During this crazy time, we’ve been chatting a ton about how we could all live a little better, thriftier, and greener. We’re so happy to see more people adopt more sustainable habits during this time, like taking up thrifting (welcome, newbies!). So far, we’ve covered a lot of ground on how to refresh your clothes and make them feel like new (all the ways to tie-dye, sustainable summer tips, clothing care tips, and style challenges, to name a few). But lately, a lot of thrifters have been asking us, “That’s cool and all, but what do I do with clothes that are too dirty or damaged?”   Good question. We’re all about extending the life of every garment—even if it begins its second (or tenth) life as something else! And the fact that 1 in 2 people throw their clothes straight in the trash makes our mission more important than ever. Landfill is never the answer!   Got a pile of worse-for-wear items? Don’t trash it, try these ideas instead: Cleaning with paper towels can be pretty wasteful, and why buy cleaning cloths if you have plenty of wipe-friendly fabric lying around? Wipe the next spill using your (very) old tee instead. Clothes too worn for wear or have too many stubborn stains serve as perfectly absorbent cleaning rags. Wipe up messes, throw  them in the laundry, and store for the next cleaning day.  

2. Start a DIY Project

  For clothes too damaged to be passed on or resold, let them live a second life as a cool DIY project. Here are just some (of thousands!) of easy upcycling solutions for your old clothes:   — A much-loved sweatshirt looks just as cool framed on your wall as it did on you. — Turn some worse-for-wear graphic tees into a patchwork quilt. — Make use of a favorite patterned top or bottoms as patches on an item you frequently wear. Learn how to make a leaf patch with our DIY tutorial with Zero Waste Daniel. — Cut out old fabric and turn them into cute scrunchies.   There are sooo many ways to turn your clothes into scrap fabric for another project. And with more time spent at home, it’s a great excuse to get crafty. Yes, most clothes can be recycled (even your undies). But it’s our responsibility to do some research on where recycled clothes go. According to the EPA, 95% of textiles can be recycled, but only 15% of unwanted clothes are actually recycled (!!). So make sure you know where you’re sending your clothes. While there isn’t a recycling box conveniently located at every corner, you can look up recycling resources in your area, or check out these sustainable organizations that will take your stuff. Check out these great recycling programs and find one near you:   Terracycle: From plastic bag collection to clothes recycling, Terracycle offers a variety of recycling programs. The idea is: you buy the program, they send you a box, you fill the box with stuff, send it back to be reused, recycled, or upcycled by Terracycle. This isn’t really for individual use, but a great resource for your company or community to chip in together to go zero waste.   American Textile Recycling Service: Like Terracycle, ATRS offers companies and communities drop-off recycling services, but you can also mail your clothes (although they cannot be TOO worn) too! About 20% is used for upholstery and automotive stuffing, and 30% is used for industry wiping rags.   The Bra Recyclers: Did you know? Bras are worn an average of 6-9 months before they’re tossed. Support women in need and send your gently-used bras to a new home. All you have to do is wash your bras and pack them in any box, print out a paid mailing label, and send them along!   Green Tree: Based in New York City, you might have seen Green Tree’s bright recycling boxes at your local farmer’s market. They’ll take your old clothes and put them into the hands of people in need, and the textiles that are no longer wearable are sourced as fibers and rags for manufacturers.   SMART Association: Our go-to resource for up-to-code textile recyclers, SMART (Secondary Materials and Recycled Textiles) is an international trade association whose members use and convert recycled and secondary materials from used clothing. Although their membership directory isn’t widely available, keep an eye (and ear) out for SMART-approved bins in your neighborhood. Your local thrift and charity stores are likely to have one! A lot of our favorite brands offer exchange programs that give you major incentives to keep your too-worn stuff out of landfill. When it comes to supporting the circular economy, these brands are doing it right.   The North Face: Their Clothes the Loop program lets you drop off clothes and shoes from any brand at their stores, in exchange for $10 credit toward a purchase of $100 or more at The North Face. Clothes are sent to their non-profit partner, Soles4Souls, to create sustainable jobs and provide relief.   Patagonia: On top of offering secondhand Patagonia apparel, our favorite brand for planet-loving adventurers also lets you mail in any Patagonia gear and they’ll responsibly recycle and repurpose them. You don’t get credit, but you do get the satisfaction of knowing your stuff isn’t ending up in landfill or being incinerated. Check out their repurposed ReCrafted Collection!   Nike: Nike’s Reuse-a-Shoe program has been running since 1993 and to date, they’ve upcycled more than 32 million pairs of shoes! Your beat-up old Nike’s will get shredded and turned into Nike Grind materials, which are used to transform community spaces, from basketball courts and playtop surfaces to running tracks and more. Find participating locations and drop off your sneaks.   H&M: The fast fashion giant may not be the first thing that comes to mind when we’re talking sustainability, but their Garment Collecting program is the perfect stop for all your worn-out looks. Drop-off boxes are located at every H&M store. Your clothes will either be resold, reused as cleaning clothes or material for a new collection, or repurposed for insulation materials by H&M’s partner I:CO.   Zara: Zara’s program sends your unusable clothes to non-profit organizations that manage garments and develop projects in local communities. Clothes are recycled, donated, transformed into new fabric, or sold to benefit social projects. This initiative isn’t available worldwide yet, so check their website to see if there’s a drop off near you!   Levi’s: Our favorite denim also happens to be the most pollutive item to produce. Levi’s partnership with Cotton’s Blue Jeans Go Green™ program, an initiative focused on recycling denim, ensures every pair lives out their full potential. Drop your denim at any Levi’s store, and they’ll repurposed as building insulation, community-oriented projects, and more! Bonus, you’ll get 20% off your next pair of blues.   Madewell: Another Blue Jeans Go Green™ partner, Madewell will recycle your well-tattered jeans from any brand into housing insulation for communities in need. In exchange, you’ll get $20 off new ones! Bring them into any store to start.   Girlfriend Collective: Send your old Girlfriend compression leggings so they can make new ones! Our fave soft-girl activewear brand is making new stuff out of old stuff… out of old stuff. Help keep their business circular and you’ll get $15 toward a future purchase.  

