Lab 053: Unsustainable

I'm t T and I'm Zakiah and from Spotify.

This is Dope Labs.

Welcome to Dope Labs, a weekly podcast that mixes hardcore science, pop culture.

And a healthy docent friendship. So last week we talked all about how the landscape of fashion and e commerce and shopping has changed completely. Yes, but there was an aspect of this that we touched on.

Very lightly that we knew that we needed to dig into in today's lab.

And that is the idea of sustainability in fashion. So let's get into the recitation, all right, So what do we know?

One thing that I know from a Mackenzie study that I've read is that clothing production from the year two thousand to the year twenty fourteen has doubled.

What we also know is that a lot of the clothes that we purchase aren't made in the US right.

A lot of it is coming from China, and China actually accounts for thirty percent of world apparel.

Wow, So we know we have a huge clothing industry. There's a lot of clothes being made. People are buying way more I guess pieces or garments per person than they used to. How do we take all of that and make it tie into sustainability. How do we shift what's going on? That's a great question.

Another thing I think we want to know is what's happening when the life of your clothing comes to an end? What are folks doing with their old clothes? And if we are generating waste from clothes, what is happening to it?

Well, I know the global population hasn't doubled or increased sixty percent to match production or purchasing power that we see, So I want to know when we got so greedy? You know, what's happening if we're all buying so much more clothing? Are we just hoarding it? Are we hanging on to it? Are we turning it over quicker? Is it wearing out? I have questions. Okay, so we've talked about fast fashion.

I want to know what is the opposite of fast fashion and how can we make things better for our global community.

We're really focusing on ourselves as consumers, But what are the companies doing? Because at sixty eight garments of person, there's only so much impact that I can make, you know, right, it kind of has to start at the top two.

They have to be doing the right things and doing them ethically before it even gets to us for us to really have a major impact.

That's right. And then what about accessibility to everyone?

It seems like sustainable fashion is on the tip of everyone's tongue these days, but does everybody have access to these things? Let's get into the dissection. Today's guest expert is Drew Heifitz.

What's up, guys. My name is Drew Heifitz. I'm the owner of Frankie Collective and I have a couple other companies called Fison, frank Vintage, and the Rag Machine.

Frankie Collective is an online retailer that sells vintage and reworked clothing.

So what that means is we take secondhand in vintage clothing that typically would end up in the landfill or discarded or wherever it ends up most of the time the landfill, and we cut it and re sew it into new clothing to give it a second life, maybe update the fit, update the style, and bring it back.

Another name for reworked clothing is up cycling or upcycled clothing, and Frankie Collective estimates that they have saved or upcycled sixty five thousand pounds of clothes every year.

That's a lot of clothes.

That's probably more clothes and is in like Mariah Carey's closet.

I'm really hoping we can help our listeners visualize what we mean when we say upcycling, and specifically upcycling the way Frankie Collective does it. Mm hmm.

They're taking old clothes and making them like brand new, and not just brand new, but unlike anything you would see in the store, So you're getting something that almost feels one of a kind. So let's rewind a little bit here, because I think to really understand why Frankie Collective is doing this, you have to kind of have an overview of the environmental impact of fashion, starting with your closet. How often do you do like a clearout

Okay, she needs to come to mind. He was not there. Okay, she's not a friendly she's not welcome in my home.

I was saying goodbye to so many things. I was having little conversations. Listen, I appreciate you shirt, you served your purpose and I'm grateful for you, but your time is done.

You must go. Thank you. I think each season I kind of go through this purging process. But you also know tt that I move a lot.

Yeah, my friend cannot stay in one place. She loves to be moving out of a place and moving in it seems yes, And so you know, just by that process, I'm purging quite a bit and going through things. I know that some people do like different things with their clothes. There's things where you can like sell your clothes.

I would just take backs to Goodwill. What happens to that stuff? I'm always looking to see, does somebody have on my outfit that I donated, Like, what happens to it?

