Help Cut Clothing Waste: Don't Throw Away Worn or Damaged Clothing

At Trash for Peace, we are always learning about new and exciting ways to fight waste, and we'd like to share some of these tips and ideas. This week we're going to address clothing waste. People often ask what they're supposed to do with old clothes, especially worn, torn, or damaged items. The answer is you shouldn't throw them away! But we'll get to that in a minute. Here's why keeping old clothing out of landfills is so important:

Approximately 14.3 million tons of textile waste were generated in 2012, according to the EPA. Some of those old clothes and shoes—an estimated 14.4 percent—were recovered for reuse or recycling, but many ended up being incinerated or sent to landfills.

            The amount of clothing waste generated in the United States is likely related to consumer habits. The average American buys nearly 70 clothing items per year, while 50 years ago that number was only 25. Not only do we buy more clothes now, we purchase them for less money. Fast fashion, which is clothing made and sold cheaply that encourages buying more rather than reusing, is leading to an ever-increasing amount of textile waste.

Photo: Flickr/Trash to Treasure

           The average person can take concrete actions to help change this trend, though. Buying higher quality clothing that will last longer is a great step. Buying second-hand items also reduces waste. Then when it’s time to get new clothes, donating those items to charitable organizations ensures more clothing will be kept out of landfills. Most charitable organizations sell these donations in local stores or send the materials for reprocessing, and some garments enter international textile markets. So what should you do with old, damaged clothing? You should donate it, too. Most organizations like Goodwill accept clothing in any condition, and if your old jeans or T-Shirts aren't reusable, they'll get recycled. 

Happy Holidays and Happy New Year!

December 15, 2013

Happy Holidays from Trash for Peace! 

Our final event of the year was on December 10^th, and while we were putting together bin kits and making holiday cards out of all repurposed materials with the fabulous members from NAIFA (see photos below), it reminded us that this holiday season you could indulge without feeling any guilt of being wasteful!  We encourage you to reduce, reuse, and rethink waste every day, and it can be just as easy during the Holidays.

You can find repurposed wrapping paper and many other craft ideas at SCRAP (www.scrappdx.org), or decorate old newspaper or grocery bags to wrap gifts!

Consider giving the gift of an experience, such as going to the movies, or a massage, or a donation to your favorite nonprofit (nudge nudge, wink wink).

Even holiday trees are becoming more sustainable.  Check out the options provided by the organization “Living Christmas Trees” (livingchristmastrees.org), and don't forget to recycle your tree after the holidays!

 At the moment, I am sitting in our living room, our kitty napping to my left and our roommate’s dog napping to my right.  The lights from our “Holiday” tree are encasing the room in a gentle glow, and it is wafting the smell of blue pine and winter all around the house. 

I am reminded of how warm and cozy this time of year is, and how grateful I am to be able to bask in it.  Part of this contentment, is the feeling of accomplishment knowing all that Trash for Peace has been able to do this year, and at the same time, the excitement and challenge of knowing how much more we want and hope to do in the future.  None of it would be possible without the support of our team, and all of you. 

We hope you all have a wonderful holiday season, and a very happy New Year.

Please stay tuned in 2014 for more exciting updates and projects from your favorite local "trashy" team at Trash for Peace. 

Warm wishes,

The Trash for Peace team

December, 2013

My goodness, it has been awhile!  The Trash for Peace team has been so ridiculously busy we have been severely neglecting our blog!

To make up for lost time, here is a quick recap of what we have been up to:

Throughout the second half of 2013, Trash for Peace built over 38 recycle bins with schools, businesses, and communities.  We worked with schools all over Portland and the larger Metro area: Forest Heights Elementary, Concord Elementary, Access Academy, Bethany Elementary, Portland State University, and more.   We also worked with Whole Foods, SCRAP, and the city of Hillsboro, and other businesses building bins, garden beds, and even a greenhouse that used over 1,000 plastic bottles!

We started a youth group program with a boys group at Dekum Court, one of Home Forward’s housing sites.   We taught leadership and team building through the hands-on techniques of turning trash into functional art.  The boys built recycle bins, a bench, and much more in a short three months this summer.

This fall we hosted our first every Trashy Trivia event, which was a huge success!  We hope to have more, perhaps every quarter.

We also piloted our new Repurposed Garden program this summer, and hope to build more garden beds and maybe even greenhouses, all out of “trash” with schools in the future.

We have more recycle-bin builds coming up in 2014, more youth programming with the boys group at Dekum, more Trashy Trivia events, and the list just keeps growing!

Speaking of growing, that is just what we have been doing, little by little, and could not do it without all of your support.  Thank you all for being a part of this movement.  We love your feedback, please send us your thoughts, ideas, suggestions!  

And please stay tuned for information on upcoming events, and more blog posts!

Love, the Trash for Peace team

Earth Day Week 2013

We kicked off the week of Earth Day with the Green Team at Concord Elementary this past Saturday! There is nothing quite like a bunch of energetic children building their plastic bottle bin and painting strawberry containers all while spouting off recycling knowledge and their recent upcycling projects. Seriously, these kids are smart! So proud.

