by Luke Longatti
SLE’s are an important part of every senior’s high school career; they establish a sense of community and responsibility. Senior Autumn Pecarovich’s SLE is no exception. She has taken it upon herself to run a clothing recycling drive! Any damaged fabrics, clothes that you would normally just throw out will be collected and donated to her SLE.
Starting on Feb. 24 to March 5, there will be collection boxes at the front of the school. Autumn hopes to reach her goal of a whopping 560lbs of fabric through this clothing drive. These fabrics will be used to create an impressive art pop up at the school to raise awareness of the amount of textile waste the average person creates. She hopes to open people's eyes to the possibility of recycling damaged clothes and fabrics that would otherwise be unusable. The art pop up will remain on campus for roughly 1 week before being taken down and sent to a textile recycling center.
The idea came about after Autumn read the book 'Something New Under the Sun' by John Robert McNeil. "This book was my environmental consciousness awakening." stated Autumn. She continued her research from that point and has worked to live less wastefully ever since. In her research, Autumn found that the fashion industry has a much larger environmental footprint than one would likely expect. Autumn decided that awareness needed to be raised about the possibility of recycling clothes rather than just adding them to the landfills and dumps.
Why the 560 pounds goal you may ask? Autumn says "This is because the average person throws away 7 pounds of textiles per year. Over an 80-year lifespan, this would amount to 560 pounds of clothing."
The art installation will be shown at school after its completion and at our Spring Art Show.
Do your part! Reduce, Reuse, Recycle, and keep this world as clean as it can be.
--
Never miss an update. Subscribe to our newsletter.