Grid Magazine January 2022 [#152] by Red Flag Media

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Randy LoBasso’s final Bike Talk column

Making space for BIPOC hunters

Temple grad launches seed keeping business

p. 8

p. 10

p. 24

JANUARY 2022 / ISSUE 152 / GRIDPHILLY.COM

T O W A R D A S U S TA I N A B L E P H I L A D E L P H I A

MAKE IT WORK Philly’s fashion industry trends toward circularity

Fabscrap Regional Manager Lindsey Troop (left) Name these people and Founder and CEO tk captions go here tk Jessica Schreiber. thanks and good night

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Daliyl Muhammad Philadelphia, PA @Jupiter5_woodco TELL US ABOUT BUSINESS + YOUR STORY I’m a self-taught woodworker, originally from Philadelphia. My training is pretty unconventional: books, YouTube, trial and error, and other informal means of instruction. I have a passion for creativity and originality, and my hope is to leave my own impression in the world of woodworking. WHAT ARE YOU CURRENTLY WORKING ON + HOW DID YOU GET STARTED? I make handcrafted furniture and other small wooden objects that are inspired by the methods, ideas, and styles of past generations. I started making furniture for myself a few years ago and fell in love with the idea of taking a vague concept from my mind and bringing it into real space. Since then, I’ve been on a mission to design and create original furniture. WHAT ARE YOUR GOALS? My goal is to make a lasting impression in the world of woodworking and wood art in general through my own original ideas and processes. I draw inspiration from artists like Jean -Michael Basquiat, Keith Haring, and Jory Brigham; from natural shapes and forms, I see in my everyday life, and from an inherent desire to express my individuality.

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EDI TO R ’S NOTES

alex mulcahy

publisher Alex Mulcahy managing editor Alexandra W. Jones director of operations Nic Esposito associate editor & distribution Timothy Mulcahy tim@gridphilly.com art director Michael Wohlberg writers Bernard Brown Nic Esposito Constance Garcia-Barrio Randy LoBasso Jenny Roberts Lois Volta Samantha Wittchen photographers Chris Baker Evens Drew Dennis Jenny Roberts illustrator Sean Rynkewicz Lois Volta published by Red Flag Media 1032 Arch Street, 3rd Floor Philadelphia, PA 19107 215.625.9850 G R I D P H I L LY. C O M

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’m wearing spandex right now. No, I’m not at my computer in an Olympic leotard or even lululemon athleisure. I’m wearing Levi’s jeans, and though they are almost all cotton, they have about 3% spandex, a kind of plastic, woven into them. The unfortunate fact that they have plastic in them prevents them from being recyclable. Spandex, also known as elastane, is one of the synthetic fibers—like rayon, polyester and nylon—that are used to strengthen or alter natural fibers.. They are all made from fossil fuels, and require heavy-duty chemicals such as sulfuric acid, formaldehyde, dimethylformamide, dimethylacetamide and dimethyl sulfoxide. These and other chemicals that are used are suspected of all kinds of mayhem: cancer, liver damage, skin irritation and dizziness. Spandex also requires synthetic dyes, which also produce harmful pollutants. That makes my jeans a triple threat: a health hazard, an agent of climate change and a polluter of the world’s water supply. But wait, it gets worse! When textiles with plastics in them are washed, and even when they’re just worn, they shed microplastics. In addition to being toxic and potentially carcinogenic for humans, when microplastics end up in the ocean (which they do), they act as a magnet for organic pollutants like pesticides, and then these poisonous pellets are eaten by fish. Welcome to the food chain, yoga pants! Eventually we end up eating these same microplastics, and what exactly that does to us we’re not sure yet. A very recent study suggests a correlation between irritable bowel syndrome and the amount of microplastics found in peoples’ feces. Aside: Do we really need scientists scouring excrement to confirm that eating microplastics is bad for us? I guess we do …

Levi’s has made some overtures toward sustainability and circularity. They partnered with Blue Jeans Go Green, a non-profit founded by Cotton Incorporated (think, “the fabric of our lives”), and offered $20 off their next purchase to people who return their jeans to bins placed in retail outlets throughout the country. Those jeans are then shredded and used in other products, like insulation. That falls short of the idea of circularity—but, the logic goes, downcycling is better than the dump. In an even more impressive display of technology, Levi’s partnered with a Swedish company called Renewcell, which can take post-consumer denim and mix it with a cellulose pulp to make a truly-recycled pair of jeans. However, this is only a sliver of the jeans they are producing, and it requires the post-consumer denim to be 100% cotton. And that is the most important detail. Recycling clothing would be much simpler if we relied exclusively on natural fibers. Cotton, wool, flax (linen), hemp and silk are all biodegradable. Our cover story demonstrates how resourceful our community is and what a sustainable textile industry could look like. The industry could make local efforts so much easier if international standards or legislation was implemented to make synthetic fibers illegal, rather than relying on half-measures to appear sustainable. It’s time we return to natural fibers and ban plastic pants.

ALEX MULCAHY Editor-in-Chief alex@gridphilly.com COV E R P HOTO G RAP H BY D RE W DENNI S

I L LU S T R AT E D P O R T R A I T BY J A M E S B O Y L E

My Plastic Pants

Parka Fridays? Not the best way for your business to save. PECO has energy answers. Saving money is easier than you think with advice that leads to comfort and energy savings all year long. Learn more ways to save at peco.com/waystosave.

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TH E VO LTA WAY

lois volta

DEAR LOIS,

How do I act with care and learn from my mistakes?

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JA NUA RY 2022

Every kid processes things differently, but I remember that being the first time I felt loss when it came to my belongings. My precious collection had been destroyed. I think about this story when I notice that I’m being careless. Nine out of 10 times I might not do any damage, but there is always that one time. When I start counting up the thousands of times I have been careless, I can see a trail of loss and pain behind me. It’s easy to be careless, even with good intentions. I don’t define the pain and loss as good or bad or even hold these times with regret. Things break, loss happens, life goes on with a lesson learned. And if I’m honest with myself, I’d rather be able to reflect on the loss of my sandcastle collection than have them bubble wrapped in a box in my basement. If I knew that I wanted to move my furniture across the room and I understood there

was a possibility that I could break something, would I still move the furniture? Yes, I would just be more mindful about how I approached what I was doing. There are a few sayings that now float around my mind when I am tempted to cut corners: ➤ Work smarter, not harder. ➤ Mindfulness is the cure for carelessness. ➤ Once you know better, you do better. Many of us dread doing domestic work because the house will get dirty again. There are ways one can justify being careless by accepting that life is a mess, thus deciding to not care about the state of the house. Why not wait until the house is truly disgusting? Why move the bookshelf at all if something could break? IL LUSTRATIO N BY LO IS VOLTA

P O R T R A I T BY J A M E S B O Y L E

hen i was young, I used to love to move my bedroom furniture around. It seemed like I was scooting my dresser and bed across the room twice a year—sometimes even switching bedrooms with my sister. I loved the change that rearranging brought and the newness within the familiar. During one of these furniture moving sessions, I tipped over the shelves that sat atop my dresser. Done properly, I would have taken everything down from the shelves and removed the top shelf before scooting it across the room, but I was 14 years old, ambitious and ha to learn the hard way. In a moment of horror, I watched as my childhood collection of sandcastle figurines came crashing to the floor. I cried, fixed the shelf and carried on.

