The textile sector is widely recognized as one of the world's most polluting industries. With alarming statistics, a really small amount that actually gets recycled. Our school is assuming that they are eco-friendly.
Yet, this sounds hypocritical when we look into the sewing rooms of modern fashion schools or ours. The tons of fabric scraps created there – cut-offs, prototypes, and unfinished projects – overflow the waste bins at the end of the semester. We are talking about unused material that often heads straight to trash, instead of being used.
It is a paradox: young designers learn the theory of Slow Fashion and Zero-Waste Design, while the educational practice promotes the very throwaway mentality they are supposed to be fighting against.
Fashion schools must live up to their responsibility pioneers. I suggest implementing upcycling projects and expanding the and trying out different resource-efficient methods like digital 3D design (virtual prototyping). This is the only way for the education to be credible and to release the next generation of designers equipped with a true green conscience. I would like to end this article with a quote, my dad once told me. „Making new things out of old scraps is not only sustainable, but it often yields the most unique and beautiful results.