[Music] We're living in an age of add to cart where trends change faster than overnight shipping.

But fashion has a dirty secret.

And I'm not just talking about my middle school jeggings.

I'm Brooke Butler and welcome to What Do I Do With This?

The show that untangles the mess of modern waste so you don't have to.

In this episode, we're airing the dirty laundry of fast fashion and how to invest in more sustainable options.

Fast fashion is cheap.

It's easy.

It's trendy and it's a huge mess.

From the things that fall apart after just one wash to the pile of what was I thinking in the back of our closets, we're swimming in things we don't wear.

In fact, each item only gets worn an average of 7 to 10 times before we're over it.

And it's not just about what we see.

Behind that $5 t-shirt, there's someone working long hours for low pay in harsh conditions.

There's water waste, pollution, and tiny plastic fibers sneaking into our oceans with every wash.

I love a little sparkle, but not at the cost of someone's well-being or the planets.

You might be thinking, "But it's so cheap."

And some people can't afford higher quality clothing.

Actually, higher income folks generate 76% more textile waste.

We love a contradiction.

In this episode, we'll explore how to recycle responsibly, shop smarter, and yeah, maybe consider rewearing that outfit a few more times.

From nitpicking your style to buttoning up your linen closet, we're ironing out the fabrics of our trash.

[Music] [Applause] Do you ever wonder what happened to all that stuff you dropped in the donation bin?

Well, it might have ended up here.

In South St. Louis City, truckloads from around the Midwest deliver mounds of clothing items to Remains, LLC, where textiles have been getting a second chance since 1981.

Remains is not body parts or roadkill.

Paul White is the director of operations.

So it it the name came from the style that remains in style.

While remain started as a thrift store, it now exists not to shop for those secondhand items, but because the massive supply of stuff doesn't always meet demands.

So, has working here changed your buying habits.

Oh, yeah.

I I only buy underwear.

Free shop.

Technically, everything is recyclable, but there's a cost to recycle things.

So, um, you know, a tennis shoe has many different components in there and there's different costs of having to capture those components.

So, does it make sense to recycle it?

That's what we're trying to do.

Always trying to find a better way to recycle items that make sense.

So, let's talk through how it makes sense for remains.

First, all of the items that were trucked in get dumped into this holding system where the first cycle of sorting happens.

These two individuals, all they're doing is opening up bags to feed the line.

So, they're opening up the bags, but they're also checking to see if there's anything wet.

So, sometimes, especially if we have a lot of rain or a leaky trailer, that's the worst thing for us is wet clothes.

So, cuz that that contaminates like the whole load.

It would go up here.

The items then travel up the line for the next round of sorting.

This area is shoes, toys, purses, belts, brick rack, which is like pots and pans and and household items.

Those are going down Central America.

Oh wow.

To get recycled and used, reuse.

This is all reuse.

Next, you guessed it, more sorting.

Certain material gets pulled to cut into cleaning rags for factories.

And this person's sole responsibility is to pull vintage and highquality clothing.

And after all that sorting, the items remaining on the line get bailed into pallets.

But now what?

Who wants all of these once unwanted items?

So maybe 40% gets reused as clothing.

Then you have 25% that gets cut for rags, for factories.

Uh the other 20% is processed for fiber.

So it could end up in mattress padding, in the auto industry, soundproofing, things like that.

Belts.

But there is also a growing market for remains to process more specific odds and ends.

Pallets of burlap sacks that once held coffee beans get shipped off to be used in plant nurseries or even down to New Orleans to fish for seafood.

These boxes are all full of hospital gowns.

Hospital gowns.

Cotton items get shredded into these bales of fiber that are sent off to be made into new textile material.

Wow.

We've made paper before out of old clothes like 100% cotton sweaters.

At one point we were doing that.

We do have a market for single shoes very low cost, meaning it's uh it would be cheaper for me to throw them away, but I store them and I ship them out as a single shoe.

Okay.

And what they do is they do near matches.

Okay.

So, they'll take this shoe, they'll find another shoe similar size.

Uhhuh.

And make a near match.

Overseas.

Interesting.

So why put all of these resources into reusing and recycling?

Well, the alternative is the consequences that decomposing textiles have when discarded into landfills.

Because of the layers upon layers of garbage being dumped into landfills, textiles don't receive the proper oxygen to decompose.

This creates a process called anorobic digestion that creates methane gases, a major contributor to global warming.

And it doesn't stop there.

The dyes and chemicals used to make these textiles can also break down into the soil and contaminate groundwater.

With mass manufacturing of fast fashion with synthetic materials, it's a little beyond the average person's control.

But there are some things Paul says we can do to help.

If you Google single socks, it will give you a list of like 60 different uses for a single sock.

But there's a lot of tradeins.

A lot of companies are saying trade in your old clothes.

And the main thing is just keeping it in the cycle, keeping it in the in the circle of getting reused and reused.

Let's talk textile waste.

Um it's it's a it's a problem.

So I big problem.