Many of us dread doing domestic work because the house will get dirty again.” In my experience, this perpetuates the disorder that is created and keeps us from being able to shift domestic energy. This thinking also directly affects the people who are being careful. Is there someone in your life that is cleaning up after you? The truth is that we don’t just live in our bedrooms, we are communal beings and we should act like it. When we exercise mindfulness in the home, and we have an open mind to embody “when we know better, we do better,” the world around us changes. Honing in on our domestic decisions is a great place to start practicing mindfulness. When cooking dinner, start to observe your movements. The movements we make in our homes determine the amount of mess that is created. Is there a layer of oil covering the stove? Is there crud around the handles of the cabinets? Find out what actions lead to messy results, then change your behaviors. In a way, it’s fitting that I collected sandcastles. Sandcastles are meant to be enjoyed temporarily. When the tide comes in, we know they’ll be washed back into the ocean. Just like we know the joy of a good meal comes with cleaning up the kitchen afterwards. ◆ lois volta is a home life consultant, artist and founder of The Volta Way. Send questions to info@thevoltaway.com.

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bike talk

Into the Sunset Our beloved bike columnist bids adieu and reminds us of the work we need to do by randy lobasso

here’s something about our tax structure I think most people don’t understand: If you own a car, the American taxpayer subsidizes your ride. The more expensive and bigger your vehicle, the more socialism you get. The money set aside for roads has come less and less from gas taxes over the past 50 years and more and more from property taxes, bonds, general fund appropriations and “other taxes and fees.” More than 50% of road funding now comes from people who may or may not contribute to the deterioration of the roads. 8 GRID P H I L LY.CO M JA NUA RY 20 22

In other words, the person who doesn’t own a car is subsidizing the roads for those who do. It’s not a great system. And, two years ago, I wanted to write about it for Grid. I came up with the pitch after an article I wrote for my former employer, the Bicycle Coalition of Greater Philadelphia, went viral on a Fishtown community Facebook group. One commenter not only claimed that his gas taxes paid for bike lanes to be built (something he wasn’t too fond of), but that if he saw me riding my bike, he would run me over with his pickup truck.

I pitched the idea to my editor at Grid, Alexandra W. Jones, and, after a couple emails back and forth, followed it up with the story of seeing my name dragged on social media. She liked the idea, and specifically asked that I write about the experience of seeing the misinformation and threats of violence thrown around so casually. It’s still one of my favorite columns today. After four years of Bike Talk, the column you’re reading is my last. I am moving on from the Bicycle Coalition, and with that, ending this column. But before I go, I want to thank all of you for reading. I also want to thank the editorial staff at Grid for giving me the space to write this column. I owe them a lot of gratitude. My editors here trusted me to come up with my own stories and write them in ways I saw fit; they also edited the crap out of them, sharing all edits with me in real time and askIL LUSTRATIO N BY S EAN RY NKEWI CZ

ing the questions that helped me find the best way to say what I wanted to say. I don’t know if this is well known outside of journalism circles, but what I just described is basically unheard of in independent news. When I worked for Philadelphia Weekly in the early 2010s, I always dreamed of having something like three editors who cared, editing my articles collaboratively. I don’t say that to throw my former, former, former employer under the bus. I say it because working at Grid was a breath of fresh air: The people here care about the subject matter, they care about the journalism and they care about the writing. Punctuation. Sentences. Grammar. Stuff like that. It may not sound like a high bar, but it is. As for me, I care about it, too. I specifically reached out to Grid as an employee of the Bicycle Coalition because I knew our goals were the same: a sustainable city. If you’ve read my columns, you probably haven’t seen too much about sustainability directly (although I delved into it from time to time). You’ve probably read more about

politics. Parking wars. Tax structures. Road safety. Funding bike lanes. Passing laws. Stuff like that. A sustainable Philadelphia won’t happen—can’t happen—until we have a real conversation about cars. That’s what I tried to advance with Bike Talk. As long as all our streets are designed for the quick passage of motor vehicles, we will continue releasing carbon into the atmosphere at unsustainable rates. At 29%, transportation is the biggest source of greenhouse gas emissions in the U.S. That’s more than agriculture, commercial and residential combined. “The largest sources of transportation-related greenhouse gas emissions include passenger cars, medium- and heavy-duty trucks and light-duty trucks … pickup trucks and minivans,” according to the Environmental Protection Agency. “These sources account for over half of the emissions from the transportation sector.” And to quote myself from my October 2021 column: “Any political leader who believes global warming is real should be figuring out

ways to get folks out of their cars and onto alternative, cleaner forms of transportation.” Those cleaner forms of transportation? Bikes. Trains. Buses. Trolleys. The things Philadelphia was originally built for. Our car-oriented streets and brains are byproducts of an era of bulldozing and re-engineering to better serve Americans who moved to the suburbs—another unsustainable venture destined to fail. There are signs of hope, for sure. Many mainstream media sources are now reporting on some of the same things Grid has been writing about for years. The government is about to begin subsidizing e-bikes. Department of Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg rode a bikeshare home from work last year. Public transportation agencies, including SEPTA, are starting to make sustainability a part of their mission and media. These things matter. And I’m glad this magazine exists as a voice to not only say what I just said, but to highlight the people doing the hard work to make change that will matter for generations to come. ◆

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urban naturalist

Aiming Higher Refuge recruits new hunters for equity, education and ecology

n early november Troy Bynum bagged his first deer and shared a photo of it on social media. Bynum, a tech worker from Mount Airy who is also a wildlife photographer, shot it with a crossbow as part of the John Heinz National Wildlife Refuge at Tinicum’s Mentored Archery Deer Hunt. “A lot of people thought it was strange for me to go hunting, as I am very big into wildlife photography,” says Bynum, who posts on Instagram as @tb_wildlife_photography. “I typically shoot animals, but with my camera.” It was after Bynum learned about the ecological problems caused by high deer populations that he grew interested in taking part in the solution. In early 2020 he signed up for the program, which consists of archery training as well as classes about 10 GR ID P H I L LY.CO M JA NUA RY 20 22

deer ecology. After a year-long delay due to the pandemic, Bynum was able to take part. The image Bynum posted—proud hunter with his kill—is basically the same as those taken by millions of hunters every year. Unlike the vast majority of the hunters in those photos, Bynum is Black. Hunting is one of the whitest activities in the United States. Of the 11.5 million hunters in the country, 97% of them are white, according to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s 2016 National Survey of Fishing, Hunting and Wildlife-Associated Recreation. While 3.5% of hunters identified as Hispanic ethnicity, there were so few Black and Asian hunters that the survey wasn’t able to report a reliable estimate. Hunting is also overwhelmingly male, with only 10% identifying as female.

bernard brown

“Because of the state of systemic exclusion, it’s left us in a bad situation,” says Lamar Gore, refuge manager at John Heinz. “It doesn’t mean that Black and Brown people are not engaged—and they have been in history—but it’s not what you see when you go online and type in ‘hunting.’” The whiteness of hunting culture sends a message to potential hunters from BIPOC communities, Gore says. “They think, ‘They don’t want us there. You know what’s going to happen when we go out there,’” he explains. In response, the refuge has focused outreach for its archery and hunting programs largely within BIPOC communities in Southwest Philadelphia. “We’re getting a really good mix of folks,” says Gore. “We had two of our community P HOTO G RAP HY BY CHRIS BAKER EVENS

Wildlife photographer Troy Bynum participated in the John Heinz National Wildlife Refuge’s 2021 Mentored Archery Deer Hunt.

