by Brooklyn, Mikayla, Jessi, Maddie, Sofia and Kennedy

The impact that clothing production and waste has on the Earth is monumental. For our impact project, we decided to tackle the task of educating our sports administration about the impact of athletic clothing production and waste to raise awareness and bring change to our school.

Benefits of donating clothing

It takes a lot of water to grow, manufacture, transport, and wash cotton, which is one of the most popular fabrics used in today’s clothing and especially in our sports team’s clothing. It’s estimated that producing one pound of cotton takes 1,320 gallons of water which equals over 700 gallons for just one t-shirt. Extending the life cycle of clothing, especially cotton clothing, can reduce total water footprint and help protect the environment. According to the most recent Environmental Protection Agency statistics, Americans created more than 16 million tons of textile waste in 2017. Of this total, 11 million tons ended up in landfills instead of being recycled or reused. While food trash takes only a few hours or days to decompose, clothing can sit in landfills for years. Synthetic fabrics like polyester and nylon, which are also common fabrics in olu athletics team clothing, can take 30 to 40 years to break down fully. That’s another great reason to donate used clothing. Orange Lutheran has its very own thrift store that donates proceeds from sales to student financial aid. Donating excess clothing to the thrift store would bring money back to the students while also providing affordable clothing for our local community.

What is the issue

The general issue is the amount of waste that occurs from the lack of use from clothing given to sports teams. The reason that lack of use occurs is because of the sheer amount of shirts and jerseys that athletes are provided with. In our project, we had athletes from volleyball, softball, basketball, and track and field research about the clothing provided to each of these teams and the impact they might have.

• Fabrics such as cotton and polyester make up some of the most wastewater in the clothing industry.

• The most used fabrics in the athletic category are Cotton, Polyester, Spandex, Nylon. Cotton needs gigantic amounts of water to be usable (10,000 liters for 1 kilogram of cotton).

• Fashion production makes up 10% of humanity's carbon emissions and 20% of the earth’s wastewater. It dries up water sources, and pollutes rivers and streams.

Our whole project was devoted to educating our administration about our athletic clothing waste and how it impacts our environment. Clothing waste is a monumental issue. Already, we are seeing an increase in our climate due to gasses released by factories producing cotton, polyester, and other clothing materials. Not only that, our resource consumption is set to triple by 2050. Less than 30 years from now. If the world switched to organic cotton, we could reduce the global warming potential of cotton by 46%. There could also be 70% less acidification of the ocean. Well, athletes need clothing. We can initiate buyback programs for practice gear. Seniors for instance, can sell their shirts back to incentivize them instead of relying on the OLu thrift store. The thrift store is a great alternative, but doesn't bring the clothing right back to the team and doesn't guarantee anything.

To curb our waste, we can also cut back on the amount of cotton and polyester shirts and other articles that we are giving to our athletes until we find better, less hostile alternatives.

We can also switch to organic cotton, a more sustainable option. Adidas is already an organic cotton company!

Programs that donate old gear can also donate to underprivileged sports programs worldwide.

OLu Basketball and Track

In the basketball program they receive 3 cotton shirts, 2 polos, sweatpants, a sweatshirt, and shoes every year. The overall value of the items for the teams is about 75 thousand dollars but since most of it is donated by Adidas they only spend around 35 thousand.

Basketball is also one of few sports on campus that reuse their jerseys and warm ups every year instead of purchasing new ones. In the past we have taken old basketball jerseys and sent them to different regions of Africa. This gives us the opportunity to give to children who are less fortunate so that they’re sports teams can have jerseys and finally feel like a real team together.

By donating the clothes it is able to be reused and put to a good cause instead of going into the trash and becoming pollution. This program has unfortunately stopped but why can’t we bring it back and open it to all sports?

On the other hand,for track and field we get one t-shirt, sweatpants, a jacket, spandex/shorts, and a tank top jersey. All together it costs about 50 thousand dollars. None of this is donated from Adidas and everything is bought new at the beginning of the season. This means that none of the items are reused and every year we will receive another 6 items. Since the jerseys change every year it’s necessary to always get a new one meaning the old ones go to waste and aren’t used again.

In order to make a change we should have the same jersey style each year so that people can decide if they need a new one or not. By doing this we will be able to prevent the amount of jerseys that go to waste and save money as well.

Indoor Volleyball

For the indoor volleyball team at OLu, as players we receive 3 cotton t-shirts, 2 pairs of spandex, 3 new jerseys, a sweatshirt, sweat pants, cover shorts, a backpack, a warm up long sleeve, and we are asked to buy knee pads and socks separately. At the end of each season we are allowed to keep everything that we receive and the following year if you chose to be a part of the program you will receive all of these items again. Now knowing from previous sections how much it costs just to produce one cotton t-shirt, 700 gallons of water, this amount of clothes over the span of 4 years seems like a bit much. While this may not seem like a big deal since all of this clothes is used during season, at the end of four years you are left with at least 12 t-shirts, 8 pairs of spandex, 12 jerseys, 4 sweatshirts, 4 pairs of warm up pants, 4 cover shorts, 4 backpacks, and 4 warm up long sleeves which isn't including all of the extra items of clothing that we may grab along the way. While we may only be a blip on the map of global polluters, there could be ways that we could fix or try to improve our footprint on the earth. As a graduating senior I am left with all of this OLu merch that I probably will never need to wear again. I do not have a younger sibling who I can pass this down to but I will be donating a lot of my clothes to the OLu thrift shop. This way, parents or other students can give my old clothes and give it a second life for their time at OLu. This would not only help the water waste of creating more t-shirts for these families but it would also reduce the amount of waste produced by allowing people to donate clothes rather than just throwing it away.

Beach Volleyball

For beach volleyball, players receive 2 tank tops, 2 cotton t-shirts, a long sleeve warm up shirt, a sweatshirt, a hoodie, and a visor with more coming next year. This was their first year that beach volleyball was a sport at OLu so they were still figuring out what they needed. This being said, they still got a good amount of clothing which is being kept by everyone and then given more the next year. We should propose a cleaner and better way to pass down all of these clothes to athletes or think of a way to donate these to people who are less fortunate. I know in the past there was a program where they donated old OLu athletic gear to third world countries so a program like this would really help in coming up with a sustainable and water efficient way to save clothes.

Softball

Every girl on the team is given a number of practice shirts, uniforms, and jackets. We are also given the choice to purchase more apparel than what is provided. All these clothes are utilized during the season but after graduating, they will not be used since we are allowed to keep the uniforms and anything else purchased. Instead of reusing the clothes each year, we get all new stuff. Since uniforms are not reused and every year the uniforms have different designs, new ones are purchased every year, and so much money and water is wasted.

Conclusion:

In our meeting with Mrs. Kekipi, one of Orange Lutheran’s athletic directors, we were able to educate her about clothing waste and propose solutions to the big issue. We presented a PowerPoint that described what the problem was, statistics with examples from different sports teams, some benefits, and what the overall point of the topic was. The reuse of certain jerseys, less T-shirt handouts, buyback programs, and donation were all proposed future solutions.

Overall, the project to raise awareness about sustainable fashion was a success. This changed our school experience as we not only performed a kind of service project, but we also learned about how we can help prevent the over pollution and negative aspects of fast fashion. Now, as citizens, we can actively use this information to share to others and spread awareness about how to keep the oceans and environment clean.