The Sewist Society

The average American throws away 82 lbs of clothing a year for a collective wasted 17B lbs annually, 15% is donated or recycled while the other 85% of unwanted fibers are landfilled or burned (EPA), leaching toxins into the air, soil, and groundwater, primarily affecting low income and communities of color (EPA).

The Sewist Society reduces textile waste by composting it, diverting reusable items from the waste stream while creating soil organic carbon, returning nutrients back to Earth. Through textile composting, we are seeking an alternative scalable solution to address our abundant fiber rejects where compost serves as the bridge between reducing waste and restoring topsoil. In recent years, ⅓ of topsoil has eroded (PNAS). 

By composting more organic matter, we could reduce landfill input by 50% (EPA) and pull up to 23Gt of CO2 from the atmosphere (Nature) while creating jobs in the process.

We are solving the problem of textile waste going to landfills and overseas markets. There’s an estimated $4.5 trillion loss in value and resources for goods not reused or recycled (WRI 2019). While I don't have an exact percentage of textiles in that stat, we know that the secondhand clothing market is valued at $28B (CNBC 2020) and roughly 15% of textiles make it to that secondhand market.

Thrift stores everywhere, large and small, are overrun with clothing donations. In some stores, as much as 40% of donations are sent to landfills or sold to overseas markets (Suncoast Goodwill facility tour, August 2018).

This is a waste of resources and it’s harming foreign local economies. We are sending our unwanted clothes back to countries where these items were produced in the first place. The answer is not to increase donations (our clothing donations actually do more harm than good) especially when sent overseas as secondhand clothing markets choke out foreign local economies (NY Times, 2017) and still fill their landfills. Essentially, we make our waste someone else’s problem and trash their home at the same time. This also wastes resources with multiple cross Atlantic trips.

Addressing our abundant waste problem and restoring our soil are two of the greatest challenges we face as a society in order to achieve and maintain environmental and social equanimity. Poor soils grow poor people, so we use the thing that makes our soils poor (waste) and repurpose it.

Our solution: Create a new recycling facility; accept unwanted textiles and other fabrics that would be landfilled (soiled, ripped, etc.); compost those textiles; create soil; use soil on farmlands/gardens/parks/playgrounds/landscaping, and in land restoration projects via Parks & Rec City/County partnerships.

How it works:

• TSS accepts textile donations at facility via receiving bays much like any Goodwill.

• Manually sort fabric into categories by use or destination (reuse, resell, compost, send to other recyclers via partnerships [Swedish Stockings Co for nylon, Levi’s for denim building insulation, etc.])

• Launder what TSS will reuse or resell. Will need industrial washer & dryer and a Filtrol on washers to capture polyester microplastics.

• Use Franklin Miller TM2300 industrial textile shredder on natural fibers making them small and quicker to decompose

• Fold fabric confetti into compost wind rows

• Use tractor to turn rows

• In 3-5 months when compost is ready, use everywhere

Currently, our direct customers are individuals who donate unwanted textiles to us (instead of throwing them away), ourselves (taking fabric from our own studios to compost), and the Earth, who benefits from our services. 

Future customers include collecting fabric waste from other businesses (thrift stores, estate sale management companies [for clothes and textiles that don’t get sold] and health care facilities (for soiled or stained bedsheets, gowns, etc) to capture and divert those fibers from being shipped overseas or to a landfill. We also hope to partner with local government in terms of city wide collection bins for textiles.

Our indirect customers are communities located near landfills, which are predominantly low income communities and communities of color due to environmental and economic racism (The Color of Law, 2017). Reducing landfill input in these communities reduces pollutants and toxins in the air, soil, and groundwater, giving residents of these communities a chance to restore and recover. 

Other indirect customers are the countries who receive America's secondhand clothes (Kenya, Rwanda, Uganda, Haiti, Honduras, and more) who can then begin to rebuild their local economies on their terms with their own goods, services, and skills.

