The fashion industry is now under intense scrutiny for massive waste generation, especially in its end-of-life disposal and its responsibility for up to 10% of greenhouse gas emissions. 

The Fast Fashion trend is driving huge production of cheap goods with a very short life cycle with the help of online “influencers.” US consumers throw away an average of 81.5 pounds of clothing a year, most of it headed to landfills.

A photo of the vast mountain of discarded clothing in Chile’s Atacama Desert was published in 2021, identifying it as the second-largest clothing dump in the world. (The largest is in Ghana.) The following year, an estimated 11 tons of the Atacama pile was set on fire, spewing toxic fumes into the atmosphere and the lungs of the local inhabitants. 

The name-brand clothes and footwear come from the US, Europe, Korea and Japan and sometimes have sales tags still on them, some are barely used and others are repairable. Some of it is resold by salvagers, creating an informal economy that governments see as beneficial.

A lot of clothing waste is from donations to nonprofits that go through commercial sorters and onto East Africa. The poorest quality (about 40%) goes straight to dump sites and is burned or washed down rivers to open seas.

Reduce/Repair/Re-use/Recycle

In the hierarchy of zero waste in a circular economy, the most important step is to produce less, produce better and use longer.

Research has shown that repairing garments prevents new purchases more effectively than resale. A few high-quality brands are now taking back garments and repairing or re-styling them while using eco-friendly ways to effectively clean garments and shoes. Savvy consumers have always looked to vintage clothing sellers and thrift shops for quality garments. Online businesses are now booming, reselling designer and vintage clothing.

About 70% of clothing is made of polyesters, and as with all plastics, they don’t biodegrade for centuries and shed microplastics. Recycling them has drawbacks. Because consumers are being persuaded that recycling is a solution, recycled polyesters are being used in new clothing (despite the fact that plastic bottles instead of textiles may be used) and may contain toxic chemicals from sources like BPA, PFAS, formaldehyde, etc. Natural fibers, if not blended with synthetics and elastic fibers, can be recycled into new fiber, composted or reprocessed into textiles such as felt.

So what can we do: buy natural fiber clothes, but not a lot of them. Repair your clothes at one of our fantastic local alterations shops. And swap with friends or thrift when you want something new!

For more information, article links and things you can do, see the links below.

Featured image from Vecteezy – Industry Stock photos by Vecteezy

Textile Waste Links

Facts and articles on the problem

• 10 Concerning Fast Fashion Waste Statistics (Earth.org, August 2023)
• Poisoned Gifts (Greenpeace)
• A Mountain of Used Clothes Appeared in Chile’s Desert. Then It Went Up in Flames (Wired, January 2024)
• Calvin Klein jeans for free! Branded clothes dumped in the desert snapped up on anti-fast fashion website (The Guardian, March 2025)
• Recycled Polyester vs Polyester: 5 Shocking Differences (April 2024)
• Fracked Fashion: How the Fashion Industry is fuelling Big Oil’s appetite for Fracking (Stand.Earth, December 2024)
• Fun Ways to Ditch Fast Fashion for a Sustainable Wardrobe (Scientific American, June 2025)

What some companies are doing about it

• Shein vows to cut clothing waste, but can the ultra-fast fashion brand really change its spots? (Reuters, September 2023)
• How 2 startups are turning imperfect clothes into a business opportunity (Trellis, March 2025)
• Deadstock is key to Cotopaxi’s circularity strategy (Trellis, May 2025)
• Colorado company powers secondhand sales for Lululemon, The North Face and Patagonia (Trellis, May 2025)

What we can do about it

Here is a list of some of the changes you can make to address textile waste:

1. Shop at local thrift shops, vintage, second hand stores and consignment shops
2. Use online second hand businesses like ThredUp or Poshmark
3. Buy natural fabric clothes if possible; they don’t shed microplastics and can be composted when worn out
4. Donate clean used fabric to school art departments, community art centers or maker spaces
5. Donate to local animal shelters—call to see if they can use old towels, blankets or pillows
6. Learn how to mend/repair clothes; check out YOUTube for tutorials
7. Can’t do it yourself?  Support local tailor, alteration and repair businesses
8. Line-dry your clothes instead of using a dryer, which sheds a lot of microplastics from synthetic fabrics