I put my thing in that drop box and it's just kind of like out of side, out of mind. I'm like, those clothes disappeared.

Most of our clothing gets donated. Everyone knows those bins you donate and it's like salvation army bin or wherever they are, or you can drop it at the back of a thrift store. Right. This is where the public perception gets blurry, because we typically think that all those clothes were donating goes right into that thrift store and gets sold. In reality, I think it's only something like five or ten percent of what we donate goes into those thrift stores.

Yeah, according to the EPA, about eighty four percent of our clothing ends up in incinerators and landfills.

They get so much more clothing than they can actually process so that the public can consume. And also they don't want to put out dirty things, stain things, rip things. People donate one leg of a gene, you know, they're just like, what do I do with this?

Then I'm really curious about how these clothes end up in landfills, Like, what is the process from my donation? Who's judging them and saying, mmmm, it's the key it brought us? This not good enough? This is trash. Yeah, that's rude.

Drew says that many places that accept clothing donations will send unwanted clothing to facilities that will sort and package it by size and then sell the packages by the pound to international markets where it can be resold.

Pakistan, India, Africa have huge street markets where they sell primarily American and European secondhand clothing. Pop culture is so based in America. People to watch American movies and TV shows, and they want those brands that they're seeing on TV

The Council for Textile Reporting estimates that the average US citizen throws away or donates seventy to eighty pounds of clothing and other textiles annually. Seventy to eighty pounds every year. How many pairs of genes is that? And it says other textiles too, So that's like towels. Let's do the math.

Eighty four percent of seventy five pounds of donated clothing.

That's sixty three pounds of.

Clothing that I thought was getting resold at a thrift store, but it's probably sitting in a landfill somewhere.

And that's really sobering to think about, what are some of the alternate things we can do with the clothes we don't want to use anymore, especially now that I know they're going to the landfill.

You're much better off giving your clothes to a friend who's gonna use it, or if you have kids clothes, like, give it to an expecting mom, whatever it is, because at least you know that it's most likely going to get used and passed on and not end up in landfill.

Yeah.

So sometimes I do that with my sisters. Like if I have stuff that I'm like, Okay, I've worn this once or twice and I don't want it anymore. Or I bought this thing it's really nice, but it wasn't the right size. I might ask my little sister, Hey, what do you think this, and I'll give it to her so she can have it. Also, you can donate to local shelters or nonprofit organizations, Yeah, in your neighborhood. So how do we accumulate all of these clothes in

First of all, it's driving down prices so deeply discounted that they can just have people buy and buy and not be concerned with the amount of waste they're creating. Quality gets compromised, which means that you end up throwing these things out after two three maybe one where they're putting out new stuff so fast, so fast, you know, a weekly basis, daily basis. Typically, when we look at fashion from a historic perspective, companies would have seasonal collections.

Fast, you know, And I think the question becomes, what's the opposite, right, right, how do we slow down this train? How do I still look good? But right, it's slow fashion A thing I think it kind of.

Is slow fashion to me would be brands where you could buy something and you can guarantee that they're going to last you. You know, maybe something that has a lifetime warranty that they'll fix it for you if it doesn't stand up to your standards, or a brand where the clothing is built to last you a few years.

And it feels like some brands are trying to write the ship. One that I've seen is like Universal Standard and they are super sized inclusive, and they even have a program where if you order things and let's say your weight changes or your size changes within a year, they will ship you the size you want, like you can ship it back, they will exchange the sizes for you.

And one of the people that I follow, she has like a clothing rail and those are like her staple things. Like She's like, I always have a nice jean jacket. These are my staple blue jeans. This is a blazer that I really like. Yes, this is a button down shirt that I really like. And so she has like eight or nine pieces that she loves that are really good qualities.

So then you're not really buying for the trends. If leopard is in, you may accessorize with leopard, you know, or you may do something like that, but you don't find yourself moving through each season. You're now I got to get Poka dout pants. Now it's time for bootcut jeans, which are those back?

I saw somebody wearing low rise jeans and I felt like I could weep. No way will I ever go back.