5. Donate to Your Local Animal Shelter

  Fuzzy, comfy textiles are in demand at animal shelters. If your fave sweater is on its last legs, consider donating to a pup or kitty in need! Shelters can turn fabric scraps into bedding for cats, an engaging rope toy made out of old tees, and of course, cleaning rags. Towels and washcloths are also perfect for puppy bathtime.  

6. Compost Them (Yes, Compost!)

  This only applies to a small portion of clothes, since many clothes have gone through chemical treatments, but it can be possible! Clothes made entirely of natural fibers (wool, silk, linen, cotton) will compost down, but it takes a very long time. Cut them up to accelerate the process.   Some garments may be advertised as 100% cotton (like T-shirts and jeans), but might still contain a blend of polyester for that extra stretch. You can either pick out the polyester bits once composted, or skip composting them.   For more info, check out these super helpful clothes composting guidelines.  

7. Donate Responsibly

  “Too worn to wear” is subjective, but generally we should only donate clothes that we’d be willing to give to a friend or family member. Donations shouldn’t be a guilt-relieving way to get rid of stuff that you simply cannot wear anymore. That, and only 20% of donated clothes end up being put back on shelves! If you’re considering giving back to communities, turn your clothes into cash for charities with our Donation Program instead. We’ll reuse or recycle the stuff that won’t sell. At the end of the day, the fewer NEW things we bring into the world the better. Throwaway fashion is a problem that needs to be solved at its source. While we should all be recycling more, we should also be consuming less too. Let’s maximize the life of each garment in our closets and beyond.   Got any more downcycling/upcycling ideas? Have a conscious recycling resource to recommend? We’re listening. Let us know in the comments below!