• ‘You sold it – now recycle it’: the protesters mailing worn-out clothes to the shops they bought them from (The Guardian, April 2025)
• Quilts That Embody the Legacy of Black America (National Gallery of Art, March 2023)
• Recycling Used Clothes and Reducing Textile Waste (ACT enviro, general advice)

Shopping advice – buy less, choose responsible companies, make it last

• Best Sustainable Clothing Brands in 2025 (Shop Without Plastic)
• 10 Essential Steps to Create a Sustainable and Eco-Friendly Closet (SparkPick)
• The Truth About Filters in Our Washing Machines: Do They Really Capture Microfibers? (Filtered, October 2021)
• 5 Microfiber Filters to Help Stop Microplastic Pollution (Eluxe Magazine, October 2024)

New Mexico Resources – donations & recycling

• Where to Donate Used Clothing to Abused Women Seeking Work (PocketSense, December 2019, general suggestions)
• Fibershed: Regional Textile Economies National site | New Mexico Affiliate
• Goodwill Industries, statewide
• Salvation Army Southwest region | Alamogordo | Albuquerque | Clovis | Farmington | Hobbs | Las Cruces | Roswell | Santa Fe 
• TenderLove Community Center, Albuquerque (has sewing and fashion design program)
• Reuseycle NM, Albuquerque (green bins for collecting clothing)
• OffCenter Arts, Albuquerque (has a fiber arts group)
• ArtStreet, Albuquerque (programs that create safe spaces for the community)
• Wemagination, UNM Albuquerque (recycled items for creative uses in the classroom) things they take | things they don’t take

New Mexico Resources – DIY, Fix-it, Repair

• FUSE Maker-space, Albuquerque – Fix it Friday
• MEND, website – connects you with ‘menders’ in your area
• Fiber Arts on Fourth, Albuquerque – classes

Do you have resources to add to this list? Contact Laurie Zunner

An Ordinance Prohibiting the Use of Single-use Plastic and Expanded Polystyrene Products in Santa Fe County; Encouraging Use of Reusable Bags; and Establishing Enforcement and Penalties for Violation, was passed unanimously by the Board of County Commissioners. Public comments were heard by community members sharing their concerns and support for the new ordinance. The passing of this ordinance comes at a timely moment as the theme for Earth Day, April 22nd worldwide this year is Planet vs. Plastics! Following a year-long investigation into the ban by passionate community members serving on the Single-use Plastics and Polystyrene Working Group, their final report is available for the public here.

You can do something about it! Join Skip the Stuff NM campaign – it’s easy!

When you place a take-out order tell them you want to “Skip the Stuff.” Then explain which extras you don’t want such as, “no plastic forks, spoons, knives or straws” or maybe “one ketchup and one mustard only, but nothing else!”

Tell your friends and get them to Skip the Stuff too! Post your order to social media. Take a smiley selfie with your order if they did what you asked, or a frowny selfie with all the Stuff they included. Feel free to substitute emojis. Be sure to name the food establishment and tag us @skipthestuffnm #skipthestuffnm

Be patient. It will take time for take-out places to catch on. It will become easier. Take-out places will see they can save money by not ordering so much “Stuff” and you will be happier knowing you helped reduce a lot of plastic waste.

Follow us on Instagram @skipthestuff and @riograndesierraclub
The Zero Waste Action Team, and the planet, thanks you!