Helpful data would be to know the quantity of unsold/unusable textiles amassed in those B2B sectors so we know what we’re dealing with locally. I have gone on two facility tours of local thrift stores, one small (ECHO) and one large (Suncoast Goodwill). ECHO said they still sent 3M lbs of clothes to Africa while Suncoast Goodwill sent roughly 23M lbs. I think we're easily looking at over 200M lbs of textiles when considering all the thrift stores in our area and soiled textiles from health care facilities.

As our goal is to divert waste from local landfills, I think it’s important and helpful to know the specific demographics and health stats of neighborhoods located near dump sites so we can measure our landfill diversion impact and it’s positive domino effect. We can get this info from municipal data, census data, race maps, and conducting door to door surveys on residents in this area asking them how the landfill has affected them and their health.

For our individual customers, I think interviewing them as to how they shop for, use, and dispose of fabric will give us the most insight right now. And as we grow into our B2B accounts, a survey with those partner organizations will be sufficient. As we gain new customers, I think surveys and interviews will be helpful to us over time as we grow and adapt.

Many thrift stores send the clothes that don’t sell to overseas markets. In my research, I’ve found that some foreign markets do not want our castoffs, but because of international trade law and tariffs, they can’t say no. Something that would challenge me is to suspect that some countries want America’s secondhand goods and that they do need it for their economy.

TSS is proposing a new type of recycling facility to address a waste stream that’s doing more harm than good overall. Recycling facilities create 6-10x more economic opportunities than landfills (NRDC California Recycles report 2014). 

The main destination for unwanted fabrics will be composted in the field at our facility as a biosequestration method, and using the compost in projects and communities around town.

By using this composted material, we are not only diverting waste and pollution from landfills and communities that live nearby, we are creating a nutrient dense soil for regenerating our ecosystem inland and at the shore.

We are using Tampa, Fl as our beachhead location. Our nonprofit is one year old, and recently secured a partnership with another nonprofit, Rosebud Continuum, who has loaned us some land to do small scale testing of our textile composting in wind-rows. We've been primarily testing small scale in a compost tumbler for the last year. We have a student intern from USF Patel College of Global Sustainability who would like to use this research as part of her thesis project. 

Additionally, we have a Patreon where we are developing our education platform and gaining insight from our community through surveys and one-on-one engagement. With our new partnerships we will be testing more poly-cotton blends and plant pulp based fibers (viscose, rayon, tencel) in addition to natural fibers (cotton, silk, wool, bamboo), as well as testing to see the threshold for poly-cotton blends to break down.

Our solution is innovative as I believe we’re connecting the dots where others aren’t in terms of recycling our textiles cradle-to-cradle. Almost no one is talking about composting our clothes as a waste management application, soil amendment, climate solution, and an avenue for social/racial justice. 

We talk about sustainable fashion in terms of where the garment is coming from and how it’s made, but not that much on what to do with it afterward, except for ‘donate it’. We cannot donate or upcycle our way out of textile waste and I believe compost is the bridge to addressing that waste and replentishing topsoil.

It’s innovative in its dual embodiment of simplicity and grandeur. We don’t have to reinvent the wheel in terms of recycling textiles like Levi’s or Swedish Stockings, we’re composting instead which is an ancient practice. Regarding our vision for the facility, we see a community center flush with sewing/craft workshops, Textile Talks (lecture series featuring artists, teachers, designers), sewing 101 classes, fabric retail store, events, and more.

Not only do we recycle textiles, but also people integrating back into society. We specifically want to work with hard to employ individuals because we believe everyone deserves an extra chance and reducing waste is a job everyone can do.

I’ve learned in my research that the placement of landfills and petrochemical plants near low income/communities of color due to redlining/gerrymandering are truly egregious acts of environmental racism/injustice. Less waste in landfills means healthier communities.

Currently, we are composting fabric/clothes from five people, roughly 2k yards, roughly 1.3k lbs. We estimate it will take the fabric 3-5 months to break down in our windrows. As we have a small composting space now, we have to incorporate the fabric confetti in the windrows in shifts, not all at once, for faster and more consistent decomposition.