Hunting has become insular. We need to recruit hunters who don’t look like us and think like us.”

I N S E T P H OTO C O U R T E S Y: S K Y E G LOV E R

— h ank fore ster, hunting director for the National Deer Association

resources for new hunters,” according to its website. As John Heinz and HOC work for equity in hunting, some in the broader hunting community are recognizing the need for greater Bynum and hunting mentor Hoan Tran pose hunter diversity. with Bynum’s kill. Hunting overall is in decline. Numbers peaked in 1980 at 17 million, or a little more than 7% leaders come out to hunt. They didn’t get of the population then. Today’s 11.5 million anything, but they had the best time ever, hunters represent about 4% of the overall and now they’re going into the community population—and they’re aging. as champions for what they experienced.” “The baby boomers were the biggest coGore also noted the program’s success in hort, and they haven’t recruited the next engaging women. generation,” says Hank Forester, director John Heinz is not alone in its approach of of hunting for the National Deer Associatargeted outreach and mentored hunting. tion and the cofounder of the Field to Fork Hunters of Color (HOC), which launched hunter recruitment program, which offers in 2020, works to “dismantle barriers to hunting education combined with mentored entry for hunters of color by providing edhunts. “We’ve been watching this bubble of ucational opportunities, mentorships and hunters age through.”

Hunting advocates often point out that the decline of hunting matters for non-hunters as well. License fees and taxes on gear account for almost 60% of the funding for state wildlife agencies, according to the Association of Fish & Wildlife Agencies. Field to Fork works with 43 programs in 17 states to replicate its model. When we spoke in November, Forester had just returned from a new hunter event, held in conjunction with HOC in New York, targeting BIPOC hunters. “Hunting has become insular,” says Forester. “We need to recruit hunters who don’t look like us and think like us.” Bynum is looking forward to the 2022 hunting season, when he plans to sign up again for the refuge’s mentored hunt. He hopes to serve as a mentor himself someday. “I want to encourage kids that grow up in the area,” he says. “Especially Black kids that have never had a chance to go hunting, that this is something that they can do.” ◆ JAN UARY 20 22 G R I DP HILLY.COM 1 1

water

So Green, So Clean Water Department deputy speaks on the impact of stormwater infrastructure upgrades, 10 years into quarter-century plan by bernard brown

his year, the Philadelphia Water Department (PWD) celebrated 10 years of Green City, Clean Waters (GCCW), a 25-year plan that seeks to improve water quality in our creeks and rivers by using rain gardens, tree plantings and other green stormwater infrastructure to soak up stormwater. Sixty percent of our city is served by an old combined drainage and sewer system. The runoff from heavy rains often overwhelms this system, triggering releases of raw sewage, aka combined sewer overflows, 12 GR ID P H IL LY.CO M JA NUA RY 20 22

or CSOs, which pollute our waterways and violate the federal Clean Water Act. At the end of November I had the chance to talk with Marc Cammarata, PWD’s deputy commissioner for planning, about the accomplishments of GCCW and what we can look forward to in the next 15 years. This interview has been edited for length, clarity and style.

to manage rainfall where it’s generated, using approaches that try to mimic the natural environment. Sometimes you may see rain gardens, surface vegetation or street trees. Sometimes you may just see the trees because we have subsurface infiltration trenches. You may see green infrastructure presenting itself as a green roof on a building.

What is green stormwater infrastructure?

Why use green infrastructure and not just “gray infrastructure,” as in pipes and tanks?

It’s an approach for managing urban stormwater using nature-based practices, trying

It’s never green or gray. It’s always green P HOTO G RAP HY BY CHRIS BAKER EVENS

discharged. We’ve reduced that volume by about two or two-and-a-half billion gallons in the 10 years we’ve been implementing the program. Are we seeing an impact yet on the waterways where the combined stormwater and sewage is discharged, perhaps with the species of animals that are sensitive to water pollution?

That’s always a challenging question to answer because the challenge is not just improving the quality of the water making it to the stream but making sure the stream itself is conducive to supporting the ecology and aquatic life. We are committed to doing natural stream channel design as a companion tool, to re-engineer the stream environment to be more conducive to the return of beneficial species. Water system planning is often retrospective, basing plans on historic conditions. How is the PWD’s 25-year plan to cope with stormwater runoff taking climate change into account?

Left: Marc Cammarata of the Philadelphia Water Department stands at a stormwater basin installed at Kemble Park as part of Green City, Clean Waters.

and gray. We strategically use these natural practices to supplement and augment the traditional infrastructure. Our sewers are stressed and they continue to be even more stressed in a changing environment, as we see more intense and frequent precipitation events. What this infrastructure allows us to do is keep that water from even making its way into the pipe. If you manage water once it makes its way into the pipe it becomes almost a waste product at that point. So it really is kind of a philosophy change. ‘How do we protect

our infrastructure?’ We treat stormwater as a resource instead of treating it as a waste product. PWD is celebrating the 10 year mark in a 25year plan. How far along are we in solving our stormwater problem?

In a typical year, we discharged about 14 billion gallons of combined stormwater and sewage. That’s not what was collected and treated—that number was much bigger—but what we actually couldn’t handle through collection and treatment and had to be

I like to say that climate change is water change. Whether you have more of it, less of it or more intensity. We’ve always thought about a changing water environment and how we need to think about it holistically: how we manage for the increased precipitation and flooding goes into pipe sizing or treatment upgrades or inlet installations to mitigate localized flooding. We also think of it as how to protect our source water, what’s happening with withdrawals or drought conditions upstream. We think about its water quality impact, whether that’s raw water or treated water. We’ve always thought about these kinds of perturbances in our water resources, in our water environment and how we factor that into our planning. Is there anything else you’d like to add?