That's Mary Rupert Steresco who created a patent for textile repurposing and sustainable garment design.

So she knows a thing or two about this topic.

Um what do you think the main drivers of the problem are?

Consumerism.

Yeah.

Fast fashion.

That's a that's a very hot term right now.

That's a very hot term, but it's not it doesn't encompass everything.

Okay.

And it's not actually a new concept.

Actually, in the um 1960s in centers like New York and Paris, they started making clothes based on what the high fashion people were doing for everyday people.

Okay?

And they would do a quick turnaround.

So this idea of fast being that you know you get the idea or you you make the design today and in 6 weeks or 2 weeks it gets into the store isn't a new thing for the fashion industry.

What is new about it is the scale, right?

Like back then we would do like 200 pieces of one and now they started being able to produce hundreds of thousands of pieces.

I I love how you the the term wicked problem.

Can you talk a little bit about that?

Yeah, it is a problem whose solutions are as complex as the initial problem and often times the solution creates more problems like vegan leather.

Yes.

And it sounds great.

It sounds great because you're not using animal.

The flip side, what is it?

Yeah.

N 90% of the time, maybe 99% of the time, it is a uh petroleum based vinyl that looks like leather.

And so you think, "Oh, it's good.

I'm not hurting any animals to make this."

But actually, you're using a product that's going to sit in the landfill for hundreds, literally hundreds of years, right?

So it's like this wicked vicious circle that is always ongoing and difficult to solve and sometimes is just too overwhelming.

It is well and I think about you know the consumer versus manufacturer responsibility in all this as well.

I feel like yes we can make a difference in our own worlds in what we do but until there is a an industrywide shift and industrywide will come with innovation and innovation is happening.

One company has developed an additive that when put into polyester would allow that material to decompose in two to three years as opposed to a couple hundred.

Another example Mary told us about was dragon fin leather developed in St. Louis which uses the hides from an invasive Asian carp fish which pose numerous challenges to our local ecosystem.

And then if the industry finds these innovations, we don't as consumers, we can just keep on having fun clothes.

Uhhuh.

Because that's what it's really about, right?

Final takeaways.

What would you recommend people um to do, to think about, to look for?

One, I would try to develop in your mind like your style.

I bought a pink blouse during the Barbie craze to wear to the Barbie movie.

And I am totally not a pink person, but you know, in general, try to do things that go with your vibe.

There's this term we use today, go with your aesthetic, which basically just means go with your style, right?

That's one.

Second is I think we need to be more attentive about repairing and trying to maintain our clothes better.

Actually, in St. Louis, we have some great places where you can go to learn these skills.

Please tell me.

Where are they?

They're the City Sewing Room.

It's at the corner of 44 in Arsenal.

That's a real treasure in St. Louis.

The City Sewing Room is a notfor-profit community sewing center.

[Music] Its number one goal is to teach.

Our motto is to teach, stitch, and share.

So, we teach sewing.

everything from the basic here's your sewing machine all the way to how to make a quilt.

Um you can actually have one-on-one with a person who knows how to tailor, how to fit a pattern.

The second thing that occurs because teaching doesn't necessarily keep the lights on is that we have people who bring us things that no longer spark joy and we resell at our makers mart.

So we um turn over about 1,700 lb of treasures every week.

Wow.

which means our volunteers are way beyond phenomenal.

Um, and we resell everything from fabric to vinyl to zippers and buttons and to the point where um, our books and our patterns are actually free because we get so much of that in Can you tell like a good quality fabric?

Absolutely.

Yeah.

What What are the signs?

Well, I have to confess that my thought about fabric, if it's napworthy, if you can lay your head down on it and it's nice and soft, I like it.

And if you lay your head down on it and you wake up and you got pox on your face, well, that's not a good thing.

Scratchy estimate.

I love that.

I want to judge everything that way.

True.

Talk talk a little bit about the importance of learning this skill.

Well, it is not really a lost art.

We just lost it when we started mass-producing garments.

Um, but a welltailored or a well-fitting outfit just really levels up.

Levels up.

I need a cheering section.

No, you need a cheering section.

I did it.

Well, now I know what I'm getting everyone for Christmas now.

I think you have to look at the sustainability of it.

Um, the landfill doesn't need more.

And there's a joy of creating something or fixing something.

There's always been that joy.

Look, I fixed this or I made this better or look, this is my grandmother's whatever and I've got it just perfect.

Um, it it's the joy of creating as well.

Thanks for watching this episode of What Do I Do With This?

Where sustainability never goes out of style.

Why do I have to wink in every episode?

If you're watching on YouTube, you already know where to find our other episodes.

And if you want more information, you can go to npbs.org/ What do I do with this?

Let's go shopping.

Where do you guys get your clothes?

H&M.

H&M.

He's a dudeista.

Big mistake.

Huge.

Do you go thrift shopping?

We went to a thrift store the other day and I went to go like touched something and a bunch of spiders start started crawling out and I I was freaked out.

That's my thing with thrift stores.

I'm all for it, but like not the spiders.

[Music]