A large local Goodwill store receives 59 million lbs of donated goods a year with a goal of keeping 10% out of landfill (Goodwill facility tour, Aug. 2018). We estimate we could serve that in one year working with a few smaller independent thrift stores, with a five year plan of recycling textile waste with the City of Tampa (roughly 400,000 residents) via a bin collection system or centralized drop off centers. Serving this many people will also create a number of positions within TSS, as well.

In that five year span, we aim to have a scalable model with qualitative and quantitative data that can be implemented in other cities throughout the country, and potentially the world. There is textile waste in every corner of the planet and it will take a concerted group effort to make a dent in it, and we believe we can achieve that with facilities in every state. Through the USDA Soil Your Undies challenge, textile composting projects have already taken place in England and Australia (the project was about soil health and used fabric as the vehicle to deliver that message). 

We are measuring through waste diverted, usable compost created, and number of partnerships created (B2B, local government, prison's skills training diversion programs). In our test projects we have successfully diverted over 1k lbs of textile waste on various small scales.

What we are Measuring and how:

- Pounds/tons of textiles/fabric diverted from a landfill

- Soil Organic Carbon (SOC [ScienceDirect])/Compost created (pounds/tons)

- Carbon sequestered (pounds/Gigatons) by making soil organic carbon (#13 Climate action)

- Partnerships created (with other nonprofits, universities, government, landscapers, retailers, estate firms, restaurants, etc) (#11 Sustainable cities)

- Land restored/regenerated (total acreage/hectares, coastal shoreline miles) (soil testing before and after with photo documentation of land transformation) (#15 Life on land)

- Food scraps diverted from landfill (through partnership with local restaurants for green matter for the compost) (pounds/tons collected & composted) (#12 Responsible consumption)

- Can also partner with tree trimming companies to use mulch in compost as brown matter (measure trees composted in tons, number of trees)

- Demographics of communities nearby and any common health effects and watching those effects with a projected downward trend over the years as landfill input reduces

- How many people positively impacted? (jobs created, waste diverted, community health trends)

- How many people do we serve in our facility? (through workshop attendance and other events hosted at TSS)

The creation and implementation of TSS aligns with SDG #9 Industry, Innovation, & Infrastructure

Currently, we are:

1 Full time - Ericka Leigh

2 Part time - Leigh Anne Balzekas, Kristine Ownley

1 Student intern - Jasmine Seitz

We also have 5 board members and are looking to increase up to 9 members.

Our team is Ericka Leigh, MA in Sustainability, compost enthusiast, textile artist; Leigh Anne Balzekas, BS Fashion Design, zero-waste fashion designer, entrepreneur; and Kristine Ownley, BA International Studies, entrepreneur, fair labor advocate. Combined, we have 30 years experience in zero waste practices, sustainable design, and textile reuse. Leigh Anne and Kristine bring 11 years as ethical business owners, and zero waste clothing production. In our own small studios, we’ve diverted over 2,000 yards of fabric from landfill through composting projects and refashioning fabric scraps into new garments or tapestries. 

I performed my thesis in Peru with the UNFAO, focusing on food security and school gardens with several lessons regarding soil health via compost.

Personally, I have experimented with textile composting with Sewn Apart, my artist moniker, in my backyard in a tumbler, in aerated open air wind rows in collaboration with Suncoast Compost (local compost collection business), and in aerated enclosed piles at The Sustainable Living Project (local community garden); and in potted plants; all four experiments resulting in various stages of success, all confirming YES, with enough time and properly managed, fabric can be composted.

The intersection of our experiences bring a unique big-picture perspective, and consider the whole supply chain from farm production, labor practice, transportation, usage, and disposal - considering the issue not just from the end of life perspective, but the toll that the whole system takes on the environment and the interconnectedness of race, gender, and locale. 

We are three women in the waste management field, and we named our organization The Sewist Society because waste and pollution are wrapped up in the labor and inequality rampant in textile production. Women are seamstresses while men are tailors, preforming the same tasks yet not being treated the same or receiving equal pay. We wanted a gender neutral term that placed value in the persons making the textiles that are essential to our everyday lives. We need to value the people growing the crop that produces the thread, as well as the weavers of the fibers, and the sewists. Equality is at the core of our mission. It's heart wrenching that we exploit the earth, and her people with current operations of textile production and waste streams. 

