An upcycled ‘trashion’ program: how SLCC students are making fashion more sustainable

SALT LAKE CITY — According to several environmental organizations, the fashion industry produces about 10% of our annual global carbon emissions.

Salt Lake Community College’s Fashion Institute celebrated Earth Day 2024 on Monday with a demonstration of how sustainable practices are within reach and ways everyday people can do their part to help save the world.

The college recognized Earth Day with an all-day celebration, demonstrating the fashion institute’s commitment to teaching students how to use environmentally conscious practices in their future careers.

“Fast fashion is one of the leading contributors to climate change and the destruction of our planet. The fashion industry creates so much waste,” said Peter Moosman, who helped with the event and works as manager of the Gender and Sexuality Student Resource Center from school. “We wanted to engage people in a conversation about the Earth in a fashionable way.”

The celebration, titled “Earth Couture, Fashioning a Sustainable Future,” included a student-led fashion show where Salt Lake Community College students used recycled, upcycled and repurposed clothing to create new fashion pieces. In addition, workshops on dyeing, printing and garment altering were conducted by university staff throughout the afternoon. The school even collected racks of discarded clothing so students and guests could alter and reuse them.

“Fashion will never go away, but it is literally not sustainable as it is now. We cannot sustain this amount of waste and this amount of production; it will inevitably destroy the planet,” says Amy Royer, a sustainability and textile consultant. professor at Salt Lake Community College.

Royer explained that students at the fashion institute are required to take a sustainability course. She believes it is important to give fashion students the skills and mindset to further their careers and make positive changes in the fashion industry and increase its sustainability.

Students in this year’s sustainability class showed off their new skills in sustainable practices during Monday’s “trashion” show. Students were given a $5 budget to shop at a local Goodwill store and create a repurposed piece for the show, Royer explained.

Students used everything from family members’ old garments to antique tablecloths to create inventive looks, all as a way to inspire audience members to think twice before throwing away an item of clothing or determining that it is ruined due to a stain or tear.

“A big part of the purpose of this event was to inspire creativity and get people to think before they throw something away and see if there’s a new way they can use it,” Moosman said, explaining how quickly Fashion has accelerated the habit among consumers of throwing away clothes every year in exchange for the newer, trendy clothes, which in turn causes the discarded clothes to pile up in landfills.

The Fashion Institute at Salt Lake Community College and its staff encourage everyone to find ways to upcycle or reuse old clothes instead of throwing them away. Clothing can be altered in a number of fashionable ways, including hemming, patching and changing the length of a garment, to name just a few methods.

“We want to tell people not to support these fast-fashion brands and instead try to recycle or upcycle old clothes,” Royer said, explaining that she hopes events like this will inspire people to adopt more sustainable fashion habits to practice.