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Thrifting keeps fashionable clothing out of landfills.

Look good while doing good

BY ELLEN PUCEL

Thrift stores are like magic. They are vibrant and mysterious in a way that intrigues a shopper to keep sifting through the racks and tables of clothes until they find the perfect piece. Once they do, the mystery builds behind each piece of clothing.

Who wore this once? What decade was it made in? What type of closet was it in before mine?

Thrifting can help reverse the overconsumption trend in fashion; in the last two decades, American textile waste has doubled from 7 million to 14 million tons, Newsweek reported in 2016. It starts right in our own closets: recycling clothes, buying from thrift or vintage stores, and donating items that sit in closets for years on end.

Why Thrift?

Clothing that ends up in landfills contains dangerous chemicals and synthetic materials that don’t biodegrade. With the right tools and information, consumers can look to update their buying patterns to reduce waste. Many local thrift stores work to promote sustainability and community involvement, including those across Wisconsin.

Sustainability in Wisconsin

Since the spread of the coronavirus, there has been a correlation between stay-at-home orders and a spike in clothing exchanges at stores like ReThreads, a sustainable fashion boutique that promotes a new way of shopping for clothes. Shopping secondhand keeps clothes out of landfills and harmful fabrics from polluting the land with synthetic fibers and dyes.

With more people at home sifting through wardrobes and dressers, prospective consumers are eager to donate and resell their items. ReThreads owner Jacqueline Irivarren also looks to incorporate labels that promote local artists and sustainable practices and is selective with items since ReThreads aims to provide unique clothing with a second home.

The store’s mission is “to give others the opportunities to wear those items that are still in great condition, that still have many, many miles on them, and that are great labels, and are fashionable and are clean,” Irivarren says.

When preparing to donate or exchange clothing at a secondhand store, make sure each piece is in good condition with no rips, holes or stains, so it is able to make it through a second life.

Open a Virtual Closet

If there are no local thrift stores or secondhand shops within the area, buyers and sellers can look toward online consignment.

Poshmark allows consumers to buy and sell right from their closets at home by adding items to their virtual closets.

If you’re looking for higher-end goods, The RealReal sells authenticated luxurious consignment items, and has both an in-store and online presence that allows shoppers to buy secondhand clothing and accessories for discounted prices. Users send in their clothing, and if it is accepted for resale, consumers are offered store credit or a check in return.

Subscribe, Don’t Buy Rent the Runway cultivates a new way to get “new” clothing that further pushes sustainability by encouraging shoppers to rent instead of buy. The subscription-based retailer offers monthly subscriptions for those looking to frequently rotate their closets in an eco-friendly fashion. Once shoppers

choose a plan, they are able to pick out a certain number of items and then return them by the end of the month.

Time to Avoid Cotton

One reason we have so much to donate is that we’ve simply overshopped without thinking about how our clothing is made. Today’s mass cotton production practices are hazardous, require large amounts of water, energy and materials, and leave traces of toxic chemicals in clothes and waterways.

Erin Schaut, a senior studying textiles and fashion design at UW–Madison, points to cotton as an example of a material with a harmful effect since it’s a common textile used widely across the fashion industry.

As consumers purchase new items, they should learn what companies are doing to incorporate sustainable supply chain practices. Information about what a business stands for can often be found on company websites, in stores or even printed on tags.

Beware of Green Marketing

Before deciding to buy an item from a specific brand, shoppers are more inclined to research its guidelines and brand mission. In 2018, a report from Accenture Strategy found that 62% of consumers want to buy products from companies with ethical values and authenticity.

While green marketing has proven to be a powerful business tool in strengthening a company’s brand reputation, consumers are also seeing a rise in greenwashing — an exaggeration of green marketing and overemphasis on possibly dubious eco-friendly practices. In recent years, some companies have been exposed for over-promoting their only slightly sustainable products.

H&M, the Swedish retail fashion company, was recently accused of greenwashing a new line, the Conscious Collection. This line was marketed as eco-friendly, but these products still use new materials and don’t necessarily slow down textile overconsumption.

Some businesses are straying from green marketing altogether and instead are urging consumers to participate in alternative buying habits such as thrifting new items, donating clothes and shopping local.

ReThreads, a recycled fashion boutique in Madison, provides a second home for unique clothing.