I want to express gratitude for the number of individuals that have helped change the way we think about stormwater, whether that’s the academic community, the nonprofit community, the professional service community, the artists, engineers, planners and the neighborhoods. In order to implement green infrastructure at scale it takes everybody to have a voice, to have an opinion and to be part of that process. ◆ JAN UARY 20 22 G R I DP HI LLY.COM 13

city healing

High Key Music and dance education offer lifelong skills and opportunities for underserved students by constance garcia-barrio

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Musicopia student Aljavar McFarland practices the violin.

instrumental music program. For low-income students, a good music education is more than a curricular frill, notes Ellie D. Brown, professor of psychology at West Chester University. Brown’s research on preschoolers shows that high-quality music programming can “get under the skin” and alleviate poverty’s physiological and emotional toll. Good music programs “ … relate to reduced levels of the stress hormone cortisol,” Brown says. Dennie Palmer Wolf trained as a researcher at Project Zero at The Harvard Graduate School of Education. She notes that preschoolers in strong music and movement programs often gain key life skills. “From an early age, they learn to cooperate with their peers and … listen to each other … ,” says Wolf, now chief researcher at WolfBrown. “For example, it allows them to calculate whether something is too risky.” Musicopia delivers these life-changing

possibilities through assemblies, after-school programs, workshops, residencies or yearround small-group vocal or instrumental coaching via their FAME [Fostering Artistry and Musical Excellence] programs, Charlton notes. “Since 1974, we’ve helped about 360,000 children experience the benefits of firsthand exposure to the arts,” she says. “That’s the population of a mid-size city.” Divine Epps, 17, a student at the Philadelphia High School for Creative and Performing Arts, receives after-school instruction through Musicopia. “I love the cello,” says Epps. “It’s low, mellow, and evens out the rest of the orchestra. And there’s a lot happening in the city, like gun violence. Playing in the orchestra helps keep me away from those things.” Epps got a cello through Musicopia. It can cost upwards of $60 a month to rent an instrument and far more to buy one, says

P H OTO G R A P H Y C O U R T E S Y O F M U S I C O P I A

ntoine mapp used to approach drug-dealing teens near his West Philly home and ask if they wanted to learn to play drums to earn a few dollars. “Sometimes they’d say, ‘Get the [hell] out of here,’ then … they’d try it,” says Mapp, 41, whose grandmother started a community drumline, the West Powelton Steppers & Drum Squad, 30 years ago. “At eleven, I was one of my grandmom’s first drummers. It saved my life. I want to return the favor.” Now head of the nonprofit Musicopia’s after-school percussion program, Musicopia Drumlines, Mapp reaches far more young people. The award-winning program serves children ages nine to 18 at eight public schools. “Kids learn discipline and self-confidence,” Mapps says. “Drumming opens up their lives.” Musicopia stands on that life-changing platform. “We reach underserved students often cut off from the region’s rich culture,” says executive director and pianist Catherine Charlton, 47. “We want to give children, regardless of circumstances, the opportunity to have their lives transformed through music.” That goal often translates into attracting Black and Brown children from low-income homes. “As of 2016, we found that 24% of Black students [more than 15,000 students] and 18% of Latino students attended schools without a single itinerant instrumental music teacher, while only 4% of white students [just 473] attended schools without an itinerant instrumental music teacher,” reports Eric Schulz, director of communications for City Councilmember Helen Gym. The school district distributes music education resources more equitably now, says Frank Machos, executive director of the Office of The Arts & Creative Learning for the School District of Philadelphia. However, much work remains to build a strong

THE LULLABY PROJECT The Philadelphia Lullaby Project also reveals the healing power of music in early childhood. Around since prehistoric times, lullabies may comfort today’s stressed families. “Lullabies are a two-way street,” says researcher Dennie Palmer Wolf, “soothing both children and parents. A mother stressed from working two jobs may feel overwhelmed and doubt her parenting skills. But if she composes a lullaby expressing her hopes for her child, it heightens her sense of competence and creativity.” World Café Live has joined Carnegie Hall artists to help parents compose lullabies. This project, part of the Research on Equity via the Arts in Childhood (REACH) Lab at West Chester University, is funded by the National Endowment for the Arts. World Café Live seeks parents of children 12 months to 36 months to participate in the project. Call Jacinda Arellano at (215) 821-9554.

Antione Mapp heads the after-school percussion program for Musicopia.

Musicopia Program Director Leslie Malmed Macedo, who books more than 100 teaching artists annually. “Many households can’t afford it.” She notes that anyone can donate instruments or contribute to the group’s instrument repair fund. In 2012, Dancing Classrooms Philly (DCP), a social and emotional development program that changes children’s lives through dance, partnered with Musicopia. “The alliance adds efficiency of operation,” says Charlton. “For instance, we can share staff.” Begun in 2007, DCP works its alchemy on third to 12th graders. “At that age, they’re developing higher level thinking skills, but they’re still open to new experiences in an innocent way,” Charlton says. “DCP builds students’ confidence by breaking down social barriers and inspiring respect. You go from that first

uncomfortable moment when you look your classmate in the eye and take their hand to performing an elegant dance together.” DCP instructors know that touch may trigger unpleasant associations for some students. Teaching artists are traumainformed and ultra-observant about what students may bring into the classroom, Charlton explains. DCP uses the method created by dance teacher Pierre Dulaine to ensure respect and safety for everyone. The scintillating colors of program director Swati Chaturvedi’s costumes from her native India nudge students toward another DCP goal. “We want to work with students, especially those from low-income households and broaden their exposure to world cultures,” says Chaturvedi, 44. “My costumes pique their curiosity.” Dance has always been an outlet for Chaturvedi. “It lets me express things for which I have no words,” Chaturvedi says. “Movement also helps our students in that way.” She notes that DCP works with students with visual impairment or special needs and that staff members adjust movements for students with mobility issues. Going forward, DCP and Musicopia will be taking a hard look at themselves. “We formed a DEI [Diversity, Equity and Inclusion] committee last year,” says Taia Harlos, 52, who is responsible for three Musicopia orchestras and scheduling auditions. “Our mission has always been to bring music to children who otherwise wouldn’t have it in their lives, but implicit bias can creep in.” Musicopia also aims to deepen ties with communities it serves. One frozen day last winter, Harlos, a pianist, violinist and violist, packed tools in her car and crisscrossed Greater Philadelphia to repair students’ instruments—in-person help needed due to the orchestras’ virtual rehearsals. “I would work on the front porch of the home, replacing strings and straightening bridges,” she says. “Parents and grandparents would stand there while I worked. I glimpsed the complexity of students’ lives. A young Vietnamese girl whose mom didn’t speak English asked questions while her daughter acted as interpreter. I imagine that girl shoulders other responsibilities. That day was the best, exhilarating and exhausting. It brought me closer to my students.” ◆ JAN UARY 20 22 G R I DP HI LLY.COM 1 5

16 GRID P H IL LY.CO M JA NUA RY 2022

Not sure what to do with your

CHRISTMAS TREE DROP-OFF The Passyunk Square Civic Association will be hosting their Tree-Cycling event. The chips from your recycled trees will be used for mulch at local parks and gardens. Check their Facebook page for finalized details.

January 8 | Suggested donation of $5 | facebook.com/passyunksquare

PICK-UP

Bennett Compost will pick your tree up curbside on one of three upcoming weekends and take a portion of them to the South Philly Tree-Cyclers for you. Trees that can’t go to the Tree-Cyclers will be chipped at our site and used in our composting process.

January 2, January 8–9, January 15–16 | $20 While trees with lights and decorations are pretty, please make sure they are all removed before leaving your tree out for pickup!