I like my genes to fit like a turtleneck in addition to the efforts on the consumer side around like you know, capsule collections and just buying things that really fit. Yeah, you know, we're seeing a lot more marketing, you like the Little Green Leaf brand saying that they are selling us clothing that's sustainable or ethically sourced.

And ethically sourced means that the workers, the people that are making the clothing are not in environments that are unsafe this non sweatshop situation, and that like if they're working with anything that has to do with like dye or chemicals, that they have the right personal protective equipment or ppe to do their job safely.

So when you actually break it down, something that is sustainable means we can do it forever and ever and ever and ever, and the resources for that are never going to be depleted and it will keep replenishing itself. Right. I don't think any of it is sustainable. I don't think the whole industry. I don't think what we're doing to a degree is completely sustainable. You know, there's always some kind of waste, and there's always something that's not perfect.

Some people in the clothing industry are trying to steer away from using the term sustainability, and a lot of environmental scientists and researchers are encouraging them to do. So.

The sustainable term is a blanket term where everyone's like, ooh, that sounds great, that's cool, maybe I'll buy that. That doesn't say anything, right, and then when you break it down, like you said, into sustainably sourced or organic or non toxic dyeing or all the other things that people use, that kind of gets more specific. And I think that's probably a better way to.

Go, you know, I really like that more of a spectrum of sustainability. Yeah, so even if you can't upcycle or rework or trade old clothing, there are things you can do from the jump to increase this life cycle. Right.

I had all these old sweatshirts and recently I was like, okay, I need to get rid of some of these sweatshirts. The kise you know I own, yes, what feels like mountains of sweatshirts. I wear sweatshirts all year round, and so I decided I wanted to get rid of some of them.

And so I was like, Okay, what can I do.

I know that you know, after talking to Drew that donating them probably isn't the right thing to do. So I went on Twitter and I asked, you know, have all these old clothes, what should I do with them? And someone suggested that I just cut them up and use them as like cleaning supply, so like stuff that I can use to like dry off dishes, you know, to like clean windows or clean floor.

And I thought that that was such a great idea.

And so it's cool to imagine a second or third or fourth life for your clothes when you're finishing wearing them.

We just all have to be looking to produce less waste and think about the things we're doing and every facet of our lives all the time.

Well, we're going to take a break, but there's a lot more to come, including how the global labor shortage is affecting the fashion world and some surprising news about those popular clothing rental services too.

We're back and we've been talking with Drew Heifitz, the owner of Frankie Collective, about fashion and how to be more eco conscious consumers of clothing.

And we can't really have this conversation without talking about access. That's also a big factor in making the right decisions for ourselves, you know, so true. If I have to drive across town to get where the more ethically sourced clothing is, that's already putting it out of bounds for me. That's already a barrier. What if I don't have a car, and if I do have a car, and am I

This is just like what we were talking about when we talked about food and about access to healthy food. Like if it's so expensive, then only certain groups of people of a certain status have access to it.

The system has to change where doing the right thing is the same price right, where it's the same for everyone and everyone has accessibility to it.

Like Drew said, accessibility is so important, and that goes for accessibility to information too. The more we know about our clothing and where and how it's made, the better equipped we are to make choices about what we wear.

Microplastics are a huge problem. Right when we wash our clothes. Microplastics come off any synthetics, so basically fleece, polyester nylons, these products are made of petroleum plastic based materials, and then they shed these tiny particles. The particles go get washed out into the ocean. Eventually through our system they're too small. This is kind of like out of sight, out of mind problem that not a lot of people think about or know about.

We as humans on this planet, use a lot of plastic. There's plastic in everything, there's plastic in our clothes, there's plastic in everything that's around us, and so that creates a lot of plastic waste. And the thing about plastic is that it doesn't degrade. It lives forever, essentially, and so that creates a problem with the environment. Because we're

And I think the thing I really want everybody to remember, you know, is when we say plastics, we think about plastic bags and plastic that we can see, you know, And that plastic is already like film, plastic hard enough to capture. But you're talking about plastic that is so small that it's difficult to recapture. Right.

