Did you know...
*NYC residents throw out 200,000 tons of clothing, shoes, accessories, and linens every year. It's 6% of NYC total waste stream. That's 14x the weight of the Brooklyn Bridge and 2x it's suspension capacity.
*Nationwide, 12.65 million tons are thrown out, which is 35x the weight of the Empire State Building. Every year! Currently, only about 15% is recovered for reuse or recycling, a little more than 5 Empire State Buildings.
*For commercial waste, the best estimation that I can find is from Annie Leonard in "The Story of Stuff". For every pound of residential waste created, 40 pounds of waste are created upstream. Using just NYC's textile numbers, and assuming commercial and residential streams have similar compositions, that's 8 million tons of textile scraps heading to landfill from the design process. That's approximately the weight of the great pyramid... every year!
*Again, using NYC's numbers as a reference, if you look at what the Department of Sanitation public budget for waste removal only, and use the 6% textile value above, NYC essentially spends ~$60 million just moving textiles to landfill. Every year!
-Information via Fab Scrap
Find out how this is being combated this Thursday, 10:30 p.m. EST on Project Runway: Fashion Startup!
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