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Green Benefits

Earth Focused Holidays

  • March 2, 2023
Earth Focused Holidays

The months of March and April bring many different holidays and remembrances promoting recycling and ways of caring for our planet.  These include: Global Recycling Day on March 18, Earth Hour on March 25, Earth Day on April 22 and Fashion Revolution Week the week of April 24. On this first day of March, we would love to share a little more about each of these days and the history as well as the potential impact each can play toward our future. There are many ways to celebrate and to get involved locally and on a larger scale.

Global Recycling Day – March 18

Global Recycling Day

The first of these holidays is Global Recycling Day. Celebrated on March 18 on the heels of St. Patrick’s Day, “Global Recycling Day was created in 2018 to help recognise, and celebrate, the importance recycling plays in preserving our precious primary resources and securing the future of our planet. It is a day for the world to come together and put the planet first.” (found here) It is a day to raise awareness and volunteer in a variety of ways to help care for our planet. 

The Global Recycling Commission set out a twofold mission for this holiday:

“1. To tell world leaders that recycling is simply too important not to be a global issue, and that a common, joined up approach to recycling is urgently needed.

2. To ask people across the planet to think resource, not waste, when it comes to the goods around us – until this happens, we simply won’t award recycled goods the true value and repurpose they deserve.” (found here)

As the first holiday in our lineup, Global Recycling Day sets out an important agenda for calling on our leaders to unite in pushing for political reforms to highlight the importance of recycling and for enlightening others around the world about its importance in their day to day life choices.

Earth Hour – March 25

Earth Hour

Our second planet-honoring holiday this season is Earth Hour, which is observed for one hour on the last Saturday in March. From 8:30-9:30pm on Saturday, March 25th people around the country and even world will be turning off their lights to honor Earth Hour. 2022 saw “people from 192 countries and territories [come] together in support of people and our planet. We saw landmarks turn off their lights and supporters switch off at home, as well as a range of activities such as virtual concerts, mangrove planting, street clean-ups and virtual runs.” (found here)


Earth Hour was “started in 2007 by WWF and partners as a symbolic lights-out event in Sydney to raise awareness of climate change,” (here) and has now “become a catalyst for positive environmental impact, driving major legislative changes by harnessing the power of the people and collective action.” It is easy to participate in this event. Simply turn off your lights for this one hour in March. And feel free to become involved in bigger ways too – through writing legislators to cleaning up parks and more.

Earth Day – April 22

Earth Day

A third, and very well known, planet loving holiday this Spring is Earth Day. Celebrated on April 22, Earth Day “marks the anniversary of the birth of the modern environmental movement in 1970.” (found here) Begun by two senators as teach-ins on college campuses, that first year “Earth Day inspired 20 million Americans — at the time, 10% of the total population of the United States — to take to the streets, parks and auditoriums to demonstrate against the impacts of 150 years of industrial development which had left a growing legacy of serious human health impacts.” Over the decades, Earth Day has become a global holiday involving over 100 countries in the mission to take better care of our planet.

On their website, Earth Day 2023 has six ways to make a difference this year:

  • Educate our youth through classroom learning
  • Break free from single use plastics
  • Plant trees (through the Canopy Project)
  • Use your voting power to protect our environment
  • Clean up communities, beaches, rivers, lakes, trails and parks
  • Choose sustainable fashion over fast fashion

Many cities post about Earth Day celebrations – so be on the lookout for ways to get involved in your own neck of the woods and help care for planet Earth.

Fashion Revolution – Week of April 24

Fashion Revolution Week

The final way we spread awareness, and honor the care of our planet over these few months is through Fashion Revolution Week, which always falls on the week of April 24, commemorating the collapse of the Rana Plaza garment factory in Bangladesh. You can read more about this in our blog “5 Ways to Fight Fast Fashion.” In 2013, over one thousand young women were killed and more than 2,500 more were injured when the building collapsed.

On their website, they list numerous ways to get involved here, including packets on ways to get involved, hosting an event, educational resources for teachers and educators and posters to print to help spread awareness. Also on our blog listed above, we share five ways to get involved in the fight against fast fashion. 

We Can Care All Year Long

Though these four commemorations and holidays all fall within the months of March and April, don’t feel limited to volunteer or spread the word only during these months. Park services are always looking for volunteers to help clean up and take care of parks and beaches. There are many months where you can help plant trees or butterfly and bumblebee friendly plants. Educating others and spreading awareness can happen any time of the year. And we can always change our way of living by starting to recycle and making more conscientious decisions about the things we purchase.