You would only be able to see them if they are grouped up in large groups. But what also is happening is that when it's in the ocean, those microplastics, because they're so small, they get carried up with the evaporated water from the ocean, which goes into the clouds, and then as either rains or snows, the microplastic comes down from the clouds and then back onto the earth. So while it's in the water, we have fish that

You know, microplastics are harmful. You get bioaccumulations. Small little organisms consume these microplastics. Bigger organisms consume lots of microplastics. Fish consume those bigger organisms. We consume fish, you know. So then you have microplastics circulating throughout our entire ecosystem, and when they're in the body, they're harmful. They're physically harmful, and they can disrupt biological function, like of your immune system and affect your growth and reproduction.

Frankie Collective has been trying in their own way to make a huge dent on the problem of clothing and textile ways, and Drew says that over the past few years they've really taken off.

The conversation has also really grown on social media and through several documentaries like The True Cost, which came out in twenty fifteen, which highlights not only the devastating environmental impact of fast fashion, but it also highlights the human rights abuses that are happening due to the rising demand of cheap clothing.

Yeah, it feels like now everybody's talking about it.

I would say even like the last five years have been the biggest movement in that kind of realm of public perception that we need to be more sustainable. It has a whole following now, a whole sector of people, a whole group of people that are really like again, there's levels to it, but are looking for it, demanding it. And that's the basis to everything. If the people want it, the people demand it, the people buy it, then it all falls into place because you literally vote for everything

You know.

This also makes me think of what renting clothes, those services where you can rent clothes like rent the Runway, Newly or Guinnybee.

These services provide users access to.

Some of the top fashion brands without the financial commitment and without having to go into the store. So for a flat rate or a monthly feed, you can go onto their website, you pick what you want, and then you wear it for or you know, whatever event that you have or whatever you need that clothing for, and then you send it back and the cost varies. You can expect to spend anywhere from sixty to two hundred

I mean, you would think the rental market's fairly new, like rent the Runway or Urban Outfitters has a rental program. Now, I believe from a perspective of convenience and fashion, it's kind of dope because you're like, you can every month get a new box of put in your closet, send it back, get a new box of and rotate it out.

But a new study that came out in July in Environmental Research Letters actually argues that renting and recycling clothes is less sustainable than just buying them. We can't win, we can't win. In this study, a group of research scientists in Finland calculated the greenhouse gas emissions connected to

I don't think it's much more sustainable than producing clothing market, to be honest. And then that argument also travels over to like e commerce in general, everything's getting shipped, everything's getting shipped, right, one garment, one T shirt's getting shipped around the world maybe a couple times, three times. So again it's like where do we draw the line what is right for you?

This goes back to fast fashion and slow fashion. Renting clothes is still based on cycling through the newest trends and sending clothes back when they're no longer in style. This is kind of like fast fashion following us. No matter how hard we try to act sustainably, we can't escape it. Sciences say that the most sustainable thing you can do is buy less clothes and wear them for longer.

Obviously, you have to be happy and get the cool shit that you want, but you also want to do it in the best way. It's like that is such a massive umbrella of opinions and arguments and facts and oil consumption and all these things. So I'm just gonna say, like, you got to make that call for yourself, you.

Know, and maybe you draw the line at regularly renting your day to day wardrobe. So maybe you decide, I'm only going to rent something for this really special event. You know, I want this one of a kind vintage dress for my cousin's wedding. Right, Dan, you do your research and you decide what's best for you. I remember when something similar happens.

Oh, for our food episode, uh huh.

We had talked about all these different things.

You know, they were saying cow's milk, you know, it's bad for agriculture and the way that it's produced and all these things like that. So it's like not ethical to drink cows milks. I said, Okay, I no longer drink cow's milk. I am now one of the elites now I drink almond milk, you know, And so me thinking that now I'm fancy and I'm with it, and I'm helping the environment and I'm a better person. I go on Twitter, Hey, y'all, I drink almond milk now.