CITY OF PHILADELPHIA

Trees left curbside will not be recycled; however, the city is providing locations where you can drop your tree off for free tree-cycling in January. Check the website below for updates.

philadelphiastreets.com/holiday

HAPPY NEW YEAR and

HAPPY COMPOSTING! JAN UARY 20 22 G R I DP HI LLY.COM 17

THE BEHOLDER

Germantown gallery captures unseen beauty and celebrates Black people story and photography by jenny roberts

assive, glossy photographs line the walls at Ubuntu Fine Art in Germantown. Each image serves as a portal to another time and place, says gallery owner and photographer Steven CW Taylor. Viewers can be transported to a crowded SEPTA subway car just as easily as they can find themselves on an African island. Taylor, 39, has been to 18 countries and his international travels are featured in some of the photographs currently hanging in the gallery at 5423 Germantown Avenue. Multiple images in “The Time Thief” 18 GR ID P H I L LY.CO M JA NUA RY 20 22

collection were captured in Lamu, Kenya, which is part of the Lamu Archipelago off the coast of eastern Africa. “Lamu is one of the most beautiful places in the world,” Taylor says. “There’s a level of freedom that you feel there … that is unexplainable.” Ubuntu is a South African philosophy that emphasizes the shared humanity of all people. Taylor said he first came into contact with the meaning of Ubuntu in 2015 when he was visiting South Africa. For Taylor, it’s the spirit of the African people and the friends he’s made on the continent

that keep bringing him back. “It’s my second home,” he says. Through his photos, Taylor, a Germantown native, captures naturalism and realism, acting as a documentarian. “I move around space really well, in a manner that doesn’t disturb the organic interaction that’s happening,” Taylor adds. “I like to capture people’s natural essence and beauty within the things that they’re already doing.” Each of the photographs on display at the gallery, which opened in September, can be purchased online as long as supplies last.

It’s all in how you view it.” — s teven cw tayl or, Ubuntu founder

Steven CW Taylor founded Ubuntu Fine Art, displaying his photography from Philly and on international travels. Right: Taylor’s “Da Ave” shows Chew and East Chelten avenues in a different light.

Every photo comes in varying sizes in either a print or acrylic version with prices varying from $150 to $6,500. Ubuntu Fine Arts is unique in that all the featured work was shot solely by Taylor, who left his job as a backend software engineer with the consulting firm Booz Allen Hamilton in April 2021 to pursue photography full time. Many of Taylor’s photographs capture nature, landmarks and Black people experiencing joy. Taylor says he sees many forms of popular media pushing negativity for ratings. This particularly impacts Black characters, he says. In his photography, he presents an alternative view of Blackness. “I’m not chasing drama,” he explains. “I actually don’t even want to see it. I want to see us hugging. I want to see us shaking hands.” “I want people to enjoy my work because it’s good, not because it’s controversial,” he continues. “I want people through my artwork to be able to see and understand what Ubuntu is: the connectedness between us all.” Kristen Clark, co-owner of The KDD Theatre, a blackbox performance space next to the gallery, thinks that Taylor has successfully brought the South African phi-

losophy back home. “With Steven living in Ubuntu and actually adopting the practice as his lifestyle, it naturally seeps into the seams of Germantown,” says Clark. Clark, 26, says her theater, along with Taylor’s gallery and Uncle Bobbie’s Coffee & Books nearby, are all offering spaces for the community to explore arts and culture. She says she did not have similar artistic spaces available to her while growing up in Germantown. “It’s just a validation for the folks in Germantown that you can be from a place and appreciate, thank, show gratitude to that place by staying home,” she says. Salim Weldon, 37, is a longtime friend of Taylor. The two grew up together in Germantown playing football. He also thinks Taylor’s gallery has been a positive addition to the neighborhood. “Young kids that walk like him, talk like him, look like him, come from the same areas as him—they’re able to step inside of his art gallery and travel the world,” Weldon says. “The impact is amazing.” One of Taylor’s photographs currently on display at the gallery features a prominent

Germantown intersection—Chew and East Chelten avenues. He titled the black and white image “Da Ave.” “When people come here, they say, ‘You made Chew and Chelten look good,’” Taylor says. But he begs to differ. “I didn’t make Chew and Chelten look good,” he says. “This is what Chew and Chelten looks like at 7:30 in the morning, two days before Christmas Eve. It’s all in how you view it.” Clark says that while the intersection has a reputation for being dangerous, biases can impact how outsiders view it and Germantown. “My home is my home,” she says. “It is beautiful. It is as beautiful as your home is, and not in theory, but literally.” Taylor’s goal in opening the gallery in the same neighborhood he grew up in is to make fine art more accessible. Now residents won’t have to make the trek to Center City to experience fine art. Instead, they can just head to Germantown Avenue. “Hopefully, I can be that beacon that brings more Black-owned dopeness,” Taylor says. ◆ Ubuntu Fine Art is open Thursday to Sunday from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. and Monday to Wednesday by appointment only. ubuntufa.com JAN UARY 20 22 G R I DP HI LLY.COM 1 9

SWIPE FOR SERVICE

Skill sharing app offers people and organizations an easy way to build community capital story by nic esposito

arla ballard’s journey to founding the skill sharing platform Ying is a tale that traverses the country and beyond, from Germantown to Barbados, from Wilmington to the West Coast. Born and raised in Germantown, Ballard’s upbringing coincided with a serious economic decline and segregation in many parts of the city, compounded by decades of redlining. But even with this racial and economic strife, Ballard’s first memories as a child were of diversity and inclusion. “I was given the opportunity to be around such a cross-cultural experience,” she recalls. “To me, that resonates so strongly in terms of what Germantown is about.” As she tells the tale, her voice almost takes on a melodic tone, each part of her story like the verse of a song. 20 GRID P H I L LY.CO M JA NUA RY 2022

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photography by drew dennis

She describes diverse cultures, neighbors living side by side, sharing their resources and their lives through deep community connections. She fondly recalls getting called on by their Jewish neighbor down the street to babysit her children and her own mother calling on the same favor when she needed it. Ballard’s cultural perspective was further deepened by the summers she spent with her grandfather in Barbados. “It made a great impression on me to see Barbados, [which] was governed by a Black community that was not seen as equals in America.” After graduating from the University of Virginia, she began working at the regional bank MBNA in Wilmington, where she jokes that she was delighted to find synergy in the often juxtaposed worlds of capitalism and social justice.

MBNA’s CEO at the time, Charles Cawley, tapped Ballard to develop the Youth Institute for Economic Leadership Development, or YIELD. This led her to speak before Congress on a juvenile justice law in 1999, which led her to meet now-President Joe Biden and helped her launch the first Urban League in Delaware. She ended up going back to D.C. in the early 2000s to work with the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the Points of Light Foundation, where she had the fortuitous opportunity to meet Edgar S. Cahn. Cahn, former counsel and speech writer for Robert F. Kennedy, was promoting his concept of “timebanking” in D.C.’s Congress Heights neighborhood, where neighbors were actively exchanging skills based on the time they could commit. As a former banker, Ballard recalls

Opposite page: Ying Founder and CEO Karla Ballard loads the app. Ballard (left) and Victoria Mendoza, director of community engagement, at Maplewood Mall in Germantown.

