Textile Waste Facts
A free 30-minute course about global textile pollution, environmental justice, and structural solutions created by the Aftermath Learning Lab in partnership with MFC Tie-Dye Inc. and the MFI Foundation. Learn more.
Learn More
Resources on This Site:
Textile Waste Facts (link)
Our 30-minute course on textile waste and environmental justice
Panel Discussion with Matilda Lartey and Stacey Johnson (link)
A 75-minute panel about the global impacts of textile waste
Aftermath Documentary (coming soon)
A short documentary about the Aftermath Learning Lab and our art activism
Academic Articles:
Post-Consumer Textile Waste and Disposal (link)
Differences by socioeconomic, demographic, and retail factors
The Global Environmental Injustice of Fast Fashion (link)
Overview of the pre-consumer and post-consumer impacts of fashion
Race, Wealth, and Solid Waste Facilities in North Carolina (link)
Exploration of injustice and racism in the location of landfills in the U.S.
News Articles:
When You Donate Clothing These Women Carry the Load (link)
Op-Ed by Chloe Asaam from the Or Foundation in Ghana
BBC Report on Used Clothing Import Bans in Africa (link)
How the US and Rwanda have fallen out over second-hand clothes
Advocate
Post on social media:
Share what you learned from this course on social media.
It's not about how big of a following you have. Even if your post only reaches one other person, it may inspire interest, engagement, and change.
Have a conversation:
Engage a family member, friend, or community member in conversation.
Share what you learned from the Textile Waste Facts course, your personal action plan for reducing your waste, and ideas for political solutions to textile waste.
Give a presentation in your community:
Speak to your school, community group, spiritual group, or workplace.
You are welcome to re-use all of the content on this site (with attribution) to engage your community in ways you can collectively reduce your waste.
Start a petition:
Identify a policy that could reduce textile waste in your community.
Start a petition explaining why you support this policy and get signatures from people in your community. Send the completed petition to policymakers.
Recycle Responsibly
All it takes is 3 easy steps:
Step 1
Ask your friends, family, and community if anyone could use the clothing.
Step 2
List the clothing online on a site like eBay, Poshmark, or DePop.
Step 3
If it doesn't sell, find a recycler who will downcycle the clothing.
Where can I find recyclers who downcycle?
The key is to research and ask recyclers what they do with the clothing you donate to them. Two national programs that allow you to ship clothing to them for downcycling (shredding the clothing to make insulation for buildings or stuffing for cushions) are:
(Free)
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($20 per large bag)
Connect
Organizations You Should Follow:
Fashion Revolution (link)
Global movement encouraging people to ask who made their clothes
Slow Factory (link)
Organization providing education about pollution and environmental racism
Make Fashion Clean (MFC) (link)
Organization working with artisans in Ghana to reduce denim pollution
The OR Foundation (link)
Organization representing people working at the used clothing market in Ghana
Give
