NOTES ON A THREAD

Mary, Alyssa, Rachel, and Wensley want to use their passion for art to help illuminate the climate change crisis and to make it known that the simple act of buying secondhand clothing can make a difference in reducing your individual carbon footprint. The choices of each individual can make a huge difference in protecting the environment. Buying secondhand helps prevent waste, as a whopping 84% of clothing ends up in landfills or incinerators. “The volume of clothing Americans throw away each year has doubled in the last 20 years, from 7 million to 14 million tons,”  according to Road Runner Recycling Inc. Trends are cyclical, and alternatives to fast fashion can be found in your local secondhand clothing stores, often in higher quality and lower prices.

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Choosing secondhand clothing also takes money away from the fast fashion industry, which “produces 10% of global carbon dioxide emissions every year, while it is estimated to use around 1.5 trillion litres of water annually.” (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)). To put this in perspective, that’s more than the combination of all international flights and maritime shipping combined, according to the World Bank Group. 

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