By Laurie Zunner

Some facts on single-use food accessories from Upstream’s National Reuse Network

• Upstream launched the national Skip the Stuff is campaign to help food vendors reduce the waste they create with take-out production. For more information visit https://upstreamsolutions.org/skipthestufftoolkit.
• Single-use accessories for food service are frequently provided to customers that don’t need them, resulting in unnecessary waste that is costly for local governments to manage and unnecessary cost to food service operators.
• One trillion disposable foodware items are used in the U.S. each year, generating 9 million tons of waste.
• Packaging is the number one market for plastics (40% of plastics go into packaging). Food packaging is propping up the fossil fuel industry at a time when cleaner cars and energy are less viable markets. Now more than ever, plastics are fueling the climate crisis.
• The United States uses more than 36 billion disposable plastic utensils a year. Laid end to end, they could wrap around the globe 139 times.
• Chopsticks made in China result in cutting down 4 million trees a year (45% from cottonwood, birch, and spruce and the rest bamboo). Eliminating forests, our natural carbon sink and providers of habitat and clean air, makes no sense during a climate crisis.
• Napkins generally are made from paper that comes from trees and require significant water to produce. As an example, if 50% of the U.S. population used 3 paper napkins a day, that would total 450,000,000 napkins for 1 day, which would require 31,500,000 gallons of water to manufacture.
• Many single-use accessories are made from plastic, and as much as 23 million metric tons of plastic waste enter the ocean each year, most of it generated in the U.S.
• The amount of plastics in the ocean is projected to exceed the number of fish by 2030.
• The vast majority of these single-use accessory items are problematic in the waste stream. They are not recyclable. Even when manufactured from recyclable materials, food packaging is usually too dirty to be recycled. Utensils and straws are contaminants in many recycling systems. Plant-based foodware and utensils are often considered contaminants in commercial compost facilities. Bio-plastics don’t degrade quickly enough and paper and other fibers dilute the quality of compost.
• Restaurants spend $24 billion purchasing disposable foodware items on average in the U.S.
• Local governments in the U.S. spend $6 billion managing the waste.
• It is in the interest of the health, safety and welfare of all who live, work, and do business that the amount of litter on public streets, parks and in other public places be reduced and the amount of single-use accessory waste be reduced.

More information

https://upstreamsolutions.org/model-policies
https://upstreamsolutions.org/outreach-campaigns

Recently I visited two Albuquerque manufacturing firms: Submaterial, which makes efforts to reuse or recycle their waste byproducts from their interior architectural products, and Soilutions, which takes organic materials that might otherwise end up in a landfill producing methane and turns them into prime topsoil.

Founded in 2006 in Seattle, Submaterial relocated to Albuquerque in 2012 and now employs 32 people. They manufacture architectural acoustical panels using natural and sustainable materials such as wool felt, cork, and wood. Submaterial uses byproducts from their industrial projects in the residential market. A lot of their cork and felt byproducts go to local schools, artists, makers, and become dog toys for Animal Humane’s Doggie Dash and Dawdle event. Biodegradable leftover waste goes to Soilutions, another local firm that produces mulch, compost and topsoil. Submaterial Marketing Director Brigid Harmon says they submitted the specification for their glue to Soilutions to ensure there wouldn’t be an impact on the quality of Soilutions’ compost.

Visiting Soilutions meant driving through the south side of Albuquerque, surrounded by industry. At their office, I was struck by how much of an oasis they are. You can smell the warm dirt and hear the Sandhill cranes at the Rio Grande. I met with co-owner Dawn Dewey and Wendy Blair of Soils and Marketing. Both are passionate about what they do, which is lovely and often missing from the working world. Wendy is a Master Gardener and Dawn grew up in the business.

Soilutions is New Mexico’s largest private compost and soil company and was started by the Brooks family 28 years ago. In 2021, Justin and Dawn Dewey bought Soilutions and are very enthusiastic about the future. The business is also a “carbon sequesterer” and is helping to reduce our carbon load.

Soilutions diverts tons of organic waste from landfills each year, and their intake fees are lower than the dump’s. Their green waste suppliers include businesses (such as Bueno Foods green chile peels), Little Green Bucket, which does home and business compost pickup, grocers, restaurants, hotels, and even Sandia Labs. They use these materials to produce mulch and compost using carefully controlled processes and temperatures. Various piles of in-progress materials have to be turned, mixed and temperature-controlled over about a year. The soils are tested to ensure their quality is high.

The richly colored soils they produce smell as if you are going on a hike through the woods. End-use customers include landscapers, contractors, gardeners, and farmers throughout the state. Soilutions products are carried by other local companies, such as Osuna Nursery, Rehm Nursery, and Los Poblanos Lavender Farm uses their compost.

