This section provides designers and consumers topical information and useful tools to understand the climate impacts of the textile industry. It’s a diverse collection of sites, educational resources, and multimedia sources. Six are highlighted to get you started. Additional resources follow, organized by resource type.
The Council of Fashion Designers of America (CFDA) has created a sustainability-centered resource hub designed to provide open access resources and information specific to fashion design and business sustainable strategies.
One of North America's most extensive recycling databases with over 350 materials and 100,000+ listings including a Style & Fashion category. Begun more than 20 years ago.
Sheltersuit creates products that protect and help ease the symptoms for people experiencing homelessness. In partnership with the fashion and textile industries they use high quality “waste” materials to make extraordinary things.
A company that developed a proprietary system for renewing and reselling products that would otherwise be considered waste. Offers a line of fully restored home goods, apparel and bags, certified to be in like-new condition. Offers circular supply chain consulting services.
A recording of World Hope Forum’s “From Farm to Fabric to Fashion” that took place on February 5, 2022. Curated by Lidewij Edelkoort & Philip Fimmano, the event included an inspiring line-up of farmer-designers who are heeding the call, and translating fibers into fabrics and fashion.
Drawing upon more than 30 international scholars in a book that brings together chapters that explore current agendas and set out visions for future ones, created through a participatory process which saw contributors take a role in shaping and framing the whole as well as their component part. The book is challenging, multi-layered, revealing, honest, sometimes uncomfortable, and, in places, funny.
Leading industry pioneers, Timo Rissanen and Holly McQuillan offer flexible strategies and easy-to-master zero waste techniques to help you develop your own cutting edge fashion designs.
A guide from Council of Fashion Designers of America combining practical information, resources, research, and exercises to help fashion brands broaden awareness, deepen knowledge, and develop a framework for future strategies to incorporate sustainability into their business model and company culture.
A buying guide and online directory that also offers end consumers the chance to find OEKO-TEX®labeled products. OEKO-TEX® consists of 17 independent institutes in Europe and Japan developing test methods and limit values for the textile and leather industry.
An outgrowth of the Ethical Fashion Forum, this “intelligent business network for the fashion industry” matches members with the connections and sustainable resources they need to succeed.
Facts and figures about materials, waste and recycling from the United States Environmental Protection Agency. One fact: The main source of textiles in municipal solid waste (MSW) is discarded clothing.
Fashion and Race Database is an online platform, developed by a Parsons School of Design (NYC) fashion history and theory educator. Its goal is to amplify the voices of those who have been racialized (and thus marginalized) in fashion, illuminate under-examined histories and address racism throughout the fashion system.
“Nearly 60% of all clothing produced ends up being burned or in landfills within one year of being made.” Fashion for Good is an Amsterdam-based member hub that connects brands, producers, retailers, suppliers, non-profit organizations, innovators and funders to work together in their shared ambition to make the fashion industry a force for good.
A non-profit organization established in 2007 to advance sustainability in the fashion industry through education, awareness, research and collaboration.
Fibershed is a non-profit organization that develops equity-focused regional and land regenerating natural fiber and dye systems, expanding “opportunities to implement climate-beneficial agriculture.”
Positive Luxury bestows the Butterfly Mark, the luxury industry’s leading sustainability certification of independently verified evidence that companies meet the highest standard of sustainability best practices across ESG+: Environmental, Social, Governance and Innovation.
A multi-stakeholder non-profit brings together expertise from across the globe to transform business for exponential impact. They provide groundbreaking tools, collaborative partnerships, and trusted leadership for industry sustainability.
An open-source version of a proprietary Carbon Footprint Calculator, plus lots of information on carbon emissions measurement practices and a “how-to” guide on the calculator’s use.
Founded in 2006 as a collaborative movement among fashion businesses, professionals and entrepreneurs to help them to integrate sustainable and ethical practices meant to transform social and environmental standards in the fashion industry.
Educational Toolkits and free online resources aimed at industry leaders, educators and students. Provided by the University of Arts London Research Centre.
A series of events designed to reimagine the fashion industry from head to toe. From clothing repair workshops to thrift markets to runway shows, the event brings New Yorkers together to build a world where style and sustainability go hand in hand.
A recording of the 2019 full-day workshop curated by CalRecycle, a state agency regulating disposal and recycling. It includes a broad discussion on the impact of textile production and consumption in California and across the world.
This 2007 PBS film, made without permission from Chinese authorities, takes viewers inside a blue jeans factory in southern China, where teenage workers struggle to survive harsh working conditions. (If outside US, check your country's streaming services.)
This film uncovers the transnational movement of cotton and tells the stories of workers’ lives in a conventional cotton supply chain from rural farms in South Carolina to factory cities in China.