And then people were like, you drink almond milk.

Do you know how much water it takes to make one almond?

That's so bad for the environment. I was like, well, dang, what am I supposed to do now?

And they're like, you have to drink oat milk, And I was like, well, probably in six months, you're gonna tell me that oat milk requires the blood of your first child to get the oats or something like that. I feel like I can't when you can really end up driving yourself crazy trying to keep up with some of these things.

You know, if it doesn't sit right with you, look it up, get the facts, figure out what works for you and your own life, and just do the best you can, you know.

And one thing we've been hearing a lot about lately is the global labor shortage, which low key is tied to the global low wage issue. M So, you know, there are a lot of industries that are in a state of constant flux as company struggle to find applicants

When you look at use clothing and resell projections, it's going up. It's going crazy. There's been some numbers put out that include sneakers, which is a huge part of it luxury streetwear. And then say, secondhand, the numbers projected for the next five years are like going to quadruple right, because it's close to home, it's becoming more accessible. Like you said, we're so reliant on supply chains from Asia, from China and other Asian countries like Korea and Vietnam

But the other thing that Drew pointed out is that it's our responsibility as consumers to educate ourselves about what efforts a company is making to become more sustainable and environmentally friendly, because even if a company is marketing itself as quote unquote sustainable, that doesn't always mean they're actually doing the work.

Greenwashing is very prevalent now, and we sort of said how a lot of companies are jumping into the space of sustainable or eco friendly in all these different ways, and the marketing is coming out so fast and heavy. Companies will market whatever works. They're ab testing on you. They're throwing ads at you, whatever you like, They're gonna throw it at you harder. We really should be doing a little bit more research.

This isn't that different from when you see foods in the grocery store marketing as natural, like what do you mean by that? Or even organic, but organic is just part of the brand name, right.

It'll be like organic but with a K at the end.

Like come on, baby, we know that that's not right. That ain't no organic.

Right again, voting with your dollar, but voting with your eyes and what you view and what you choose to acknowledge, and if you're gonna buy something, maybe just do a little more research to see if that marketing was actually correct and stands up to your personal filter of what you decide is good for your own life.

And that's something I can really get behind. Tt me too.

It's your personal filter. You can't change every single thing. It's gonna be what matters most to you. It's not just about you know once every four years or every two years. You can every day be making a statement with how you place your money.

Because that's exactly what shopping is, if you break it down, voting with your dollar. All right, it's time for one thing the Keia. What's your one thing? My one thing is a book this week. It is Stop Telling Women to Smile Stories of street harassment by visual artists Tatiana Fazla Le's All Day. You can find her at t l y n n faz dot com.

I love that and I will definitely be purchasing. My one thing this week is also a book. It's by Ajah Barber and it's right in line with what we've been talking about over the last couple of episodes. It's called Consumed, The Need for Collective Change, Colonialism, climate change, and Consumerism. It is so good, so definitely pick that up as well.

That's it for Lap fifty three and a wrap on our episodes on fashion call Us at two O two five six seven seven zero two eight, and tell us what you thought or if you have an idea for a lap we should do this semester. Tell us that too really love hearing from you. That's two O two five six seven seven zero two eight, And don't forget there's so much more for you to dig into on our website. There'll be a cheat cheat there for today's

You can find us on Twitter and Instagram at Dope Labs Podcast.

And TT's on Twitter and Instagram at dr Underscore t s h O.

And you can find Zakia on Twitter and Instagram at z said So. Dope Labs is a Spotify original production from Mega Own Media Group. Our producers are Jenny ratlit Maass and Lydia Smith of WaveRunner Studios. Editing in sound design by Rob Smerciak, Mixing by Hannes Brown. Original music composed and produced by Taka Yasuzawa and Alex Sugier from Spotify.

Marquis Executive producers from Mega OH Media Group, r us T T Show Dia and Zakiah Wattley