Fast Fashion

5 Ways to Fight Fast Fashion

  • April 18, 2022
5 Ways to Fight Fast Fashion

This week is Fashion Revolution week. Part of caring for our planet is highlighting the importance of recycling textiles and keeping them out of landfills. Another part of caring for our planet is caring how new textiles are made, including the usage of water and energy, how dyes are used and disposed and the people making those very textiles. Each year, Fashion Revolution week highlights the importance of caring for the conditions textile workers face in their day to day making the clothing items we buy.

History of Fashion Revolution

History of Fashion Revolution

The Fashion Revolution began in 2013, surrounding the news story about the Rana Plaza building in Bangladesh, which

“…housed a number of garment factories, employing around 5,000 people. The people in this building were manufacturing clothing for many of the biggest global fashion brands. The building collapsed and killed 1,134 people and injured more than 2,500 others, making it the fourth largest industrial disaster in history. The victims were mostly young women.” (found here)

Fashion Revolution week is about raising awareness and speaking out against companies that continue to abuse their textile workers through too little pay, long hours, terrible working conditions and various other reasons. It is about creating standards for these same workers and promoting clothing companies with sustainable clothing choices and ethical business practices.

Wondering how you can help? Here are five ways to fight fast fashion.

Social Media Awareness

Social Media Awareness

“One of the simplest ways we can push for industry change is by using social media to challenge brands and hold them accountable to the people in their supply chain during Fashion Revolution week.” (Get Involved Guide, page 11)

How you do this is? Post a picture or video of yourself holding a poster from the Fashion Revolution website on any social media platform and tag the brand of clothing you are wearing. Hashtag your post according to the poster, the most popular of which is #WhoMadeMyClothes? Learn more about how you can help in this way on pages 10-11 of the guide here.

Email Your Policymaker

Email Your Policymaker

Another way to fight fast fashion is to email your policymaker and ask #WhoPaysLivingWages? In their “Get Involved Guide”, they offer an email template for doing this, which pushes “for tougher legislation to support” textile workers. You can find the template on page 15 of the guide. They also include a helpful link to find your local policymakers.

Become Knowledgeable About Textiles

Become Knowledgeable About Textiles

Thirdly, Fashion Revolution offers a fanzine “Money Fashion Power” which “explores the hidden stories behind your clothing, what the price you pay for fashion means, how garment workers spend their earnings, and how purchasing power can make positive change.” You can find a link to the fanzine in the Get Involved Guide, page 21. There are also countless books published about textiles, that discuss everything from how clothing is made to the lifecycle of a textile to the history of sweatshops. Knowledge is power and simply educating ourselves about the rights of textile workers is sometimes all that is necessary to ignite passion in joining the cause to fight for others.

Share a Story

Share a Story

Sharing a story or writing a love letter about an article of clothing you own is a fourth way to fight fast fashion. One of the big problems with fast fashion is making textiles into completely disposable items, items that do not have importance or worth. But, if you have ever owned a pair of jeans that fit you like a glove, or been given a quilt that was on the bed of your great grandmother or found a pair of shoes that took away all of your foot pain, you know that this is not true. Textiles do and can have immeasurable worth. Textiles tell stories in and of themselves. Who made the shirt you were wearing? What was happening in that person’s life as they sewed on each sleeve? Who carried it in their cargo and how far did it travel? Each textile has a history and as we have posted in a previous blog, it is important to show respect for our clothes.

When you post a story or love letter, include the hashtags #LovedClothesLast and #FashionLoveStory.

Join the #SmallButPerfect Network

Join the small but perfect network #smallbutperfect

A final way to fight fast fashion is to join the #SmallButPerfect network that supports small businesses and connects them into a network “of change-makers and social enterprises who will transform fashion.” Small businesses often work hard to make sustainable, quality textiles that come from factories with quality living conditions and liveable wages. Supporting these small businesses and connecting them through a network helps them thrive and endure against the mega industry of fast fashion. Find out more in the Guide on pages 32 and 33.

Further Ways to Fight Fast Fashion

These five ways are a small sample to the many ways you can help fight fast fashion. The “Get Involved Guide” on Fashion Revolution’s website has further ways to get involved as well as being filled with information and support for consumers and producers of textiles.

Here at Chicago Textile Recycling, we care deeply about textiles. We care about where they end up, not in landfills but being recycled over and over to their end of life, and we care about where they come from, which includes the hands that weave the fabric and sew the pieces together. We hope that you, reader, will join us in our journey to educate others about the importance of textiles, that you will choose to recycle those in your care and further, that you will learn more about the starting point of these textiles and the hands that make them.

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