A Zero Waste Culture launches t-Tote to combat fabric waste
By Clara Alvarez-Alonso / Special to Islander News
Updated
Chances are, if you’ve been around the Saturday’s Farmers Market, you’ve seen or heard about A Zero Waste Culture.
They are the local nonprofit that are responsible for the Key Biscayne Compost as well as multiple other efforts to reduce food, fabric and plastic waste and educate people on the importance of sustainability. This Earth Day weekend, they set out on an encouraging quest that asks for your participation.
What for? TheirTake a t-Tote, Take a Stand project. While trying to find ways to tackle fabric waste, they found that a prominent issue was fast fashion. People often throw out t-shirts because they might have a stain, they’ve shrunk or they’ve simply grown out of the graphics they display.
Schools hand out tees for field trips or events that are only intended to be worn once and companies gift tees as self-promotion. Oftentimes, these are left in the bottom drawer of our closets and if they make it out it’s usually when the decision has been made to get rid of them.
How to give these tees a second life? The t-Tote idea was born.
Their t-Totes are made by cutting the sleeves and a bit of the lower portion of tees and sewing the bottom together. This turns the tee into a much more sustainable version of a plastic or paper bag. Before they’re sewn, they manually screen print them with their slogan to make people more conscious about their message. The sewers are women that have lost their jobs and are paid per shirt.
The cutters and screen-printers are AZWC volunteers.
This coming Earth Day Weekend (Sunday April 25 from 3 to 7 p.m.) A Zero Waste Culture and the Key Biscayne Presbyterian School ask for your time and skills to join them in cutting and printing their t-Shirts.
In collaboration with Goodwill SFL, they have 1,000 lbs. of outdated tees they need to turn to totes.
Anyone over the age of 14 will be welcomed with open arms, a Smiling Underneath mask and a homemade hand sanitizer provided by A Zero Waste Culture.
They’re also asking for donations to allow them to keep their sewers employed and to purchase the printing ink and future second-hand tees. To donate, click here.
As a local nonprofit, AZWC recognizes that they are nothing without the support of their community and on a week where the planet is celebrated across the globe, you have a chance to be a helping hand for a greater purpose.
