I’ve been studying and involving myself in the circular economy for several years now. I’ve done a pretty decent job of studying what comes through my garage and rethinking where it should go. I like to brag to whomever I can entrap in a conversation that I’m valorizing post-consumer waste. People stop listening and look nervously for ways to get away, but I keep them there and make them listen. Like I have the “glittering eye” of the ancient mariner except I’m obsessed with compression running sleeves instead of a murdered bird.
My obsessive love for things ending up in their optimal resting place extends beyond clothing when necessary. I have clothing donation bins throughout Bexley, Ohio, and I have made it my mission to endeavor to rehome EVERYTHING that ends up in a bin, no judgement and no questions asked. This has included some non-textile items: A brand new extension cord (it felt like people were not going to make it to tomorrow if they didn’t get that cord.) A Copper Slim waist slimmer thing. Some vacuum cleaner bags. A weight lifting belt. Those grippy things you attach to your shoes so you don’t slip in bad weather – not the straps that attach them, just the grippy things. If you take a decent photo of something and post it on Facebook Marketplace, someone is going to need the thing you have.
I recently came to possess a ceramic pig with a purple fuzzy hair strip holding a sign that says “A Balanced Diet Is a Cookie In Each Hand.” I immediately developed a love-hate relationship with the Kitchen Pig. I hated the stupid message. I hated how it looked. I hated the tuft of hair that reminded me of those trolls you could get for a quarter from a machine at the grocery store in the 70s. But it also made me sad to think of the Kitchen Pig ending up in a landfill either directly (my garbage can next to my house) or after first sitting on the shelf of a national charity store. On Facebook Marketplace I received no fewer than 10 inquiries on the Kitchen Pig, and someone paid me to ship it to them. Wow.
But clothing (fashion) is my primary focus. I believe that we can get way better at keeping our clothing in circulation. This is important because we have a long way to go before we can confidently recycle our textiles. Solutions for post-consumer textile waste are limited today, especially for synthetics. 65 to 70% of the resources needed to make a garment are consumed by the time the fabric is produced. Not the finished garment, just the fabric. It is a point of existential fascination for me that resource consumption is a brand-agnostic, aesthetics-agnostic, and to some degree cost-agnostic truth. Your jeans from Target or Walmart or Madewell or Mother or Paige are pretty much the same in terms of water, energy, fiber, petroleum, and chemicals. So take care of them. Wear them a lot. Mend them if needed. Launder them properly. Pass them along to someone who wants or needs them and will use them.
But also, don’t buy the Kitchen Pig. I wish that no one had made a ceramic pig that said “A Balanced Diet Is a Cookie In Each Hand,” but it is here now, so we had best pass it along from owner to owner until it degrades and really needs to be placed in the trash. I wish that no one had made the literal tons of the clothing that I see and handle. If consumers buy fewer Kitchen Pigs (one-time wear, low-quality outfits, impulse purchases that don’t fit into a wardrobe strategy but seem like a good deal, or are a brand they aspired to own even if not EXACTLY what they were looking for, etc.) then fewer Kitchen Pigs will be produced in the first place.
Thanks for reading.
