break up with that mega cheugy idea of a new outfit for every instagram post and a suitcase full of new clothes for every vacation. No more one off shirts for bachelorette parties or trips to Disneyland. Everyone will have to change.

But that’s also where EPR comes into play…EPR or extended producer responsibility.

.Right now brands are not responsible for where a product ends up when it breaks or goes out of trend. This allows “planned obsolescence” to flourish.

As a reminder, Planned obsolescence is the practice of intentionally designing products with a short lifespan–due to low quality and/or trendiness–in order to motivate the customer to continue to purchase new products.

EPR motivates brands to make better, longer lasting products that are more easily repaired and recycled. EPR makes brands financially responsible for the end of a product’s useability. This makes the disposal of a product a financial burden for the brand! So it’s in their best interest to make better stuff that is easier to recycle, that lasts longer, that fits better…because suddenly the model for the industry shifts from selling millions of garments for pennies of profit to selling thousands for dollars of profit. So yes, prices will probably increase, but not as much as you might thing…and in theory, you would need to be buying a lot less new clothing…because anything that is still in good condition will either be worn by the original buyer or still be circulating in the secondhand market. In fact, it could increase teh quality of the secondhand market!

EPR starts with government regulations. Various countries and states are starting to adopt legislation like this, and it’s up to us to demand it from our elected representatives. That’s something we can do! But remember, the goal of EPR is to make us need less new stuff. So no matter what, we’re going to be changing our behavior. I know that can be scary…i mean, all change is scary. But in this case, the pay off will make that transition so worthwhile.

So this is a great transition into talking about circularity…another concept that fast fashion is starting to use incorrectly as a means of greenwashing.

A while back, a friend of mine received an email from a big fast fashion retailer about a secondhand platform they are launching. Something to compete with Poshmark and Depop. And in the email, it mentioned how proud they were of making this move into circularity. I’m totally misquoting here, but rest assured the terms sustainability and circularity were used in a totally incorrect manner…and the body of the email itself seemed to be written by a copywriter who specialized in recognizing buzzwords and making them sound meaningful in emails.

That same week, I saw a write up on an industry blog about this new secondhand selling platform …the president of this new platform was interviewed and he actually said, “Our brands tend to be some of the more popular brands on the resale market. We saw it as a gap that we wanted to fill.” Let me translate that for you…we want to make a few more pennies off of the clothing we’ve already sold once. And listen..this could be an amazing opportunity for EPR policy right here…like, make better clothes in the first place that last longer and can be resold once, twice, maybe even three times over a period of years. Now that is a more circular approach to secondhand selling. Put a pin in that and we’ll come back to that. The other thing that struck me as fundamentally un circular and super greenwashy is that sellers using the platform had the option of either taking their cut of a sale in money (like all the existing platforms) or in the form of store credit (with an extra 10% of value) for one of the companies fast fashion brands. Honestly, H+M is probably kicking themselves for not thinking of this first. And while I get excited about the notion of normalizing secondhand, of getting more and more people into a secondhand first way of life, I don’t like a bad faith attempt at getting people to consume more fast fashion.

This is a great time to explain true circularity, and what a circular economy and circular fashion are. Right now we live in a predominantly linear economy…and that’s exactly how it sounds, a straight line the heads in one direction: ‘take-make-consume-waste’. When we talk about clothing, resources are taken from the earth to say, grow cotton and turn into fabric. This fabric is made into clothing, we buy it (that’s the consume part of it) and when we are done with it, it often ends up in the trash. Remember, here in the United States, 85% of our unwanted clothing ends up in the landfill or the incinerator. Globally 60% of new clothes end up in the landfill or incinerator within a year of being made. That my friends, is the linear economy right there.

And this version of events…well that’s what we’re living right now and what we are seeing play out around the world. Our clothing is made under exploitive and wasteful conditions, we buy it, toss it in the trash…or worse, it gets shipped overseas to become someone else’s problem. The other thing that is important to call out here…is with so much of the stuff we consume being treated as disposable…and that’s not just clothing, but also construction materials, electronics, the packaging our stuff comes in…we arent’ really maximizing the value of trees and cotton and water, and plastic and everything else because we’re sort of forgetting the value of it all? That’s what makes it easier to pretend its all disposable.

A circular economy is one that exchanges the typical cycle of make, use, dispose in favour of as much re-use and recycling as possible. The longer materials and resources are in use, the more value is extracted from them. A circular economy is not only more environmentally sustainable, it’s actually more profitable because both people and companies are maximizing the value of everything, creating things that last longer and can easily be reused and recycled.

