Alicia Robles grew up watching her mother make wedding dresses and other clothes in southern Mexico. As a girl, she watched and learned, but she didn’t get back into sewing until she had her own children.
“When I became a mom, and I can fix stuff for my kids, I feel good about myself,” Robles said.
On a recent afternoon, Robles and two other women mended old clothes, packs and linens in the basement of the Franklin Library in Minneapolis. The women are experienced sewers hired by the nonprofit Reuse Minnesota to staff their Mend-It Clinics, a series of events where the public can bring in damaged clothes and other textile goods for free repairs.
The Mend-It Clinics, which started in January with a grant from the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency (MPCA), are part of the state’s broader effort to cut down on textile waste. Fast fashion and clothing made of dizzying blends of fabrics are contributing to growing piles of textiles that wind up in the trash.
The MPCA is trying to get a handle on the issue and identify buyers and sellers for recycled fabrics, said Susan Heffron, a recycling market coordinator with the agency. The data isn’t perfect, but the MPCA estimates that somewhere between 134,000 and 192,000 tons of textiles are thrown away each year in Minnesota.
The best way to prevent that? Getting people to fix and mend what they already own.
“We want to reduce what we buy, and then we want to reuse and fix, then recycle,” Heffron said.
The triage order in the triangular recycling symbol is often overlooked, but maintaining the life of items someone already owns is the best method of reducing waste. In the case of clothing, blankets and packs, it also helps elongate the life of valued items.
The true cost of textiles is hidden to modern Americans, according to Reuse Minnesota executive director Emily Barker. Synthetic fabrics, overseas labor that is often exploited and an online retail culture that allows free deliveries and returns can fog the public’s understanding of what goes into producing clothing and other textile products.
“New stuff has gotten so cheap,” Barker said.
Worth fixing
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) estimated in 2018 that the nation produced more than 17 million tons of textile waste, nearly double the amount in 2000. The vast majority of the country’s textile waste ends up in landfills or is incinerated, according to the EPA. About 2.5 million tons were recycled in 2018.
But older clothing is worth fixing, and Reuse Minnesota hopes its Mend-It Clinics can help people see that.
“A lot of older things are better quality,” said Mai Lauer, one of the sewers who works at the Mend-It clinics.
Lauer grew up sewing and has kept up with the hobby for years. She sews many of her own clothes, including a beautiful floral skirt she wore to the Mend-It Clinic, and regularly alters items for her three daughters. Lauer started sewing at Fix-It Clinics hosted by Ramsey and Hennepin counties—where residents can bring in all sorts of non-working items for free repair—and has worked at all six of the Mend-It Clinics this year.
Lauer and other menders invite their customers to learn as they fix clothes. People sit next to them as they sew, observing and asking questions. Robles helped a woman with a common request: repairing a zipper on an otherwise good jacket. Robles opted to remove the zipper entirely and replace it with a new one.
Reuse Minnesota also hosts educational events to teach people how to sew. The organization is hosting a mending and introduction to sewing machines class in Spanish at the Eastside Food Co-Op, 2551 Central Ave. N.E., in Minneapolis on July 30.
“We will teach you how to do it so you can do it later,” said Carolyn Wieland, Reuse Minnesota’s communications assistant.
Reuse Minnesota launched the Mend-It Clinics using a $46,000 grant from MPCA to cover labor, materials and organizing. So far, the clinics have mended at least 129 pounds of clothes, bags, curtains and stuffed animals.
Fix-it and Mend-It style clinics are regularly held across Minnesota, and are typically hosted by counties or nonprofits. Most metro area counties host at least one clinic each month, typically on Saturdays. The Minnesota Tool Library hosts weekly fix-it clinics Friday afternoons from 4-7 p.m. at its St. Paul office, 1010 Dale St.
Reuse Minnesota has hosted six Mend-It Clinics this year, and has funding to run the clinics into 2025. Its next clinic has not yet been scheduled.
The group has a separate grant from Hennepin County to teach students how to repair items, including mending clothing and other textile goods.
Unveiling the textile market
In 2019, the MPCA began looking into the textile recycling market after a company approached the agency and asked where it could buy used wool and cotton to make padding for car seats, Heffron said.
Minnesota, like most states, doesn’t have a good system to track textile waste, which is not collected curbside. There are trash audits that can inform how concentrated textiles are in the waste stream, but nonprofits and private companies that deal with textiles, such as Goodwill, don’t report how much they’re receiving.
There are companies known as “secondary sorters” that buy used fabrics, process them and resell the recycled materials, but their businesses tend to be opaque, Heffron said. The MPCA looked into helping launch a secondary sorter in Minnesota or a nearby state, and learned that those businesses are historically clustered in the American South and Canada.
Broadly speaking, about 20% of textiles donated to thrift stores in the United States go on sale, Heffron said. About 45% will be broken down to become rags for cleaning, and another 25% will be sold overseas. About 10% will be thrown out.
Some clothing items are in demand, like old blue jeans, which are commonly used in insulation. But that demand can be limited due to the way fabrics are blended now, Heffron said. It’s not uncommon for a T-shirt to have cotton, polyester and spandex.
“It gets harder and harder to break them apart,” Heffron said.
Need something fixed? Get a rebate for repairs through the end of June.
Reuse Minnesota is encouraging people to fix all items possible, not just textiles. The group is running a rebate program through the end of June that will refund people 60% of the cost, up to $75, for a repair they pay for out of pocket. Participants need to submit their receipt and fill out a survey.
The rebates can be used on small appliances, shoes, clothing, musical instruments, furniture, bikes and electronics. The repair must be performed by a Minnesota business. Repair shops are in short supply, according to Wieland, but Reuse Minnesota compiles a directory of resources for repairing, recycling or disposing of a variety of items.
For more information, visit the Reuse Minnesota website.