Recently a friend sent me a disturbing chart on the decomposition rates of various types of garbage. I looked further into the matter and found it’s worse than I thought. Way worse.

America is a wasteful country. Daily, we generate four pounds of waste per person. Annually, that’s more than 220 million tons of trash, three times the global average.

We use 1.6 million barrels of oil per year just to produce plastic water bottles that can take up to 1,000 years to decompose. Plastic bags can take up to 500 years.

But how do we know how long it takes to decompose? Plastic hasn’t been around that long, so there’s no firsthand evidence of its decomposition rate. To make long-term estimates, scientists place a solid waste sample — like a newspaper, banana peel, or plastic bag — into a vessel containing microbe-rich compost, then aerate the mixture. Over the course of several days, microorganisms assimilate the sample bit by bit and produce carbon dioxide; the resultant CO2 level serves as an indicator of degradation.

These tests work perfectly for newspapers and banana peels. But when scientists test generic plastic bags, they find no decomposition; microorganisms don’t recognize polyethylene as food any more than we do.

Although plastic doesn’t biodegrade, it does photodegrade when exposed to ultraviolet radiation from sunlight. This suggests that plastic will eventually fragment into microscopic granules. But scientists still aren’t sure how many centuries it will take for the sun to work its magic. That’s why some news sources cite a 500-year estimate for plastic bags, while others prefer a more conservative 1,000-year lifespan. They all agree it’s a really, really long time.

I looked into some other common trash materials.

• Aluminum can be recycled over and over again. It is considered the most sustainable beverage container. The average aluminum can is made from 70% recycled metal. Nevertheless, many aluminum cans make it into landfills where they take 80 to 200 years to completely decompose.
• Cigarette butts are the most littered item worldwide. In America, 176 million pounds of cigarette butts are discarded annually.
• Disposable diapers: An estimated 90-95% of American babies use disposable diapers, creating 7.6 billion pounds of nonbiodegradable garbage each year. This is enough diapers to stretch to the moon and back nine times — every year.
• Food waste: an estimated one third of the world’s food produced for human consumption gets lost or wasted annually. Over 97% of food waste ends up in a landfill, producing methane, a greenhouse gas 21 times more potent than CO2. Landfills account for over 34% of all the methane released into the environment, making them the largest source of methane. Composting would alleviate much of this methane production.
• Glass is 100% recyclable and can be recycled over and over again without loss of quality. Despite this, glass still makes its way into landfills. The most shocking aspect of this is that glass takes a MILLION years to decompose. Some sources say it may never break down at all.
• Paper is by volume the largest element of American landfills. On average, paper products take two to six weeks to fully decompose. If we recycle paper, we save room in landfills and use far less water and energy. Like food waste, decomposing paper creates methane.

Regular readers of the Sierran need no introduction to the environmental and economic catastrophe that is single-use plastic. For the past several months a few of us have engaged in deep research and planning for a statewide bill addressing the problem. Several towns in New Mexico already have laws regulating this issue, although Albuquerque is not among them. Some local laws were passed but never implemented. New Mexico is a patchwork of differing policies on plastic. Ten American states have plastic-related statutes, with varying degrees of complexity. New Mexico can join that trend by passing this law.

Briefly, there are four goals of our proposed legislation:

1. No Styrofoam (polystyrene) food containers, trays, plates, cups, and packaging “peanuts.”
2. No single-use plastic takeout containers, plates, cups, and stirrers. Exemptions if/when necessary: food pantries, soup kitchens, church meals, etc. Single plastic straws given upon request for ADA and HIPAA compliance.
3. No plastic shopping bags to be given out by retailers or food delivery services. There will be a 10-cent charge for recyclable paper bags, part of which will go into a state fund dedicated to environmental services or to assist local businesses that address the pollution problem. The other portion remains with the retailer for use in administering the program. If stores give out or sell reusable bags made of plastic, they must have stitched handles.
4. State law would not preempt local governments from enacting more stringent measures of plastics control.