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Shopping Vintage

A different form of recycling involves vintage stores, which sell retro pieces of clothing from different eras. Shoppers in Madison can visit Good Style Shop, a vintage clothing store that features unique and stylish articles of clothing. Many shoppers consider vintage to be a sustainable clothing choice, though Good Style Shop owner Peter Benck says the true mission of the store is to cultivate style, authenticity and art, and create a community for people to discover a creative side.

“More specifically, that’s about what you can find on our racks of clothing — as fashion, as art, the ever-changing perspective of what you could make out of your own wardrobe or the people you might meet or the people you might interact with on social media,” Benck says.” X

FOLLOW FOR A FIND

@patagonia

Patagonia is a clothing brand that aims to create clothing and equipment for outdoor activities. The brand consistently spreads awareness about the changing state of our ecosystem and aims to educate consumers on what they can do to help. Additionally, Patagonia offers a lifetime warranty and is dedicated to recycling old clothing and repairing rips and tears to encourage the cycle of sustainability.

@thepangaia

Pangaia is a London-based clothing brand that is doing its part to combat climate change. It has a strong mission statement pledging to use only sustainable fabrics to make its clothing and other products. Along with clean fabrics, it participates in direct change such as planting or restoring one tree for every product purchased.

@renttherunway

As consumers start to look for new ways to shop vintage and buy secondhand clothing, check out Rent the Runway, an online shopping platform that allows customers to swap, buy and rent clothing that has been worn before. Consumers can sign up for a subscription and rent clothes on a monthly basis, which helps encourage the continuous cycle of wearing secondhand clothing.

@veja

Veja is a shoe company focused on being transparent to the public with its mission and supply chain methods. It has started “project transparency” to answer all questions consumers may have about the brand, such as how its shoes are made and what materials are used.

FAITH COMMUNITIES MEET THE MOMENT

From outdoor worship to text messages, congregations find pandemic-friendly ways to connect

BY ELISE GOLDSTEIN

Gaven Foster (above) is a student leader of Chi Alpha, a UW-Madison Christian organization that overcame physical distancing this fall with virtual community group meetings via Zoom. D ozens of people gathered under a group of old maple trees at the tip of Door County’s peninsula every Sunday morning during the months of April through October. The people spread out on the lawn beside the white building, sprinkling their blankets and lawn chairs out on the grass at a safe distance from their fellow congregants at Bethel Baptist Church.

“There’s a lot of people that are third, fourth, fifth generation that have lived up here and worked up here, which is kind of an unusual thing because it’s such a transient area of people coming and going,” says Joel Rose, the church’s pastor.

The tight-knit setting in Door County allows congregations there to work in cooperation with one another to serve their communities. When the local fire department asked Rose and a local Moravian church pastor to organize a way to help those who might be lonely or more susceptible to the coronavirus, the pair set up a phone call system among churches in the area to offer a friendly and helpful voice to their most vulnerable neighbors.

Churches and synagogues across Wisconsin have established unique ways to foster a sense of community since the outbreak of COVID-19 — which has limited people’s access to houses of worship — as a quarter of adults report their faith has become stronger, according to a Pew Research Center study.

Religion has a material side, a physical side and an essential side, says Ulrich Rosenhagen, the director of the Center for Religion and Global Citizenry at UW–Madison and an ordained Lutheran pastor. This means that materially, communities might celebrate religion with singing, liturgy and prayer. Physically, religions have a meeting place and religions have an essential aspect of their faith, such as weekly Shabbat for the Jewish community.

“So now the question is, what is there now instead of that regular experience of before?” Rosenhagen asks.

“You can’t go and celebrate in a religious community and put yourself at risk or put other people at risk,” Rosenhagen says. “You just can’t. Putting someone else at risk would be totally unethical.”

Now that it’s too cold to be outside, Bethel Baptist Church has moved services inside to its gymnasium and main sanctuary, while still following all protocols and precautions at 25% capacity. While other religious organizations might wish to consistently serve their communities in person each week, it’s not possible under current COVID-19 conditions based on their locations and environment.

Faith Beyond Walls

There are approximately 100 students involved with Chi Alpha, a Christian organization at UW–Madison. The group strives to live by the motto “everyday, everywhere, always,” meaning that they live for Jesus wherever they are.