Through our board, we seek folks from different backgrounds, experiences, and walks of life to ensure diversity and that the community we serve is reflected in our leadership.

When we have our facility, we plan to employ those who have barriers to employment, such as the formerly incarcerated, refugees, and immigrants to work in the fabric sorting room or out in the field helping turn the compost. Our skill share education program would also offer opportunities to employ craftspeople and artisans as teachers. We feel these skills are largely undervalued and are already scarce in underserved populations. The arts are often the first programs cut and keeping arts education programs in tact is imperative to us because art is critical thinking, too.

With MIT's expertise, network, and clout combined with our expertise, enthusiasm, and community, we believe this is more than feasible. This is an amazing opportunity for receiving help, support, and mentorship in solving one of our greatest challenges. MIT is committed to solving the world's issues and this is an issue we wholeheartedly believe we can solve.

It's not a question of if, but when we will be overrun with textiles as the current system is not working and there are not strong signs of production slowing down. According to OaklandNorth (2019), “I can tell you that if somebody just suddenly turned off the spigot and nobody was willing to buy salvage, then we would have to figure something else out.”

We are not trying to reinvent the wheel. We want to marry an array of proven successful models into one facility (textile recycling center, municipal composting, job training programs, a community center). I think MIT could help us in franchising The Sewist Society so we can create a model to be licensed and implemented in every city (like Planned Parenthood or Meals On Wheels).

I think MIT can assist us with technology and other tools when testing the soil for dye runoff, as well as provide some suggestions that we haven't thought of yet to overcome that barrier.

We are also thrilled at the opportunity to be mentored by some of the brightest minds and collaborate on a project that creates a healthier planet.

As mentioned, we want to partner with local government and create a business model that can be scaled horizontally and implemented in cities across the country. We would love partners and support in facilitating this as we have little to no experience in government contracts. 

I'd absolutely love to chat with a soil scientist at MIT about methods of testing our soil and perhaps some other things to look out for, different ways of testing soil, and learn of other possible impact opportunities. The potential to have access to more technology surrounding this topic is really exciting. 

Additionally, the potential for public relations help in dispersing our mission is amazing. We have a lot of ideas for marketing and branding, and as we want to grow into a national organization, I think help on this front would be extremely valuable.

At this stage in our development, we do need capital in order to get to the next step. We very much so welcome the opportunity to pitch to investors. As we grow, we will need help with managing finances. My team (Kristine and Leigh Anne) nor I have experience running a company as large as our vision and we invite insight, advice, and more when it comes to stabilizing an organization at that scale.

To start, we want to partner with our local government, the City of Tampa and Hillsborough County Parks & Rec departments for accepting and dispersing our compost. Ideally, we would love for our mayor, Jane Castor, to gift or loan us an old cigar factory as our facility, and I think with enough data, the right pitch, and backup support such as MIT, that that would be an easy reality.

Something we've been talking about is hosting a panel with other textile recyclers to talk about how textile waste is such a problem and share our solutions. This panel would include Stephanie Benedetto from Queen of Raw, Clare Press (Vogue Australia sustainable fashion editor), FabScrap, The Renewal Workshop, Fashion Revolution, and more.

I'd also love to partner with Dr. Ayana Elizabeth Johnson (marine biologist) on a project or report outlining the connection of pesticides/herbicide/etc. to ocean health and how using more compost improves underwater life by decreasing pesticide et al usage. As we know, what we do on land effects what happens under water and agricultural runoff is a big contributor to coral bleaching, depleted fisheries, increased algae blooms, and more.