thinking, “Wow, here’s a hard-hit neighborhood that may not have a lot of financial capital, but they have so much social and community capital.” She kept this lesson in the back of her mind as she then took a veer into tech, working to bring broadband internet to lowincome (or as she says, “high-potential”) communities across the country. (She also ran for vice president in 2020 alongside former actor Brock Pierce, who is also known for his work in cryptocurrency.) Her unique experience in banking, tech, social justice and timebanking inspired her to found Ying in 2016 with $800,000 in startup capital. The concept is simple. Like timebanking, Ying would bring people together to share their skills with others in return for more sharing. Skill sharers receive 24 “digital tokens” through the app that they could spend on requesting another person’s skills. Each token acts as an hour (hence why you start with 24) and is tracked through the app, creating an incentive for people to both receive and give skills to one another as if they were spending fiat currency. Ballard kept building Ying in Los Angeles until 2018 when a family emergency brought her back to Philly. After taking

time for her family, Ballard relaunched Ying right as the pandemic began, but that did not slow her down. Although Ying 2.0 is still in the beta testing phase, Ballard has grown the company by increasing users. Anyone can sign up through the Ying app or Yingme.co. But Ying also allows organizations to create “skill sharing groups” for a yearly fee on the platform. Organizations get a bank of 2,400 tokens to recruit users through unique group codes. An organization can post a task in their network and offer tokens from their bank based on the amount of time a task will take, basically expanding an organization’s volunteer management system through the new dimension of timebanking Ballard has also built her staff by bringing on Victoria Mendoza as director of community engagement in 2021. “It’s so exciting to see how much skill sharing is going on in Philly already, and how Ying creates the platform to execute it even more,” she says. Mendoza, a performing artist by trade and founder of Revolutionary Artists, found that the best way to build Ying’s community was to use the app herself. While scrolling through the opportu-

nities, she came across a request by Ami Yares, the executive director of the nonprofit BuildaBridge International, for their need for trauma-informed artists. After a successful partnership, Yares is now preparing to trade his skills by hosting a workshop for Mendoza’s art group. “Philadelphia is facing some serious issues these days regarding gun violence, opioids, poverty, gentrification, refugee resettlement and more,” Yares explains. “There is a lot going on to meet these crises head on and not a lot of intraorganizational communication. So when communities like We Love Philly, Revolutionary Artists, BuildaBridge and others team up with information, resources and capacity expand, it is not cliché to think, ‘together, we’re better.’” As Yares points out, We Love Philly, which was featured on the cover of Grid’s December issue, used Ying during four events in the fall of 2021 at the La Placita flea market in Fairhill and in Germantown to do child tax credit and vaccine outreach. We Love Philly requested for the nonprofit Pheed Philly to make care packages during the events. Then Pheed Philly requested We Love Philly students to make care packages at one of their own events. “We already are asking each other for favors in the nonprofit world,” Carlos Aponte, executive director of We Love Philly, explains. “But Ying puts those favor requests on a platform so we can keep track of those exchanges to see each other’s skills, opportunities and make sure we’re keeping the exchanges fair.” There are already over 350 users and 30 skill sharing groups on Ying, even though they will formally launch on January 17 on Martin Luther King Jr. Day by installing a mural in Germantown with the help of artist Marcos Santini and Ying volunteers. Why MLK Day for the launch? Ballard shares, “Like Dr. King’s dream, the sense of a beloved community showing up as a united front to create a culture that is more connected and cares is what fuels the mission.” ◆ Ying is available on Apple and Android. Join with the code “skillsharingfamily.” JAN UARY 20 22 G R I DP HILLY.COM 21

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GROUND WORK

Temple grad starts seed keeping business, honoring their cultural significance for farmers of color story by jenny roberts

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mirah mitchell has known she wanted to be a farmer since she was a 14-year-old intern with The Food Project, a Massachusetts-based nonprofit devoted to building sustainable food systems. “That’s kind of when I caught the farming bug,” Mitchell, now 29, says. “Something about working with the land felt really healing for me.” In her newest farming venture, Mitchell is creating her own enterprise called Sistah Seeds, focused on seed production of West African, Afro-Caribbean and AfricanAmerican heirloom vegetables and grains. “I think it’s important to reclaim those seeds for our own communities,” Mitchell says. “My goal is to really be supplying farmers of color with their seed needs.” Mitchell is a former Fairmount resident who graduated from Temple University with a bachelor’s degree in horticulture in 2021. In order to start Sistah Seeds, Mitchell moved about 50 miles north of the city to the Lehigh Valley last month. There, she’ll produce crops at The Seed Farm, an incubator farm in Emmaus in Lehigh County, that offers a shared piece of farmland, rental equipment and a community of other farmers. “I’m going to start with some crops that are really important to me,” Mitchell says. “And I’m then going to ask the farmers that I’m building community with what foods are important to them and grow those.” In her farming, Mitchell will prioritize regenerative agricultural techniques, such as cover cropping and composting, with the goal of maintaining and rebuilding land health. And when it comes to her crop selection, Mitchell will focus on growing crops that are not common in a Johnny’s Selected Seeds catalog, she says. With Sistah Seeds, Mitchell will be looking to explore both 24 GRID P H IL LY.CO M JA NUA RY 20 22

photography by drew dennis

wholesale and retail opportunities in the national seed market. To get her business off the ground, Mitchell started a GoFundMe in October with the goal of raising $32,000 to cover startup costs, such as purchasing supplies and equipment, and to allow herself a small salary during her first year of farming. “Seed farming actually requires that you wait almost a year until you can begin marketing the product,” she says. “So there’s a much longer wait to return on your investment.” As of December, Mitchell surpassed her $32,000 goal, but people can continue to do-

Amirah Mitchell is the founder of Sistah Seeds, a seed keeping venture based in Emmaus. Pictured below: pigeon peas.

nate, she says. Additional funds will be put toward her second year of farming. Owen Taylor, 40, cofounder of Truelove Seeds and Mitchell’s mentor, says Mitchell’s personality is well-suited for the business. “Amirah is so focused on the way things work and the science behind the work and efficiency,” Taylor says. “When she’s on the farm, she has a lot of questions but also a lot of innovations.” Truelove is an heirloom seed company based in Philadelphia, with a farm in Glen Mills, Delaware County. Mitchell started out at Truelove Seeds as an apprentice and has worked at the company for the past four years, learning the art and science of keeping seeds. “She’s just one of the most driven and dedicated people who has come through our apprenticeship program,” Taylor says. Mitchell also closed out her time in Philadelphia by working with Greensgrow Farms in Kensington and leading the urban farm’s fellowship program on seed keeping. “Seed keeping is the practice of saving seeds from plants, along with the stories and cultural practices that accompany them,” Mitchell explains. “It differs from the act of

seed saving, which is harvesting seeds from the plant, in that you are also preserving the stories, the traditions, the rituals, the foodways that accompany those seeds.” Mitchell mentored eight fellows from throughout the city, teaching them about practical farming topics, such as botany and

pollination. She also discussed the politics of seeds with the fellows and encouraged them to share stories about their familial connection to certain crops. “Having the ability to mentor others and have them learn about seeds and gain that connection with their own cultural crop is

