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Hello! Thank you for visiting us (UD Fashion and Apparel Studies Sustainable Textile RAD (research through applied discovery) Lab.
The W=FT Collection is an design collaborative partnership aimed at determining post-market manufacturing opportunities that re-define the textile waste stream (i.e. deadstock textile and post-consumer garments) as a value stream.
The research/discovery team specifically focused maximizing the embodied energy of fast-fashion fabrics. McDonough and Braungart (2000) propose the cradle to cradle concept, suggesting that one organism's waste is food for another cycle. Nutrients and energy flow perpetually in closed-loop cycles of growth, decay and rebirth.
About this ongoing research: Although not yet an official era, the term Anthropocene reflects the ways in which human activity has become a world shaping force, and highlights the urgent need for planetary stewardship to ensure a sustainable future for human society and the nonhuman world (Payne, 2019). As virgin resources grow more scarce, there is incentive to focus on bi-products and waste as a resource and raw material. In most regions, in this time of the anthropocene, waste is the prominent local material. According to Mcdonough and Braungart, local materials have less effect on soil and water and often provide the most feasible solutions to local problems; local business bolsters local economies and promotes citizen awareness.
To address social aspects of the wasteshed and to function as a tool for consumer education/citizen awareness, the researchers are continuing collaboration with Goodwill of Delaware and Delaware County with qualitative and social practice research merging experiential retail, visual merchandising with wardrobe studies and the anthropology of clothes. Reclaiming the value of waste offers an opportunity to build a sustainable economy, strengthen community, and broaden prosperity, while solving a local waste issue.
We have been collaborating with Goodwill of Delaware and Delaware County since 2015 as part of a regional re-manuacturing Initiative. A significant opportunity exists to capture value from unused textiles and clothing, using recycled rather than virgin materials also offers an opportunity to drastically reduce non-renewable resource inputs and the negative impacts of the industry. The Ellen Macarthur foundation report A new textiles economy: Redesigning fashion’s future (2017) offers a vision of a fashion system that is circular, ideally creating no waste by design, while strategically capturing value from recycled content. Goal three of the report findings suggest the radical improvement of recycling by transforming clothing design, collection and reprocessing.
Reference:
Ellen MacArthur Foundation (2017) A new textiles economy: Redesigning fashion’s future.
http://www.ellenmacarthurfoundation.org/publications)
McDonough, W., & Braungart, M. (2002). Cradle to cradle. New York: North Point Press
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