What is our Mission?
At Upcycled, we strive to create pieces of clothing from reused textiles and reclaimed scraps. Besides small details of our clothing like zippers and buttons, the clothing we produce does not create any new textile waste. Every garment we make is different, and based on the materials we receive. Everything is 100% made in America and ethically produced.
Upcycled was created to tackle the environmental and ethical issues present in the current fashion industry. Read more below to find the issues Upcycled addresses.
Upcycled
Upcycled
Fast Fashion
Fast Fashion is the mass production of apparel at a rapid pace, often taking shortcuts that harm the environment and the general welfare of the world.
Fast fashion brands are constantly chasing trends that quickly go out of style, which leads to clothing being produced with the sole intention of lasting the time of the trend. Fast fashion clothing is not designed to be a staple in your closet, often, it does not exceed 10 wears.
Lead time, how long it takes a fashion brand to bring a concept into a ready-to-purchase item, has shortened to 10 days in some companies.
Planned Obsolescence
During the great depression, it was often practiced to create clothing that would break and wear more easily than most. This would force the consumer to replace their items sooner, known as planned obsolescence.
As more trends in fashion became stronger and quicker, combined with the normality of planned obsolescence, people started to develop psychological obsolescence.
Psychological obsolescence is the need to replace clothes even when they are perfectly fine. This occurs due to people chasing trends and throwing out old clothes that are out of style. Fast fashion brands can now make the shelf life of clothing even shorter and cheaper.
Fashion History
The first sewing machine was invented in 1830 by Barthelemy Thimonnier. Clothing was now made in bulk and in various sizes. This was the start of clothing being worn for stylistic choices rather than practicality.
Sweatshops now made their way into the scene in the 1800s. Sweatshops are clothing factories that mistreat their workers with long hours, little pay, and dangerous conditions. While the US government has taken action to make sweatshops illegal, they still exist in the US and across the world.
By the 1990s, fast fashion was in full effect. After the 60s and 70s, which created a relationship between social status and clothing, shopping was seen as a hobby. The term, fast fashion, was officially established in a New York Times article describing the 15-day lead time of a new fashion retailer.
The Fashion Industry’s Impact on the Environment
Whether you're clothing is made of 100% cotton or polyester, it has extreme impacts on the environment. Cotton is a crop that requires tremendous amounts of water to grow. It takes about 713 gallons of water to produce a single t-shirt. Polyester, on the other hand, sheds microplastics while you wear it. Microplastics are linked to digestive issues, reproductive health problems, respiratory harm, and more.
Globally, the textile industry generates more CO2 than aviation and shipping combined. Fast fashion is not coming to a stop soon, it is estimated that textile manufacturing will increase by 60% before 2030.
The Ocean
Just washing your clothes can have negative impacts on the environment. Washing clothes can release synthetic microfibers (a type of microplastic) into the ocean. These microplastics can be consumed by marine life and biomagnify up the food chain. This results in the food at the supermarket containing microplastics. The production of synthetic textiles also releases arsenic, benzene, lead, and other toxic chemicals into water sources.
When growing cotton, the use of synthetic fertilizers and toxic chemicals can run off into bigger bodies of water like the ocean. This runoff can be detrimental to aquatic ecosystems by causing eutrophication and making an environment outside the range of tolerance for organisms.
Additionally, textile dying and finishing is a major pollutant to our waters. 20% of global industrial water pollution derives from the toxic chemicals used in these processes.
Disposing of Textiles
81.5 pounds of clothes are thrown away by an average US consumer each year; garments have been worn 36% less in the last 15 years; and every year, 19.2 million tons of textile waste is produced.
Textile waste is an enormous part of waste created in America, but where does it go? Recycling textiles is extremely difficult and is more expensive than creating a new garment. Additionally, recycling fabric makes the fibers weaker. So this only leaves one option for unwanted clothes: the landfill.
Have you ever seen a landfill full of clothing? If you live in a developed Country, your answer is probably no. Many developed nations have extreme amounts of textile waste that they don't want to deal with, so they dump it into developing nations. Ghana, for example, receives massive amounts of textile waste. It is filled with so much textile waste that, when it begins to rain, clothing seeps into the ocean. The locals call all the waste "dead white people's clothes" because no one alive would throw away that much waste.
Labor in Fast Fashion
Fast fashion is cheap because it uses low-quality materials and poor craftsmanship to create it. But this still leaves one big factor that leads to a high price tag on slow fashion: the labor.
How do fast fashion companies reduce these labor costs? Using labor overseas.
Many developing Countries do not have a minimum wage that can actually support a healthy lifestyle. This leads to parents sending children to factories to work, so families have more sources of income. Many adults and children enter the workforce, creating competition and allowing factory owners to pay the bare minimum wage. On top of that, factory owners maintain dangerous work environments, and they can fire workers if they take just one sick day.
Many garment factory workers suffer from health issues, for example, dying clothes can cause thick fumes to be released in poorly ventilated rooms. Combined with working up to 16 hours a day, 7 days a week, garment workers are suffering.
Taslima Aktar, a worker for the Windy Appeals factory in Bangladesh, had a persistent fever and cough. She continued to request time off to go to the doctor, but was consistently denied by her boss. She knew taking time off work would mean losing her job, so she continued to sew. After passing out and being revived, she was sent right back to her sewing machine. Not long after, she passed out again and died.
On April 24th, 2013, the Rana Plaza building collapsed on thousands of garment factory workers.
The Rana Plaza building, located in Bangladesh, was discovered to have large structural cracks, and it was advised not to go into the building. The lower floors, consisting of shops and a bank, were shut down, but the factory workers were required to go to work and would lose their jobs if they did not. The building collapsed and led to 1,134 deaths and approximately 2,600 injuries. Many of the people who survived were under rubble for hours, even days, and had to amputate limbs to get out.
There is approximately 75 million factory workers in the fast fashion industry. Less than 2% of those earn a living wage.
The Collapse of Rana Plaza
The Solution?
Fast fashion has many negative impacts, but it has a cheap price tag. New clothing from more ethical brands is more expensive, and it also ends up in the landfill at some point. So what’s the solution?
At Upcycled, we solve all these problems. We thrift textiles to create new clothing. Everything we make uses ethical, well-paid labor. And the best part, our materials are cheap, which allows us to keep the price down.
Now it’s your turn. Will you continue to shop at fast fashion brands that poison our environment, kill people, and fall apart easily; or invest in quality, sustainable, and ethical clothing?