Implementation of these measures will require a reasonable transition phase. Our little group is expanding, and we are now seeking legislative sponsors. You can help by speaking to your state representatives and senators about this proposal. If they are supportive, let us know. If you run a small business and wish to support the effort, let us know that, too. This will be a long process, but if we don’t start, we’ll never get there.

Contact us at plasticactionteamnm@gmail.com.

It seems like I’m writing from a different planet today. The pandemic is wreaking havoc and cratering our economy. Millions of Americans are unemployed, hundreds of thousands are dead. Police murders of Black men have unleashed national protests unlike any since the Vietnam war.

People are hunkering down at home, heeding the call to stop the spread of the virus. Meetings and outings are cancelled through the summer. Precious little hugging is going on.

All of this is having an effect on our efforts to refuse, reduce, reuse and recycle. A proliferation of latex gloves and plastic masks are making their way into our waters. Due to the “temporary” relaxation of restrictions on single-use plastic, such bags and takeout food containers are cropping up in huge numbers. Online orders are way up, resulting in more non-recyclable plastic packaging. Low oil prices make it cheaper to manufacture new plastic than to use recycled.

I don’t mean to be depressing. People are still working toward a Zero Waste environment. There is some hope that corporations will embrace a circular economy as we begin to open up again. There is renewed appreciation for the great outdoors. And there are still things you can do to help. Here’s one I’ve adopted since our reusable bags have become unwelcome in grocery stores. Sure, you can bring them in and bag everything yourself. But I’ve found it easier to have them put your purchases back into the cart, wheel the cart to your car, and pack it there, using your trusty reusable bags.

Many of us who received a stimulus check were fortunate enough not to need it. I surveyed friends to see what they did with the extra funds. They kept the money in New Mexico by supporting overworked food banks, charities, tribal groups, medical organizations and local businesses.

National protests have raged across the country, and monuments are toppling. Here in Albuquerque we said farewell to Juan de Oñate amid cheers, boos and some violence. Other New Mexico monuments to the Civil War and Spanish colonization are being subjected to new scrutiny. Amid this belated reckoning, isn’t it time to rename Coronado Historic Site in honor of the people who were actually there? Kuaua Pueblo Historic Site has a nice ring to it.

Featured image from Pikist. 

Read this in English

Reciclar en los Botes Azules

Otros  – No poner en el bote azul de reciclaje NI en el bote negro de basura

Otro tipo de basura no reciclable, y los residuos peligrosos, van a lugares especiales: buscar enla página de la ciudad: https://www.cabq.gov/solidwaste/household-hazardous-waste y en New Mexico Recycling Coalition at https://www.recyclenewmexico.com.

Ejemplos

Botes de aerosol / gas propano
Electrodomésticos
Baterías
Partes y fluídos de carros /trocas
Electrónicos / cables
Vidrio
Residuos peligrosos / latas de pintura / mercurio
Otros metales (diversos)
Popó de gatos y/o perros
Residuos de jardín / madera

Lo que ponemos en el bote negro de la basura vá alrelleno sanitario

Pañales
Basura
Mangueras
Arena de la caja del gato

Roja esto en español

Recycle via blue bins

Alternative Recycling – Do Not Recycle in Blue Bins

There is extensive information on how & where to dispose of non-recyclable and hazardous waste published by the City of Albuquerque and the New Mexico Recycling Coalition. Examples of items that can be recycled in other ways:

Aerosol/propane cans
Appliances
Batteries
Car & truck parts/fluids
Electronics/cords
Glass
Medical bio-waste/ needles/pills
Miscellaneous metals
Plastic bags
Yard waste/wood

Goes to the Landfill via Black Bin

Diapers
Garbage
Hoses
Kitty litter
Styrofoam

Hazardous materials – do not recycle, do not dispose in trash

Residents of the City of Albuquerque and Bernalillo County may bring residential some hazardous wastes to the Household Hazardous Waste Collection Center (HHWCC) at no charge. Other residents will need to check with their municipality or the NM Environment Department. Examples of items that do not belong in a landfill include:

Fluorescent light bulbs
Household chemicals/pharmaceuticals
Mercury
Oil/antifreeze
Oil-based paints
Pesticides/fetrilizers