Our Story

This website is the result of a four-year research project conducted on the University of Maryland campus. Team Recycloth is a research team of seven undergraduate students and our faculty mentor, Dr. Mary Beth Furst in the Gemstone Honors Program.  Our team spent a year researching the harmful effects of the fast fashion industry on our environment. During our time on campus, we wanted to do something that would not only add to the current literature on fast and sustainable fashion but would have a direct positive impact on our community.

 

We realized that while it would be nearly impossible for us to change the industry, one thing we could control is how we dispose of clothes already purchased from fast fashion companies.

With this in mind, our research goals were to

1) study and change the attitudes and behaviors of college students toward fast fashion and

2) create a zero-fabric waste campus.

 

Over the four years, we conducted surveys of the campus population and created a clothing collection system for on-campus housing. We collected over 700 pounds of unwanted clothing in just a few months. We realized if our team of 7 students could divert 700 pounds of clothes from the landfill in just a couple of months, imagine how much clothing could be diverted if other groups in other places could replicate this system! This realization led us to create this website in the hopes that others will replicate and our system and divert unwanted clothing from landfills.