This 2014 documentary by Clique Pictures is set against the backdrop of the fast-fashion industry and our increasing disconnect to where and how clothing is made, as well as the hands that create a garment.
A groundbreaking 2015 documentary film that pulls back the curtain on the untold story behind decades of almost steadily decreasing prices for clothing, asking us to consider, who really pays the price for our clothing?
A direct-to-consumer materials science company and global collective of scientists, technologists and designers creating essential products from innovative tech and bio-engineered materials.
Resources for tutors. "A set of tools and resources to help us consider what to teach, how to teach, and how far we can change or transform our teaching through the discipline of Fashion Design for Sustainability. "
At the Fashion Institute of Technology, a certificate program that gives design entrepreneurs the knowledge, tools, and access to resources they need to build a viable business based on sustainable design practices.
Sustainable Fashion Business and Practices is a new creative master’s program developed to address fashion’s unsustainable footprint from a systems design approach. “This is the business of design as a problem-solving tool, not a means to produce more stuff.”
Education For Sustainability is a program that seeks to transform the fashion system by changing fashion education, with learners across levels and locations, and through courses and resources for LCF and UAL (University of the Arts London) students and teachers, and for wider audiences through digital learning.
A short, online, no-credit course intended as an introduction to sustainable fashion and textiles and the myriad of creative responses to the challenges.
Vancouver, Canada - based consulting agency offers Sustainable Fashion 101 and Circular Fashion 101 courses for professionals, executives and employees of brands wanting to improve their sustainability commitments.
A certificate program that takes an open, inclusive, and empowering approach to sustainability, enabling learners to overcome barriers to change and shape their careers in fashion in alignment with their personal and professional values.
A Master in Textiles program in partnership with Lidewij Edelkoort focused on educating creative individuals who want to change the course of fashion and mitigate environmental impacts of clothing.
A certificate program that covers sustainable design theory, practice, processes, and materials to address real-world challenges, while highly encouraging research and innovation.
Education for Sustainable Development Using Fabric and Fibre, a course from SFE for teachers who want to learn more about sustainability, the fast fashion industry and how to bring sewing back into the classroom to prepare students for a more sustainable future.
The UAL (University of the Arts London) Decolonising Arts Institute seeks to challenge colonial and imperial legacies, disrupting ways of seeing, thinking and making, in order to drive cultural, social and institutional change.
An organization focused on waste collection through chemical and mechanical recycling technologies that is compiling a map of textile recyclers in the United States. Accelerating Circularity partners with many of the organizations highlighted here on TCA’s Fashion Sustainability resource list.
In collaboration with Zappos for Good, Cotton’s Blue Jeans Go Green™ program collects any brand of denim made from cotton to be recycled into something new.
The US EPA estimates that textile waste occupies nearly 5% of all landfill space. Council for Textile Recycling is a nonprofit organization dedicated to raising public awareness about the importance of textile recycling and the need to reduce the amount of used clothing and other post-consumer textile waste.
In collaboration with Zappos for Good, The Remix™ Project recycles and repurposes footwear from Vancouver, Canada - based manufacturer Native Shoes to give them new life with new owners, or as base materials in community projects, like children's playgrounds.
An international trade association promoting the interdependence of the for-profit textile recycling industry, SMART segments and provides a common forum for networking, education and advocacy.
Founded in 2006 to help with disaster relief after the devastation of Hurricane Katrina, Soles4Souls is a nonprofit organization, in collaboration with Zappos for Good, dedicated to providing relief, fighting poverty, and creating opportunity through shoes and clothing donations.
TerraCycle is a social enterprise “Eliminating the Idea of Waste®”, working in 21 countries to collect, sort and recycle typically non-recyclable items through national, first-of-their-kind platforms.
Government organization helping New Yorkers give goods, find goods, and do good, with tools at their website that make it easy to donate or find used goods.
A coalition under the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation composed of textiles recyclers, local governments, non-profit reuse organizations, and others working together to increase the amount of textiles recovered for reuse and recycling in New York State.
A free clothing donation and recycling service through a partnership with Housing Works and refashionNYC that provides convenient, building-based bins for donation/collection, using clothing donations to fight the dual crises of homelessness and AIDS.
With local pickup from businesses in Brooklyn, NY and Philadelphia, PA, FABSCRAP is a convenient and transparent recycling and reuse service with collected fabric scraps either recycled into other materials, or sold locally and online for repurposing/reuse.
The Massachusetts Department of Environmental Protection’s directory of textile recovery and recycling sharing information on organizations and locations where residents can donate and recycle clothing, footwear, bedding, curtains and other textiles.
A free apparel, shoe and handbag recycling program in West Warwick, Warwick, North Kingstown, East Greenwich and Pawtucket Rhode Island, offering door-front pickup on trash collection days.