“I do believe that the church of Jesus Christ is not bounded by walls,” says Chi Alpha student leader Gaven Foster. “It’s more of a lifestyle and how you live, and the building is just a place where we meet.”

The members can now join “connect groups” on Zoom, created with the goal of building community with others. The groups — ranging from movie appreciation to cooking and baking to the great outdoors — sustain feelings of community beyond watching a sermon each week.

“We actually do things together,” Foster says.

High Holy Days During COVID-19

This year’s Rosh Hashana was the largest Jewish event ever on the

UW–Madison campus for the Rohr

Chabad house. In previous years, High

Holy Day events at Chabad hovered around 500 students. In September, 718 students broke into pods of four to five people to pick up homemade kosher to-go meals from Rabbi Mendel

Matusof and his wife, Henya. Matusof distributed 230 pounds of brisket, 190 pounds of challah, 110 pounds of honey and 85 kugels along with honey cake, rice and vegetables. Students also picked up candles, High Holy Day guides and cards for reflection. Before the dinner, the pods joined together on Zoom to feel the energy of their religious community on campus and to ring in the Jewish New Year.

“As in any time of uncertainty and a heightened level of stress and worry, it’s crucial for us to sort of be the anchor in everyone’s lives.”

Chabad uses a new text message system for students to reserve and pick up Shabbat and holiday meals. It’s also used to RSVP to attend a Shabbat dinner, which has a maximum capacity of 25 people with four shift options, and once the shift is full, the texting system automatically closes.

Of course, like many things in the pandemic, countless plans have also fallen through for religious groups. In May, Matusof planned to lead his largest Birthright Israel trip yet, with 162 students signed up to tour the country for 10 days. Looking forward, Matusof is planning one step at a time to stay aligned with campus protocols in hopes of making the trip next year.

Matusof feels that it’s his duty to uphold feelings of unity and togetherness for Jewish students on campus. “If I can do it in a safe way, in a legal way, based on the guidelines, then I think it’s my responsibility to do it,” he says.

Off campus, similar sentiments resonate with the Chabad of Madison. There, Matusof’s brother, Rabbi Avremel Matusof, helps with weekly food distributions for families with children, supplying a week’s worth of food for anyone who signs up. Chabad in Chicago does the bulk of the packing and then sends it to Milwaukee Chabad, where Avremel hauls it to Madison for pickups and deliveries each Thursday.

This year, Chabad of Madison also created 60 “High Holiday Toolboxes,” geared towards children to help them experience the holidays with different crafts, challah, sweet treats and shortened prayers to do at home.

“As in any time of uncertainty and a heightened level of stress and worry, it’s crucial for us to sort of be the anchor in everyone’s lives,” Avremel says.

Spreading Love

Through Care Packages

When the coronavirus crisis hit, 1,000 students in the Witte and Sellery dorms at UW–Madison received snack packages and letters from Blackhawk Church, which has a college-aged ministry to reach youth between the ages of 18 and 25. Students quarantined in hotels and student athletes at Edgewood College were also given the care packages.

“In order to love like Jesus does, and to love the city, we’ve been doing things online,” says Michael Knapstad, pastor of college aged and young adult ministry at the church.

Each week the evangelical church records a story with worship songs and a brief message and encourages people to get together with their friends or family to watch together on its YouTube channel. Knapstad also includes tools that can help the ministry during this time by sharing different spiritual practices. One week was centered around anxiety, which included the clinical definition and also tied to an ancient practice called “breath prayer.”

Each week, the general Blackhawk community can tune into the Next Steps Podcast on multiple platforms, produced by Blackhawk Church, where they can further explore the message from that week’s sermon and apply it to their lives.

Knapstad says a significant number of people who don’t usually go to church actually feel more comfortable tuning into Blackhawk’s current online events.

“It’s really cool that a lot of people have placed their faith in Jesus, but also a lot haven’t and they’re just like, ‘There’s something here we feel, but we still feel comfortable to watch from our home,’” Knapstad says. •

In September, Rabbi Mendel Matusof and his wife, of the Rohr Chabad House near UW-Madison, distributed hundreds of hot meals and candles to students for Rosh Hashana, the Jewish New Year.