My goal is to really be supplying farmers of color with their seed needs.” — a mirah mitchell , founder of Sistah Seeds

really about just continuing that transfer of knowledge,” Mitchell says. The fellowship ran from March to November 2021 and culminated in the creation of a seed library at Greengrow for the community to access seeds and share their own. Mitchell says there were many backgrounds represented in the fellowship, including Filipino, Korean and Jamaican ancestry. These cultures all informed the crops the fellows grew, she says. Fellow Deja Morgan, 24, of West Philly, says seed keeping encouraged her to preserve her lineage as a Black person. Throughout the program, she learned more about her own family history, specifically that her great-grandfather was a talented rice grower. “In agriculture, the histories of Black and Brown people are obviously washed away and people are not recognized,” Morgan says. “I just really appreciate that throughout this fellowship, [Mitchell] specifically made it a priority to make sure we were focusing on the stories and the histories and the legacies of the seeds we were growing.” Morgan grew speckled brown butter beans, along with other crops, including bitter melon, which she grew alongside fellow Amanda Chan, 28, of Center City. Chan says the fellowship allowed her to connect to her family’s Chinese culture and their passion for growing. “I was sending pictures to my grandparents and my dad, and I was seeing that they got excited,” she says. “This is such a core joy for them.” Mitchell herself has experienced greater connection to her family through growing cultural crops, she says, specifically the green striped cushaw squash that was also grown by her great-grandfather. “That is a crop that I will always continue to grow for that reason,” Mitchell explains, “because it’s part of my family story.” Mitchell will grow the cushaw, as well as watermelon, okra, collard greens and black eyed peas in Emmaus. While the road to harvesting seeds from these vegetables will be long, Mitchell says she enjoys the journey. “I love having to exercise grit and perseverance in order to manifest something as wonderful as a seed.” ◆ To learn more or donate, Google “sistah seeds gofundme.” JAN UARY 20 22 G R I DP HI LLY.COM 25

FASHION FORWARD With the addition of Fabscrap, Philly’s textile industry moves closer to circularity story by samantha wittchen

ordan haddad sat in his 1,800 square-foot studio in South Philly’s BOK. The waste was piling up. His local sustainable fashion company, Lobo Mau, had been saving fabric scraps from all of the clothing it designed and produced, but by summer 2021 the storage bins were at capacity. “We ask the manufacturers to save scraps from producing our clothes for us, and we use them to make one-off pieces,” Haddad says of his zero-waste, slow fashion company. Lobo Mau is an outlier in the world of fashion. Design houses typically overbuy textiles to create the next season’s styles and then trash yards of unused fabric when the process is over. More waste is then produced in the production process. The same issues repeat themselves in the home goods industry, and the net result is an enormous textile waste problem. “As we learned about the waste problem in the fashion industry, we wanted to better ourselves each year and focus on sustainability,” Haddad explains. But while Lobo Mau is breaking this cycle within its own business, another player new to Philadelphia is aiming to solve this problem on a larger scale. Fabscrap, a Brooklyn-based nonprofit, collects pre-consumer textile waste that hasn’t yet been turned into garments or other finished goods from businesses and individuals. It then sorts the textiles for reuse and downcycles the rest. At its first operation in New York, the organization picks up roughly 6,000 pounds of textiles a week from a host of brands, including Philly-based Urban Outfitters.

26 GRID P H I L LY.CO M JA NUA RY 2022

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photography by drew dennis

Urban had been working with Fabscrap for almost three years when talks began to expand Fabscrap’s role from just a recycling partner to helping Urban generate change in the industry beyond its own operations. “They wanted to expand their sustainability efforts,” says Lindsey Troop, regional manager for Fabscrap Philadelphia. Urban offered them a working capital grant to help them open a Philly location and to provide operating funds for their first two years, and Fabscrap accepted.

organizations and recycling logistics companies coming together to tackle this problem in a coordinated way to accelerate this work. Eleanor Turner, founder of zero-waste clothing basics brand The Big Favorite, agrees. “The interest in textile recycling right now in Philly is incredible,” says Turner, whose company designs its products, primarily T-shirts and underwear, for circularity and takes back garments for recycling at the end of their life. “It’s like the universe

It’s like the universe said, ‘Okay, we have everyone we need here. Let’s make it happen in Philly.’” — e leanor turner, founder of The Big Favorite Fabscrap arrives in Philly at an auspicious time. Philadelphia’s textile recycling movement has been brewing in fits and starts for years. Now the movement seems poised to shift the local textile system to a circular one that designs out waste, keeps textiles in use for longer periods and recycles end-of-life materials into new ones. As director of programs and operations at Circular Philadelphia, a non-profit focused on advancing the circular economy in the region, I see this shift happen first hand, and it’s exciting. Even a year ago, there was no collective effort to advance textile recycling in the region. Now I see brands, reuse

said, ‘Okay, we have everyone we need here. Let’s make it happen in Philly.’” Fabscrap officially opened the doors to its Philadelphia location in BOK, in the former vocational school’s cafeteria, on November 15, America Recycles Day. In the light-filled, 6,800-square-foot space, volunteers and staff alike sort textiles. Staff also operate a fabric resale store that’s open to the public by appointment. By the end of November, 86 volunteers had already helped sort through about 5,300 pounds of pre-consumer textiles, and 153 shoppers had bought almost 1,000 pounds of reclaimed fabric at its “fabric thrift shop.” Fabrics range in cost based on how

Lindsey Troop is the regional manager for Fabscrap Philadelphia.

JAN UARY 20 22 G R I DP HI LLY.COM 27

Volunteers and staff at Fabscrap help sort collected textiles based on their fiber composition.

quality, but the shop has fabrics at all price points—cheaper than what you’d pay retail. There is even a “pay-what-you-wish” bin. Volunteers who sort get the perk of free fabric from Fabscrap, five pounds for each three-hour sorting session. It’s a great way for students and new designers on a budget to get high-quality fabric at low- or no-cost. Kimberly McGlonn, founder and CEO of zero-waste fashion brand Grant Blvd and Fabscrap’s inaugural featured Philly designer, believes that this expanded access to reclaimed fabrics removes a roadblock for local designers and brands with a desire to become more sustainable. “I think one barrier has been ease of access, and having Fabscrap here makes it easier for home sewists and brands to think about their supply chains in more climate positive ways,” says McGlonn. Fabscrap’s sorting process works like this. Bags filled with textiles from customers—the organization accepts donations from both corporations or individuals—arrive at its facility, which Troop then weighs and labels with each brand’s unique identification number. Volunteers then sort the contents of 28 GRID P H IL LY.CO M JA NUA RY 20 22

individual bags at one of 16 sorting stations. Textiles made solely of wool, cotton or polyester are separated, and anything with spandex in it is set aside. Any materials in good condition that measure a half-yard or more are sold in the thrift shop area. Once a bag is sorted, Fabscrap weighs each category of material and logs the data. Since 2016, Fabscrap has worked with 550 fashion, interior design and entertainment

the data front and center.” The conventional lack of transparency has held back true textile recycling for a long time. It is often difficult for people in the industry— let alone consumers—to determine what actually happens to textiles that have reached the end of their life and can’t be reused. It’s something Karyn Gerred, executive director of The Resource Exchange, a Kensington creative reuse center that ac-

