Thrifting for Climate Yardsale

Tanaz Baset Mahmoud Grady Laasya

Our mission was to inform and educate people about the dangers of fast-fashion and how it relates to the effects of climate change. We wanted to let people know there is an alternative in thrifting, and how something so convenient could actually be so harmful for people and our planet. We aimed to make this community wide so it could make an impact on people outside of school.

Fast fashion is one of the biggest causes of climate change and environmental degradation. Mass production creates a very large amount of emissions and greenhouse gases, along with transporting the clothing as well. In the fast fashion world, hundreds of tons of clothes are produced and never sold, which will be burned or thrown away for landfill. The burning of these clothes release high amounts of CO2 which worsens the effects of climate change. In the greenhouse effect, CO2 is a greenhouse gas and is trapped as a heat insulator by the planet to keep it warm, however, when excess amounts of CO2 is released in the atmosphere, excess amount of heat is trapped in the earth and will cause global warming and other unnatural temperature changes across the planet.

By putting up posters across school and holding a school-wide donation process where everyone could bring their clothes in, creating an Instagram post discussing our project and holding a big yard sale, I believe we were able to leave an impact on our school and members of our community as to the harm fast fashion is doing to the planet. We believe the impact will help people to thrift clothing more, avoid fast fashion stores and avoid buying clothes when not needed.

Our action was successful and we met our goal. We got nearly hundreds of donations from our class and outside of our class and we were able to sell them and make money from it to donate. We were able to hold an in person yard sale which was our main goal because the last group that did thrifting wasn't able to. We met both of our goals of educating people on thrifting and fast fashion and holding a yard sale.

From the beginning of our project, we immediately set a goal and spent the entire project achieving that goal rather than changing the goal of having to constantly modify. We communicated with teachers and parent council on setting up our garage sale and we always had a plan of what to do in case circumstances were to change in any way.

If we could do something differently, we would've tried to make a more diverse assortment of posters about the dangers of fast fashion if we could, along with advertising the yard sale more in advance to students so they could have had more time to prepare or keep it in their schedule if they were interested.

The next phase for this project would be to present to the community (eg Cedarview, a community event etc) in further detail about why fast fashion is destroying the planet, and holding a workshop based activity like learning how to sew or modify clothing to avoid throwing it away.

Fast fashion is one of the biggest contributors to climate change and environmental degradation, it's important for big corporations and fast fashion brands to know that you have a voice and you can use it to stop the horrible things they are doing.

Fast fashion doesn't just worsen climate change by way of large excess greenhouse emissions from waste and transportation, but also is a human rights issue because many fast fashion brands take advantage of lesser developed countries with poor labour rights/laws and use slave and child labourers. These countries often suffer the most as due to their typical tropical climates, they suffer from effects of climate change such as disappearing coastlines, extreme monsoons and hurricanes and extremely hot weather. It's important that more and more people will wake up to understand the disastrous consequences that the fast fashion industry is doing to the world, and it's always important to speak out.

We would like to see even more community involvement in fighting against fast fashion and spread even more awareness about the consequences it has on our planet and climate change.

Tanaz: I really enjoyed this project, it was a new learning oppurtunity for me and it was so much fun. I gained new skills from this whole project, from planning, all the way to setting up and running the yard sale. I also expanded my knowledge on the topic of fast fashion and thrifting. Being an assistant/secretery, I learned to respect everyone, manage my time, be organized, confident, and continously help out the leader to the best of my abilities in order to have a smooth sailing, positive outcome in this project. Everything we have done, all the units we covered throughout in this course, has only taught me about climate change issue, however this project has actually taught me how to act upon these problems and make a difference in this world. I am truly grateful to have experienced this; I have learned a lot from this project and gained many skills. I was so happy with how our yard sale turned out, I am truly grateful for all the hard work that our team and the volunteers have done. I hope that future students and our community have learned from our experience and can contribute to this mission. Thrifting is a more sustainable alternative to fast fashion; it is a step in the right direction for an environmentally friendly future.

Baset: I was really happy with this project not only did I learn something new I also helped and got experience in different things for example the yard sale I never really did any volunteering but this was a big chance for me to learn something new and I am thankful for my group for teaching me new things. During the research, I was able to share my thoughts with my group. I also learned a lot of things about fast fashion and knowing the truth about fast fashion motivates me to go and raise money. This group helped me boost my confidence in talking to strangers for example talking with them about the price or why we are raising money which helped me be more comfortable. I think that our group reached our goal and I am really proud of us I hope that the future students understand and learn from us and do an even better job than us. Having social media in this generation is a big thing and I think that sharing the posters we had was a good way to get the audience's attention. I wanna thank all my group members and I hope your future students can do better than us.

Mahmoud: Me personally I really enjoyed this quite exquisite event, I felt that I learned a lot of useful material and had lots of fun with my partners. During the research process of this project, I was able to expand my knowledge on all the things that are happening in in the industry of fast fashion and how these large companies like H&M and ZARA are taking advantage of children in foreign countries by paying them such a low amount and giving them so much work. I also really enjoyed the event that our group had, I think the yard sale was a really fun time and it was a great way to get some experience for my future. The yard sale was also a really great way to help spread the word of such a bad thing that is happening in the world we live in. With more people being knowledged about fast fashion, this is definitely a step in the right direction for an environmentally friendly future.

Grady: i had a lot of fun with this project and i learned a lot of useful skills like how to successfully manage a shop and a chance to learn and work with classmates and it was really nice to see how interested people in the community were about the event, also i learned a lot about fast fashion and the negative effects it has on the environment and the truth of the fashion industry, and how easy it is to recycle and reuse clothes and the positive effects it can have in the future and environment.

Laasya: I learned a lot from this science project. I was able to expand my knowledge on climate change but also learn other skills like setting up an event like a yard sale. Being the leader of the group, I was able to learn time management and leadership skills in order for the group to get things done. Climate change was a huge topic in this course, every subject we learned we had to relate climate change to it. I'm glad I was able to learn and apply my knowledge to the topic in other ways than just a test. I felt really honoured to be able to do a project like this, and I hope that everyone else involved whether it be they worked on it, helped to volunteer on the day of the yard sale, or came to buy clothes will also be aware of how thrifting is a more sustainable alternative to fast fashion and is a step in the right direction for an environmentally friendly future.