This summer, many of us are missing those quirky and unique celebrations of Ithaca — our festivals.   While I’m devastated that our community is missing out on our festivals this year, let’s take this as an opportunity to pause, to rethink and to make sure that when the festivals return, their focus is on celebrating what makes Ithaca so special: a town of caring, community-minded and forward-thinking people who are connected to their landscape.   Before the pandemic occurred, I observed increasing single-use plastic waste at these events, specifically the Chili Cook-Off, Chowder Cook-Off and the downtown concerts, but not limited to these events. I was especially disheartened after the Chili Cook-Off this year and wrote the following plea:   “On Feb. 8, we braved the cold to participate in our annual Chili Cook-Off. As ubiquitous as long lines and puffy winter coats, single-use plastics piled up in trash cans everywhere. Drawing visitors from both hills and beyond, the Chili Cook-Off is one of the festivals that introduce our students and visitors to Ithacan traditions.”   When I first came to Ithaca as a college student, it was a place where a progressive future seemed possible. I remember seeing compost bins at CTB and Wegmans and thinking, if we can make sustainable habits commonplace, there’s hope.   The sight of brightly dressed volunteers directing festival visitors on how to compost was quintessentially Ithaca. Our town seemed to be populated with caring, educated people acting to make the world they believe in, even when it’s not glamorous, being the change. But that is not the case. Instead, we’ve made ourselves disposable.   In the last few years, we have gone backward from compostable portion cups and wooden spoons being a common sight to nonrecyclable sample cups and wine glasses proliferating at every downtown concert. (The Tompkins County recycling center does not accept #6 plastics, and the center recently issued a warning statement that the level of contamination in recycling bins is too high.)   Unrecyclable #6 portion cups and spoons are given out at many Ithaca events like Chowder Cook-Off and Chili Cook-Off. Unless someone takes on the revolting and tedious job of gathering up, washing out and drying each cup and then purchasing an expensive TerraCycle box to send these cups for recycling, these items are landfill fodder.   When their useful life is over (15 seconds on average), they have nowhere to go but to take up space in a local landfill or to pollute our waterways.   It’s time to reverse that disposable mentality and act to remove single-use plastic disposables from our festivals and events. Seasoned Ithacans know the perks of bringing your own mug (bigger portions, supporting local artisans, showing your swag, no guilt!) and can be seen with gloved hands wrapped around a variety of colorful, handmade mugs, at times even balancing multiples in muffin tins. But let’s make it easier for our visitors to do the right thing and be a role model for sustainable cities once again.   For their part, I believe the downtown Ithaca crew would prefer not to continue purchasing single-use plastics. But change hasn’t come, and who is working with them to make this possible?   It takes everyone to break the plastic habit, from those who implement reusables and representatives who demand top-down policies to vendors purchasing better containers and a system of responsible waste management.   The city is culpable in this. There needs to be somewhere for compost and trash to go, and the current system is especially cumbersome for events.   I understand that nonplastic options are expensive. Doing the right thing is expensive, but bending to the throwaway economy is more expensive in the long run.   And we don’t have to. We have options, whether it’s a returnable system like the Dish Truck, zero-waste services such as Impact Earth or compost haulers like Natural Upcycling.   We have vendors who take the initiative to be creative, like serving samples in mini bread bowls or clamshells. We should celebrate this creativity and incentivize reusability.   If we want change, we must not only appeal to moral, earth-loving sensibilities but also to wallets. We must incorporate the real cost of creating and disposing of plastics into our equations so that they are no longer the cheapest option.   Anyone who follows the news can see how far behind we are when it comes to single-use plastics. We tout the beauty of our gorges, and our local waterways are an essential part of our local environment and economy.   We can see the impact of plastic pollution firsthand when visiting Stewart Park, Treman Marina or Myers Point, as colorful bits wash up on our lakeshores. A bit farther away, Casella is in the process of expanding upstate New York landfills. We don’t have to look as far as people suffering from burning plastic trash heaps in Indonesia to see the effects of our actions — this is our backyard. This is our problem.   Plastic litter should be everyone’s concern. It breaks down to microplastics, which we consume. The average person eats an estimated credit card’s worth of plastic in a week, subjecting ourselves to unstudied health effects.   Purchasing plastics funds the fossil fuel industries and contributes to climate change and injustice as poor countries struggle with mountains of our trash. We took a stand against fracking in New York, but as Ithacans, we’re poised to support it in the coming fracked-plastics boom unless we find alternatives to single-use plastics at our festivals.   Communities across the country are taking action to stop plastic, and we are not the progressive icon any longer. Many towns have passed ordinances to reduce the use of single-use plastic, launched public education campaigns on the issue and stopped using single-use plastic items like plastic water bottles at municipal facilities. We should be one of them.   I love our festivals, but a single bite of chili or a sip of craft beer is not worth the guilt of knowing that my cup will pollute our landscape for the next thousand years.   We know better. It’s time to do better. Let’s give students and visitors a taste of what it’s really like to be an Ithacan.   The advent of the COVID-19 pandemic creates additional challenges around reducing waste. The plastics industry is lobbying hard to reverse plastics bans and funding studies to make single-use plastics and wrappings seem like the only safe option, but that is not the case. We know that washing is the most effective way to stop the virus.   The pandemic has brought us closer together, with many community members and organizations stepping up to help one another in this time of need. Ithaca is a community of intelligent, creative and innovative people. I know that if we work hard, collaborate and stick to our ideals, we can create solutions to the problem of waste at our festivals. The next time we celebrate together, it should be both safe and sustainable.  

 

Reciclagem de Esponja

 

While is wasn’t the first crowdfunded startup to trace its origin story to a college dorm room, TerraCycle may be the only one that’s turning our trash into an investment opportunity. The company with its roots in a Princeton college dorm room in 2002 is gaining traction among alternative equity crowdfunding watchers eyeing the low minimum set to invest in TerraCycle stock. TerraCycle has established a network of third-party logistics providers and facilities to convert collected waste into raw materials that are then sold to and used by manufacturers to create new products. It captures the waste streams that most of us contribute to but probably never thought could be turned into profitable raw materials: potato chip bags, coffee capsules, cigarette butts, beauty and oral care disposables, child car seats, disposable contact lenses and packaging. The list is seemingly endless.

