The fashion industry produces a lot of waste fabric. Some of it has a second life, finding its way to thrift stores or resale shops or being up- or downcycled into other products, but much of it ends up in landfills, and that can be a problem for the environment. Two Textile Development and Marketing students, Lydia Baird and Willa Tsokanis, have begun working on a solution. The pair developed the FIT Muslin Compost System, which breaks down and recycles fabric waste into nutrient-rich material to be used in all campus green spaces, particularly FIT’s Rooftop Natural Dye Garden.
The students presented their idea at the Clinton Global Initiative University last year. The CGI U was established to engage the next generation of leaders on college campuses worldwide to take action on global challenges. FIT’s compost system has now been fully implemented. Muslin scraps are placed in composting bins and mixed with organic material and thermophilic (heat-loving) bacteria, and left to “cook” or break down. The compost is then used on campus to improve soil, manage water use, and reduce dependence on pesticides.
Cotton muslin fabric is at the heart of a fashion designer’s creative process. It’s used to test ideas on a form, and make sure fit and proportion are correct before cutting and sewing the final fabric. Unlike other fabrics, muslin rarely has a life beyond the designer’s studio, so it usually gets discarded. But because it’s unbleached, undyed, and unfinished, it’s perfect for composting.
Some facts about cotton muslin:
- Cotton muslin is free of dyes and finishing.
- If cotton muslin isn’t composted, there’s no secondary use for it, so it’s tossed away.
- The production of cotton, the most common natural fiber in the world, reached over 120 million 480-pound bales per month in 2013-14.
- How much cotton muslin is being wasted? The design of a blouse typically uses 1.5 yards of muslin. A circle skirt takes approximately 3 to 4 yards of muslin.
- While a number of downcycling processes exist for cotton waste (secondhand clothing, the rag market, and industrial products such as insulation), these methods only defer its inevitable dumping in landfills.
The FIT Muslin Compost System is one of the college’s newest sustainability initiatives. It was developed in part as a companion to the previous year’s CGI U project, the Rooftop Natural Dye Garden, where plants are grown and harvested to become a source of natural dyes. The compost project is not only keeping FIT’s waste fabric out of landfills, it’s helping the dye garden to flourish.