This Is Not Your Goldmine. This Is Our Mess.
This Is Not Your Goldmine. This Is Our Mess.
Sackitey Tesa
Liz Ricketts is a fashion educator, designer, researcher, and director of The OR Foundation.
This letter was first published in Atmos and is part of an ongoing collaboration highlighting stories that bring a critical lens to consumerism and its impact on our planet.
Dear Fashion Industry,
Let’s talk about waste.
We are on the verge of a waste revolution—a revolution of waste technology and of systems driven by a revolution in the way we think about waste. Some people and organizations call this revolution the Circular Economy. Others prefer the language of regenerative systems. Whatever model or lexicon we choose, waste is quickly moving from out of sight, out of mind to the center of design, business, media, and education. The away has moved from a myth to the marketplace, which is to say that waste is no longer “waste,” but instead has been reimagined as a “resource,” an “asset,” a “nutrient,” and an “opportunity.” Corporate marketing campaigns claim that waste is now “beautiful,” and that waste is no longer a “problem,” rather it is the “solution.” I’ve heard people talk about waste as a “trend to design into” and other people call circularity the “waste-to-gold” revolution.