While is wasn’t the first crowdfunded startup to trace its origin story to a college dorm room, TerraCycle may be the only one that’s turning our trash into an investment opportunity. The company with its roots in a Princeton college dorm room in 2002 is gaining traction among alternative equity crowdfunding watchers eyeing the low minimum set to invest in TerraCycle stock. TerraCycle has established a network of third-party logistics providers and facilities to convert collected waste into raw materials that are then sold to and used by manufacturers to create new products. It captures the waste streams that most of us contribute to but probably never thought could be turned into profitable raw materials: potato chip bags, coffee capsules, cigarette butts, beauty and oral care disposables, child car seats, disposable contact lenses and packaging. The list is seemingly endless.

While is wasn’t the first crowdfunded startup to trace its origin story to a college dorm room, TerraCycle may be the only one that’s turning our trash into an investment opportunity. The company with its roots in a Princeton college dorm room in 2002 is gaining traction among alternative equity crowdfunding watchers eyeing the low minimum set to invest in TerraCycle stock. TerraCycle has established a network of third-party logistics providers and facilities to convert collected waste into raw materials that are then sold to and used by manufacturers to create new products. It captures the waste streams that most of us contribute to but probably never thought could be turned into profitable raw materials: potato chip bags, coffee capsules, cigarette butts, beauty and oral care disposables, child car seats, disposable contact lenses and packaging. The list is seemingly endless.

While is wasn’t the first crowdfunded startup to trace its origin story to a college dorm room, TerraCycle may be the only one that’s turning our trash into an investment opportunity. The company with its roots in a Princeton college dorm room in 2002 is gaining traction among alternative equity crowdfunding watchers eyeing the low minimum set to invest in TerraCycle stock.

Members of Blue Zones, and a task force created to help reduce cigarette litter in downtown Klamath Falls, emptied their new receptacles on Main Street for the first time on Friday to see if people were using them.   Merritt Driscoll, executive director of Blue Zones, counted 332 butts collected a week after the nine metal bins attached to lampposts were put in place. While the old pots for cigarettes were still being used, too, she was happy to see less litter on the streets.   The receptacles are the latest step in a grant program aimed to combat the leading cause of litter in the United States: cigarette butts.   Blue Zones, in partnership with the city of Klamath Falls and the Klamath Falls Downtown Association, was awarded a $10,000 grant. The funds went toward purchasing the receptacles as well as an awareness campaign.   Before the cigarette bins were placed, the team did quarterly clean ups, picking up cigarette butts in cracks in the sidewalks and along the curbs. The team did a cleanup in July before placing the bins and collected 5,254 butts. In July 2019, the team collected 8,362 butts.   Driscoll was encouraged to see cigarette butts in each of the receptacles she emptied. Still, the bins weren’t full after a week in place, so she plans to wait longer between checks in the future.   She said group focused the initiative on the downtown business corridor because it’s a hot spot for shopping, eating and smoking. Part of the motivation behind cleaning up the downtown litter is to increase community pride.   “When you see litter on the ground, it doesn’t conjure up a sense of pride,” she said. “We want to clean up, starting in our downtown, and from there we can move to other areas.”   Three extra receptacles are available for other businesses who want them outside.   Driscoll plans to do another cleanup in November, at the end of the grant, to see if the bins decreased the amount of litter in the streets. Blue Zones will send the collected butts to Terracycle where they will be recycled into plastic products such as shipping pallets and ash trays.

Members of Blue Zones, and a task force created to help reduce cigarette litter in downtown Klamath Falls, emptied their new receptacles on Main Street for the first time on Friday to see if people were using them.   Merritt Driscoll, executive director of Blue Zones, counted 332 butts collected a week after the nine metal bins attached to lampposts were put in place. While the old pots for cigarettes were still being used, too, she was happy to see less litter on the streets.   The receptacles are the latest step in a grant program aimed to combat the leading cause of litter in the United States: cigarette butts.   Blue Zones, in partnership with the city of Klamath Falls and the Klamath Falls Downtown Association, was awarded a $10,000 grant. The funds went toward purchasing the receptacles as well as an awareness campaign.   Before the cigarette bins were placed, the team did quarterly clean ups, picking up cigarette butts in cracks in the sidewalks and along the curbs. The team did a cleanup in July before placing the bins and collected 5,254 butts. In July 2019, the team collected 8,362 butts.   Driscoll was encouraged to see cigarette butts in each of the receptacles she emptied. Still, the bins weren’t full after a week in place, so she plans to wait longer between checks in the future.   She said group focused the initiative on the downtown business corridor because it’s a hot spot for shopping, eating and smoking. Part of the motivation behind cleaning up the downtown litter is to increase community pride.   “When you see litter on the ground, it doesn’t conjure up a sense of pride,” she said. “We want to clean up, starting in our downtown, and from there we can move to other areas.”   Three extra receptacles are available for other businesses who want them outside.   Driscoll plans to do another cleanup in November, at the end of the grant, to see if the bins decreased the amount of litter in the streets. Blue Zones will send the collected butts to Terracycle where they will be recycled into plastic products such as shipping pallets and ash trays.