When we talk about fashion within a circular economy, it is a more thoughtful approach to creating clothing. From moment one, clothes are designed and developed to last longer, to be passed through families or from peer to peer…they are designed to be versatile, fit better, fade less, wash up more easily, all of the things that fast fashion is not. The whole idea of planned obsolescence gets cancelled, as retailers no longer utilize trends or intentional low quality as a means of getting you to buy as much stuff as possible, as often as possible. Brands work to remove nonrecyclable and polluting materials from their sutpply chain. They utilize ever last bit of material. They replace their current “takeback” scams with repair and reuse programs. And in that scenario, I feel okay with a brand offering their own resale platform for these items.

Circular fashion embodies the five R’s: Reduce, Rewear, Recycle, Repair, Resell

Meaning, reduce your consumption by buying less stuff. Rewear what you already have. Recycle when you can. Repair as often as possible. And resell or thoughtfully rehome clothing when you can no longer wear it. That includes rehoming via your local buy nothing group, giving it to a friend, having a yard sale, holding a clothing swap, and so on.

It sounds so easy, right? It also sounds kinda fun to be honest! The problem with fast fashion brands claiming circularity is that they aren’t thoughtfully creating products that last a long time, then are easy to repair, that minimize waste and maximize use. No, they are making the same old clothes with the same old model that requires us to buy lots of stuff as often as possible. In fact, the quality of these clothes is so poor from the moment they are made that there is little hope to get much use out of them via rewearing, repairing, and reselling. That’s not sustainable. That’s not circular. And it’s just not cute.

All right, well now that I’ve talked for a really long time…let’s get back into my conversation with Liz!

I just want to say again how grateful I am that Liz spent so much time talking with me. This is such an important story for all of you to hear…for all of us to hear. And I’m glad that all of you have been so responsive to hearing it! Next week will be my final installment in this series—although I hope Liz comes again to tell us more! And in next week’s episode, I’ll be talking to two members of the OR foundation in Ghana, Chloe and Sammy.

In the mean time, please if you haven’t already, follow the OR foundation on instagram @theorispresent. And check out some more information that I will be sharing in the show notes.

I know that this has been a lot for all of you to hear and learn and absorb. It was only last year that I began to discover the impact our overconsumption was having on the planet and its people. And as I have learned more and more, as I have seen the waste colonialism created by millions of brunch dresses, bathing suits that never touched the water, and bachelorette party tees…I have cried. I have felt sick. I have been angry. I have felt ashamed for all of the dumb birthday outfits I bought and hardly wore. Guilty over all of Those lunchtime Zara shopping sprees because my job was making me feel bad about myself.

But feeling guilty or ashamed is never the way forward…and that goes for all of us. If you’re feeling all kinds of things from listening to Clotheshorse…or even just the last two episodes…it’s okay to feel those things. It’s kind of step one, really! Even you placed a big order from Shein or Fashion Nova THIS MORNING! It doesn’t matter…that was then this is now, and we need to start thinking abou what we are giong to do next!

The way forward isn’t feeling guilty or ashamed. It’s about receiving the information, processing it, grieving implications of it all–including grieving the realization that big business has been intentionally misleading you for a long time, or at the very least, lying by omission–grieve all of that. Grieve the horrific truth about how our clothes are made and how it impacts the planet and its people. Grieve the knowledge that garment workers are paid pennies and work under terrible conditions. Grieve the fact that 85% of our unwanted, barely worn clothes end up in a landfill. And grieve the impact all of that fast fashion has on our planet, it’s people, and its animals when we are done with it.

It’s okay to be sad and angry. But what are you going to do with that? That’s the big thing! That’s the important thing!

It’s easy to give up, to say I’m one person, I can never have an impact on the world. But that’s not true. Operating alone, yeah, you won’t have much of an impact. But when you’re working with other people, a community like ours that is turning into a movement…big change can happen!

Now is the time to make that change. We have a big opportunity here, as brands are listening and they are afraid of what we are doing! I cite the #payup movement as a moment where tons of people were educated about the real truth of how brand were treating their garment workers…by cancelling tons of orders and shifting around payment terms in a way that meant workers who had already been living in poverty were now not going to get paid, and slip into even worse circumstances…Word got out, we mobilized and took action…and you know what? Brands were forced to payup. Some of them ignored us…and those are the ones that I think need to just go out of business. But lots of other brands did pay. And we did all of that while for the most being quarantined away from one another. Imagine what we can do next!

We have a major opportunity to demand change from brands, from our governments, and from ourselves. And we can do that together by unifying, sharing our best practices, supporting one another, welcoming others into the movement, and educating those around us.

We can do this! And I’m excited for us to do it together!