The few hours we spent in Concord Elementary's garden area was filled with fun. It even included a llama! Along with a baby pig, goat and hamster, the students were thoroughly entertained! And so were we.

We had a great start to Earth Day Week and have so many more activities this week! What are you doing in support of Earth Day? We'd love to hear more ideas!

Perfect Rainy Day Activities

Following our 501(c)3 status celebration, Trash for Peace has been booking dates for events and activities and our calendar is filling up fast! So fast that we've had a hard time keeping all of you guys informed. Here is a brief recap of a couple past events in our winter rainy weather.

The TfP team had a lovely afternoon with Girls, Inc. at the DaVinci Middle School in February. The girls decided to incorporate plastic bottles and toilet paper rolls into their bin design, decorating the materials with environmentally friendly messages. Way to spread the word ladies!

Trash for Peace kicked off the month of March with the Clean Water Festival at the University of Portland. We worked with seven elementary schools throughout the day, teaching about the importance of reducing, reusing and rethinking how we look at waste, as well as how to build a recycle bin out of plastic bottles! We were thrilled to be a part of the Clean Water Festival's 20th anniversary.

Thank you to Girls, Inc. and the Clean Water Festival for inviting us to spread our mission and having a perfect indoor activity of building bins. Can't wait to write more updates about our spring events - they may even include outdoor, sunny shots!

Rethinking our Food Culture

Our highest bid amount for a donation at our event last month went to an Abby's Table gift certificate, well deserving of it too. If you haven't heard of Abby's Table, let me take a moment to share one of our supporters' amazing mission.

Founded by Abby Fammartino, Abby's Table brings a new food culture to the table - literally. By using long tables in the restaurant, people share space and family-sized meals at the same table. And all of the food prepared is allergen-free, meaning no dairy, gluten, soy or refined sugars. Eating dinner has turned into embracing pure, natural and organic foods in tasty combinations while enjoying the company around you.

Abby's mission is to build a healthy food culture in America by making it fun and social - and delicious! Check out their website (www.abbys-table.com) to reserve your spot today.

Trash for Peace wants to support our partners just as much as they support us! We appreciate the goal of Abby's Table to rethink our food culture. Just as we want to provide a way to rethink our trash culture. And the only way we can change this is to work together.

Trash for Peace @ the University for Peace

A post from our fearless Andrew Judkins!

This was the second winter that I have had a chance to advance the mission of Trash for Peace in another country. This time, my travels took me back to my alma mater, the United Nations mandated University for Peace in Costa Rica. I earned an MA in Sustainable Natural Resource Management in 2009, and I returned to take a couple more classes. While here, I got involved with the university’s Sustainability Club. I led a team comprising of a couple grad students from this club, and a few people from the maintenance staff.

The idea with this particular project was to equip the Sustainability Club with the ability to lead simple, short-term, and extremely meaningful projects, while at the same time empowering the maintenance staff with a new skill of building something useful from waste materials. Additionally, the collaboration between grad students and maintenance staff builds a bridge across vast social differences and fosters the kind of peace identified in our mission and the mission of the university.

To begin, the problem: there are 10 garbage/recycling stations located throughout the campus. Each station has a garbage bin, and a recycle bin. Although each are labeled, the maintenance staff consistently finds garbage in the recycle bin, and recyclables in the garbage bin. The solution: recycle bins made from wasted materials that clearly transmit a non-verbal message of what its contents ought to be.

We found some old, beat-up metal desks that were no longer wanted so the maintenance guys went at them with cutters and welders, and created a structure similar to the what I had shown them in pictures.

Unfortunately, my Spanish is embarrassingly bad, and we had several hangups in the frame’s production. It wasn’t built with any planning for use - it was just built because I asked them to build it, and finished my question with "Por favor." So, it was too big to hold any of the plastic garbage bags in stock. They will have to buy another size of bag to fit it so this bin will only be used in the Peace Park, an adjacent plot of land that is open to the public, and for special events on campus.

We sorted out bottles, washed them, drilled holes in them, while the maintenance staff did the welding. Another language barrier reared its ugly head and we had to redrill all the holes in the frame they’d made us. I took on that one, while the the two students stripped off the insulation from some old internet cables.

We then used the cables to string up the bottles to form a beautiful creation that would be a beacon for collecting recyclable materials.

It’s sturdy and looks great, but we can’t put them into the existing collection stations so for the next bin, I decided to get all the measurements and draw up a design that was completely ready before the guys started debating what my broken Spanish was requesting. This time, we used some leftover wood that had been designated to be used in the construction of the new Earth Charter building. They did a fine job in building it to my exact specifications, leaving it to be wired and bottled.

The new bin fits perfectly into the collection station, it looks great, and it resolves the issue of differentiating between what goes where! Problem solved!

The next step is to build 9 more of these bins for the rest of the campus. Easy! The materials may alter slightly, but the important concept about utilizing waste has been embraced by all of the participants, and I’m excited to see what they come up with!