Natalie Prokes

December 11. 2020

Senior Seminar

Mr. Niko

Upcycling Old Fabric to Better the World

Upcycling is the future of our fashion industry. It is urgent to upcycle our old fabrics

because they have a negative impact on our planet. Natural fibers can take hundreds of years to

decompose and they release methane and CO2 gas into the air. Upcycling fabric and old

garments helps prevent the world from having too many unnecessary products. Fast fashion

makes up for many of the world's global issues. The fashion industry releases more carbon in the

air than international flights. Let’s work together and save the world one fabric at a time!!

One of the best ways of making use of old clothes is upcycling it! Upcycling is when you

take old/unused products, in this case fabric, and reconstruct it into a new original product. One

example of upcycling is my project “ReBag”. I collected old fabric from my community and

then I turned the fabric into a new creation, my durable surfboard sock. Although recycling has

been around for thousands of years people recently started taking it more seriously. Word on the

street is that upcycling fabric is a continuously growing trend and people are starting to become

more conscious of their wasteful behavior.

While fast fashion can be fun and affordable, it is one of the most wasteful industries in

the world. Retailers like Forever 21 and H&M have a big history of fast fashion, they produce

cheap clothes as quickly as possible and keep up with new trends weekly! But fast fashion is no

friend to our environment. The excessive textile production creates 10% of all humanities carbon

emission and it is also the second largest consumer of the world's water supply. In this present
day 60% of our clothes are made with polyester which is a synthetic petroleum-based fibre, it is a

nonrenewable source. Believe it or not, polyester pollutes our oceans, rivers, and lakes with

micro plastics! Washing clothes releases 500,000 tons of microfibres into the ocean each year,

that is equivalent to 50 billion tons of plastic bottles. People still don’t realize the negative

impact it is making to our world.

Trash isn’t the only thing that fills up our landfills, most of it is clothes, in fact 21 billion

pounds of it. Clothes aren’t designed to decompose which is why the natural fibres can take

hundreds of years to decompose. Thousands of chemicals are used in the process of making

clothes, when they are thrown into the landfill they release toxins into the ground, water, and

soil. Clothes decrease landfill space and pollute our earth so why not upcycle it? Some ways we

can prevent textile recycling is to reduce the consumption of energy and water, less demand for

dyes and avoid pollution. Even though fast fashion, cheap clothes, are bad for the environment

people tend to buy a lot of it because it is cheap. Most people can’t afford to buy expensive

clothes or they just don’t want to spend money on it.

Upcycling fabric should be prioritized in the fashion industry! People can have fun upcycling, be

creative, and feel good about their well being. Upcycling can be very easy, people just have to

make an effort to do it! The textile industry is one of the most wasteful industries in the world.

Clothes are one of the hardest items to decompose because most of them are made from synthetic

fibers like polyester. We should prevent clothes from being the main thing in our landfills by

upcycling. Everyone should be impacted by this idea because it is the most eco friendly way of

recycling, all you need is your creativity.It also lets us use the products that we have indefinitely.

I believe we should find a better solution to this economic disaster and make the world a better

place. Let’s create something new!