We believe we have an holistic approach when it comes to creating a sustainable city. The creation of our facility addresses many societal ills and allows us to feed multiple birds with one seed. We divert waste from landfills (reducing the amount of toxins being leached into the soil, air, groundwater), tap into an abundant and underutilized resource (our clothes), create community (through sewing & craft), and offer a pathway to redemption with a skills training program that productively reintegrates hard to employ individuals (immigrants, refugees, the formerly incarcerated and previously homeless). All of these business models/programs have proven successful on their own and we want to combine them into one operation. Our premier way of recycling textiles will be compost. By composting more organic matter (our natural fiber clothing), we could reduce landfill input by 50% (EPA) and pull up to 23Gt of CO2 from the atmosphere (Nature) while creating jobs in the process.

We would use the money as a down-payment on a facility, which will help us scale our impact and assist in our goal of establishing a new recycling facility that can be employed in cities across the country. By scaling horizontally and focusing on recycling our waste and utilizing our resources at the hyper local level, we embody the idea of thinking globally and acting locally.

The Sewist Society uplifts and supports women and girls, and strives to create a more equal, fair, and safer environment for them. Women and girls have become modern day slaves in the garment industry, working long hours and in unsafe working conditions. Women’s work has been undervalued for decades, which we believe has led to the textile waste problem we have now. Cheap labor in garment factories has impoverished and enslaved women and devalued their work for too long.

TSS educates consumers on these facts and offers solutions to uplift women and the art of sewing. Money received from this grant will be used to open our facility, where we honor women, women’s work, and compost unwanted textiles, making sure that women’s work was not done in vain. We also have a Home Sewist program where we can contract women sewists working from home to create items for sale, allowing women safe and flexible employment, which is imperative for women to come up as equals in today's workforce (when considering childrearing, etc).

We would use the money as a down-payment on a facility, which will help us scale our impact and assist in our goal of establishing a new recycling facility that can be employed in cities across the country. By scaling horizontally and focusing on recycling our waste and utilizing our resources at the hyper local level, we embody the idea of thinking globally and acting locally.

According to Nature Sustainability (2020), "We show that soil carbon represents 25% of the potential for natural climate solutions" helping stabilize forests, wetlands including coastlines, and agricultural lands and grasslands.

With our textile composting project, we are diverting waste and creating soil organic carbon, allowing us to address two of our greatest challenges in one solution. Additional, we believe we can reduce local landfill input by 50% or more through composting food, yard waste, and paper products. We'll need more than just textiles in our compost operation so creating partnerships with restaurants, landscapers, and tree trimming services allows us to capture waste from other industries, as well. Since California implemented municipal composting over 10 years ago, they have diverted over 80% of their waste from landfills. With our idea to scale horizontally, we can't find any reason why this can't be done on a large scale, which would produce mass decarbonization.

Money from receiving this grant would go towards further research and opening our facility, buying the appropriate tools and machinery needed to implement our textile project on a large scale. Tools and machinery include soil testers and lab kits, a textile shredder, and a tractor to help us turn the compost.

Restoring our soil and addressing our abundant waste problem are two of the greatest challenges we face as a people in order to achieve and maintain environmental and social equanimity. Poor soils grow poor people, so we use the thing that make makes our soils poor (waste) and use it productively.

The Sewist Society is contributing to a sustainable world by creating compost and taking one of our most wasted resources out of the waste stream. Seventeen billion pounds of textiles are wasted annually, 85% of which are landfilled or burned (EPA), leaching toxins into the soil, groundwater, and surrounding neighborhoods, predominantly affecting low-income and communities of color. This exacerbates health, economic, and access disparities, perpetuating a classist, racist system.

Through partnerships with thrift stores, we can capture unwanted/unsold donations and divert them from going to overseas markets where America's castoffs choke out foreign local economies. By dramatically decreasing donations to countries throughout Africa, Central America, Haiti, and other nations who receive the bulk of America’s donations, we give those communities a chance to recover and rebuild their economy with their goods and services.

We would use the money as a down-payment on a facility, which will help us scale our impact and assist in our goal of establishing a new recycling facility that can be employed in cities across the country. By scaling horizontally and focusing on recycling our waste and utilizing our resources at the local level, we embody the idea of thinking globally and acting locally.