Do you have Too Many T-Shirts?

Hi,

Hope you've been having a lovely weekend.

Upcycling or Repurposing is one of the 5 R's of waste management. Refuse, Reduce, Reuse, Repurpose, & Recycle.

Sometimes people say they prefer to give their old t-shirts to charity and this is a valid point. Your charitable donations will have some use to others in the UK. However, approximately 70%* of our charitable donations are shipped overseas. Our worn and poor fitting clothes often undercut developing countries’ clothing markets and traditional clothing productions.

This is such a problem, that the governments of the East African Community (EAC), a regional trade block including; Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda, Rwanda, and Burundi want to block the import of second-hand clothes by 2019.** This is with the aim to promote local manufacture of clothing and textiles.

In 2015, Kenya alone imported 18,000 tonnes of clothing from the UK.

Repurposing provides part of the solution to our clothing waste problem. Your help will secure our new studio space and thanks to this we'll continue researching how to eliminate textiles and clothing waste.

We want to focus on how we can extend the life cycle of our materials locally, rather than passing on the problem and shipping it overseas.

We're now at 79%! If our campaign is successful, we'll be exploring how we can further reduce clothing waste.

Cheers,

Simon - Too Many T-Shirts

For some further reading on this have a look at:

*http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-30227025

**https://www.economist.com/news/middle-east-and-africa/21695819-governments-take-aim-well-meaning-foreigners-east-africas-used-clothes-trade

https://www.theguardian.com/sustainable-business/sustainable-fashion-blog/2015/feb/13/second-hand-clothes-charity-donations-africa

http://www.clothingpoverty.com/clothing-poverty/