This simple question sounds like it would lead to a simple answer, but the fate of even a single shoe involves some of the most complex issues related to textile waste. I quickly discovered this during my master’s studies at the University of Waterloo’s School of Environment, Resources and Sustainability. I asked more than 400 people in Ontario what they do with their unwanted garments, shoes and accessories. While more than 90% of all participants responded they donate most of their stuff, this response was at odds with the overwhelming volume of textile waste in landfills worldwide. I recognized that more research was needed, so I started a PhD at SERS. My research applies a social innovation approach to consider how we can get textiles out of landfills and adequately reused, re-purposed and recycled.
Textile waste is only a symptom of a larger problem that starts with our desire to purchase so much clothing. I try to better understand the drivers for fashion consumption by exploring how the process of individualization and the need for group belonging encourages us to buy more clothes. For instance, our political environment encourages us to solve every crisis by going shopping, and many of us become power shoppers: happiness machines who wear a garment on average only seven times before discarding it. How can social innovation work to break the resilience of this unsustainable fashion system?
To answer this question, my research explores successful sustainable innovations, interviews social innovators like Safia Minney, who has founded the Fairtrade company People Tree, and even involves site visits and SWOT analysis of companies like Eileen Fisher to understand how the company established its clothing take-back program. Cumulatively, these methods aim to scope the issues surrounding textile waste and determine ways to transition the fashion system towards sustainability.
Putting these insights into practice, I also became a co-founder of the Ontario Textile Diversion Collaborative (OTDC). The collaborative conducts mutual learning workshops to foster and facilitate transdisciplinary collaboration among various stakeholders to better understand the opportunities and challenges of social innovation initiatives.
My research also tries to close the data gap surrounding textile waste by conducting waste audits in Ontario. The photos below are from my applied research project dumpster dive, supported by Seneca College. The first photo shows the garments people have thrown in the garbage, which after analyzing and washing them, I turned into an exhibition to raise awareness (side picture).
I am grateful to my Professors at SERS who gave me the opportunity and the support to explore such an unusual topic like textile waste. It’s been an amazing learning journey one where I learned next to methods and theories that we should donate single shoes because graders will pair them with similar ones and sell them (picture below).
