New York City’s Design and Fashion Leaders Zero in on Landfills

Zero Waste Design Guidelines graphic

Some of the biggest names in fashion and design are collaborating in a campaign to send zero waste to New York City landfills by 2030.  Zero Waste Design Guidelines address the crucial role that design plays in achieving NYC’s ambitious goal, outlined in OneNYC, to send zero waste to landfills by 2030. As a resource to help designers, building operators, and planners, the Guidelines will encourage the collaboration needed to dramatically reduce waste and work toward greater adoption of circular material flows. Applying design to improve the city’s current system of material flows will improve sidewalks and buildings as it lessens the environmental and human impacts of the current system in the city and beyond.

The Zero Waste Design Guidelines are made possible with support from The Rockefeller Foundation and were developed in collaboration with the AIA New York Committee on the Environment; Kiss + Cathcart, Architects; ClosedLoops; and the Foodprint Group.

Fashion brands will work alongside New York City Department of Sanitation, New York City Economic Development Corporation, collectors, recyclers, resale companies, and Make Fashion Circular, as part of #WearNext – a city-wide effort to tackle waste and pollution in the fashion industry.

Every year New York City landfills 200 million pounds of clothing (equivalent to over 440 Statues of Liberty). Globally, 73% of the materials used to produce clothing are landfilled or burned at the end of their life, while less than 1% of old clothing goes on to be used to make new clothing.

Make Fashion Circular, launched by the Ellen MacArthur Foundation in May 2018, is leading international efforts to establish a circular economy for fashion where business models increase the use of clothes, clothes are made from safe and renewable materials, and old clothes are used to make new ones.

From March 4th to June 9th, the Make Fashion Circular #WearNext campaign aims to make sure the city’s old clothes find a new life. Participating stores and other locations across the city will act as drop off points. Every available drop off point – more than 1,100 in total – is marked on a new online map created by the New York City Department of Sanitation, to make it as easy as possible to save clothes from being landfilled.

Our goal is to continuously be involved in protecting our environment and living a Green live, whether we’re recycling or working on a Green Design concept… We hope you participate in this amazing campaign and help protect our beautiful Mother Earth.