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Kaysville » That cute brown hoodie.
Ami Jordan of Farmington eyed the garment last week and plans to bring a bag of old clothes to the Sept. 17 clothing swap she can exchange for that pullover and some clothes for her two daughters, ages 5 and 2.
"I was looking through my closet thinking, 'I don't wear a lot of this,' " Jordan said of the items she'll use in the exchange.
As part of its farmers market, the Utah Botanical Center in Kaysville has organized a clothing swap for the last two days of the market: today and Sept. 24.
The swap gives people a simple way to "save some money and be sustainable," said organizer Michael Dietz, Utah State University extension sustainable living specialist. The Kaysville botanical center is a USU extension and a clothing swap was first organized at USU by textile specialist Lindsey Shirley.
"The textile industry can be considered one of the most environmentally unfriendly industries," said Shirley, a USU assistant professor of family and consumer sciences education. "And the amount of waste that we can produce as consumers from the result of that industry is pretty staggering."
About 12 million pounds of textiles were dumped into American landfills in 2007, though there are industries dedicated to redistributing used clothes to consumers as well as converting unusable clothes into scrap pieces for recycling.
Buying used and secondhand
This Nov. 1, her class will host another clothes swap in Logan, as well as a runway show featuring her students' designs made by recycling old clothes.
Beyond reducing the amount of clothes that are trashed, Shirley said, clothing swaps also addressed another factor against sustainability of new clothes: the resource- and energy-intensive production.
Those include pesticides and water used to grow the plants that produce the fibers, more water used to process plants into fibers, petrochemicals used to create synthetic materials, and the carbon dioxide emissions produced, she said.
Apart from organized clothing swaps, Shirley recommended that people can host their own smaller affairs with a few friends.
Leftover clothes can then be donated, which is what Shirley and Dietz said will be done at the USU clothing swap in November and the events at Kaysville's farmers market.
"There's nothing that I would throw away from here; it's all usable," Dietz said reviewing the selection at the Sept. 10 swap, noting one blouse was even donated with a price tag still on it. There were three tables already stacked with clothes, as well as a rack of button-down shirts.
Any clothing that isn't swapped out will be donated to the Road Home in Salt Lake City and a women's shelter in Kaysville.
The farmer's market is from 5 to 8 p.m. across the street from the parking lot of the Utah Botanical Center's Utah House, 920 S. 50 West, Kaysville.
