Make It Last

My pants had a small hole. No idea how it happened. Now, I know how to stitch-I patch my own blue jeans- but since these are my good work pants I thought I’d let a professional handle it. The lady who runs  (14701 Aurora Ave N) advertised alterations and tailoring and since it’s maybe 300 feet from my door I thought I’d take her up on it.

The point? I didn’t buy new pants. I mean, I don’t have the scratch to buy new duds every time I pop a button, but even if I did, that would be stupid! The ridiculous thing is how many people do pretty much that. Any scuff, any stain, any fading, and it’s throw it out and run off to a store.

Reduce, Reuse, Recycle is the basic mantra of conscientious individuals, as you know, and the top of the pyramid is ‘reduce’ because it has the greatest impact on one’s environmental footprint. By not buying something new, by reducing the size or amount you might otherwise have bought, by going for the choice with less packaging you keep significant resources from having to be expended in the first place.

Reuse is next, because if you had to buy something, then best to maximize the use one can get from it, and recycling, while honorable, is last, because it’s what you resort to when you can’t (or don’t know how to, or can’t be bothered to) reuse something any more.

The ragman used to be a common character in most towns, back when the country as a whole was generally cash-poor. He was the smallest of small businessmen, collecting and selling rags. Back in the day that meant a nearly useless piece of cloth, because if your skirt was too ragged to wear (remember, in those days you wouldn’t consider merely cutting it shorter, because modest women didn’t expose their ankles!) you would recut it smaller for your daughter, or cut strips to sew onto the hems of other, slightly less ragged skirts, or cut it into table napkins, or use it to wipe up spills, or whatever.

When it was fit to give away to a ragman it was pretty far gone. Yet it might still have uses. Cut small enough it would contribute to a quilt. Rolled and woven with many other rags it would become a rug. You could even strip it down thread by thread and use that to repair other clothes.

Even with the persistent slow economy and all the day-to-day measures people have taken to cope I don’t expect to see a ragman wandering our streets calling out to housewives/husbands anytime soon, but the concept is valid. Among the many potential ‘green’ jobs are those who facilitate reuse and recycling.

Goodwill, , Children’s Hospital Thrift Store, Living Wisely Thrift & Gift and others all do a similar thing, but remain steadfastly ‘up the food chain’ in what you might call ‘immediate’ or ‘direct’ reuse. That is, Goodwill and its like are explicitly not in the rag business. Donated clothing must be in good enough condition to wear directly. As the Children’s Hospital Thrift Store site says “We can accept new or gently used items in good condition…”

I’m pretty sure clothing makers and chain retailers hate this whole concept, because it drives right up against their basic premise: ‘buy! buy! buy!- now! now! now!’, new styles you “simply must have!!!”. Planned obsolescence at its most callous, of course, but how can it be otherwise? As The Economist magazine defines it in a 2009 article defending the practice “Planned obsolescence is a business strategy in which the obsolescence (the process of becoming obsolete—that is, unfashionable or no longer usable) of a product is planned and built into it from its conception. This is done so that in future the consumer feels a need to purchase new products and services that the manufacturer brings out as replacements for the old ones.”

Clothing is obviously just a small part of reduce/reuse/recycle. Cleanscapes, for instance, is in another part of the spectrum, recycling various ‘trash’ items and helping turn food and yard wastes into compost. is another area of big opportunity. It makes personal and national economic sense and is to significantly reduce our material demands, both per capita and nationally.