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 of outdated tees they need to turn to totes.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.
By Kym Klass and George White / Special to Islander News
Jun 23, 2020 Updated Jun 23, 2020
THE GUARDIANS, Celebrating the heroes who keep us safe in the battle over Coronavirus
When a crisis such as the Coronavirus pandemic strikes, a community’s strength of character is put to the test. As neighbors struggle, others step up to help. Compassionate. Diligent. Selfless.
When a crisis such as the Coronavirus pandemic strikes, a community’s strength of character is put to the test. As neighbors struggle, others step up to help. Compassionate. Diligent. Selfless.
For some — those designated as “essential” workers — it is their job, and they perform exceptionally. Others, however, willingly come out of the safety of self-quarantine and risk sickness to offer assistance to the community.
The response to the pandemic epitomizes what makes Key Biscayne so special. The village is composed of people who put the community before self. People from all walks of life with generous hearts who have genuine concern for their neighbors.
From making and distributing meals to the homebound, to being senior “buddies,” to volunteering at testing sites or serving in area hospitals, these folks work on our behalf – not just to keep us safe, but to keep hope alive for a brighter future.
In a Special Report, we honor just some of the community’s “guardians” for keeping us safe, fed and healthy. To them, and others who continue to step up, we say “Thank you!”
Since Monday, we have been introducing you to some of these 10-kind friends and neighbors who give of themselves to keep us safe & comfortable during this pandemic.
In 2019, Helena Iturralde founded A Zero Waste Culture to empower people to fight climate change through programs such as creating reusable grocery bags from donated fabric.
Being an alternative to single-use plastic bags is important as one means of reducing the Carbon footprint, Iturralds said. Since the Coronavirus crisis struck, however, the program shifted to creating cloth masks by the hundreds.
The masks are purchased from underemployed women who get paid $5 per mask. When the masks are sold for $15, the extra proceeds go to help sustain the program, including training women to sew. In addition, two other masks are donated to those needing them: residents of Little Haiti, incarcerated women, and the Navajo tribe in Arizona.
“We started by learning, making masks with a real simple design, but we changed it to a different model because we had to find a faster way to make as many as possible,” Iturralde said. “They are not medical masks, but … (it’s) better to be protected with these masks than not be protected at all.”
To date, several thousand masks have been sold or donated, she said, adding that many of the masks go to essential workers. “So many people have to go to work and really need to be protected.”
The group now has volunteers collecting elastic and bendable metal bars off disposable masks so they can be incorporated in the reusable design, she said.
Iturralde is pleased her organization and its workers have the flexibility to help with the virus-submission effort, but “I hope we will stop needing them.’’