Volunteers who sort get the perk of free fabric from Fabscrap, five pounds for each three-hour sorting session. brands to collect their unwanted textiles and provide data back to the brands about what types of waste they’ve generated and what happened to it. Troop says that in an industry that’s notoriously opaque about production and waste practices, Fabscrap is transparent. “We’re letting the industry know what we have and exactly what we’re doing with it,” says Troop. “We put transparency and

cepts non-clothing textiles, describes as a shipping container-sized problem. There’s a portion of the textiles her organization receives in donations that can’t be resold because they’re too low quality or made of fibers that people just don’t want (mostly polyester or polyester blend). Since she can’t follow these undesirable textiles through the chain of custody after they leave her facility, she cannot be sure

they’re not dumped somewhere in the Global South (as was revealed in November to be happening in the Atacama Desert in Chile). She’s been storing them in a shipping container until there’s a solution she can trust. It’s less than ideal, and she’s running out of space with no good solution on the horizon. Currently, Fabscrap sends anything that can’t be reused to a textile downcycler that shreds the textiles into a product known as shoddy, a fluffy pile of fibers used for insulation and mattress stuffing. The downcycler can accept any fiber content, except spandex. Fabscrap would prefer to send these textiles to a recycling facility that could turn them back into fibers suitable for weaving into new fabrics, but there are only a handful of these fiber-to-fiber recycling facilities scattered across the country, and Troop says they can’t handle Fabscrap’s volume. While Fabscrap continues to sort and keep data on the single fiber content textiles it receives in the hopes of one day sending them somewhere they can be turned back into new textiles, that still leaves the problem of everything else—the mixed-fiber textiles that can’t be turned back into new textiles and continue to grow in market share because they’re often cheaper for brands to produce. “The difficulty is with mixed-fiber textiles, like polyester and spandex and all of those things that are made with fossil fuels,” explains The Resource Exchange’s Gerred. “The nature of these materials prevents them from being recycled into useful materials. They are downcycled.” And while Fabscrap cofounder Camille Tagle says she’s confident Fabscrap’s shredder actually creates insulation from its mixed-fiber waste because they’ve provided samples of the insulation they make for use in Fabscrap’s educational programs, many shredding facilities are relatively opaque about their operations. That lack of transparency has been a major motivator for Kabira Stokes, CEO of Retrievr, a residential clothing and home textile collection company (which also collects electronics) contracted by Fabscrap to collect textile waste from businesses. Stokes came from a decade in the e-waste industry, where she says there are laws in place that allow end-of-life tracking to make the chain of custody of a product’s

disposition transparent. “There is none of that in textile recycling. The moment it leaves our warehouse, we lose any sense of transparency because there is no system for that tracking,” laments Stokes. Shocked by this lack of transparency, Stokes decided to bring more of the disposition process in-house. She identified that sorting was the first step to gaining control, and having an industrial-scale, post-consumer, textile-waste sorting facility in the region would fill in a gap in getting to textile circularity. In November, Retrievr conducted a sorting pilot with the help of Columbia University Business School students who developed a portable, hand-held device using spectrometer technology to identify the

component fibers of textiles. The sort revealed that Retrievr could recycle 60% of the non-rewearable garments and other textiles it collects through existing fiber-to-fiber recycling technology. The rest must be downcycled. Stokes plans to scale up Retrievr’s sorting capabilities, but to get to full circularity, she believes the region needs a textile recycling or shredding facility. Currently, the closest shredder is the one that Fabscrap partners with on Long Island. The next closest is in North Carolina. Stokes has considered adding a shredder to Retrievr’s operations, but so far she can’t find a way to make it economically feasible. Shredding is a low-margin business, and according to Stokes, the market is currently saturated with an oversupply of shoddy.

The Philadelphia

TEXTILE RECYCLING ECOSYSTEM CONSUMER Pre-Consumer Collection (Retrievr) (The Resource Exchange)

Production (Lobo Mau) (The Big Favorite) (Grant Blvd.) (Cut & Sew manufacturers)

Design (Lobo Mau) (The Big Favorite) (Grant Blvd.) (Design schools, i.e. Drexel)

Pre-Consumer Sorting (The Resource Exchange) (Fabscrap)

Post-Consumer Reuse (The Resource Exchange) (Consignment shops) (Thrift stores) (Resellers)

Pre-Consumer Reuse (Fabscrap) (The Resource Exchange)

Post-Consumer Collection (The Resource Exchange) (Retrievr) (Thrift stores) (Resellers)

Post-Consumer Sorting (Retrievr) (The Resource Exchange) (Thrift stores) (Resellers)

RECYCLING • Fiber-to-ﬁber (not in Philly) • Chemical (not in Philly)

DOWNCYCLING • Shoddy, rags (not in Philly)

JAN UARY 20 22 G R I DP HI LLY.COM 29

That’s where the Textile Recycling Task Force comes in. Led by Rachel Mednick of All Together Now PA and composed of representatives from Fabscrap, Retrievr, The Resource Exchange, The Big Favorite, Circular Philadelphia and Philadelphia’s Office of Sustainability, it’s a who’s who of players in the textile circularity space. Together they are spearheading the collection of better data on what currently happens to unwanted textiles in Philly with the goal of attracting a textile recycling facility to the region. The City of Philadelphia’s 2017 Residential Waste Composition Study—its most recent—showed that residents discarded 31,577 tons of textiles, or slightly more than 5% of Philly’s residential waste, that year. That’s 40 pounds of textiles per Philadelphian. The number doesn’t account for pre-consumer textile waste produced commercially by designers or manufacturers, and it doesn’t include figures for preand post-consumer waste that’s donated to reuse organizations or thrift stores. To get better data, the task force launched a survey for residents in and around Philly

A Fabscrap sorter holds a fabric sample.

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to provide information on how much clothing and other textiles they dispose of each year as well as how they dispose of it. They will similarly be surveying designers and reuse/resale organizations to collect information about the waste they generate. “The data collection piece is huge,” says Mednick. “We know we have a problem, but we don’t know exactly how big that problem is.” After quantifying the scale of the issue, she adds, it’s about building the infrastructure to rehome, reuse and then recycle. While a recycling facility fills a critical circular infrastructure gap, Mednick cautions that we need better reuse systems in place too, to rehome textiles on a large scale. Organizations like Fabscrap and The Resource Exchange help fill this role, but Mednick is quick to point out that we still have huge gaps in dealing with postconsumer waste. Turner also sees gaps in expertise when it comes to turning recycled fibers back into fabrics locally. “Combing, carding, respinning–we need the people who hold the knowledge to help set this up,” she says. She also argues that we need more investment. Stokes agrees.

“We don’t understand the economics of this yet,” says Stokes. “Who is ultimately going to pay for this? What is the sustainable business model here?” Still, Mednick is optimistic that Philly is at a point where it can fill these gaps. “We have organizations coming in that make the logistics of textile recycling more feasible. It shows that Philly is finally taking textile recycling seriously,” she says. Indeed, Retrievr’s plan to sort post-consumer textiles in the Philadelphia area plugs one of those gaps in the system. Brands like The Big Favorite and Grant Blvd fill another role. In addition to operating a take-back program for their garments, The Big Favorite is working with other brands to help them design garments for circularity. Ultimately, they’ll even help those brands with the actual recycling. “It looks like a lot of conversations right now,” says Turner. “But we will start aggregating cotton garments here in Philly to make sure they’re baled to go to mechanical fiber-to-fiber recycling facilities.” Grant Blvd sources reclaimed fabrics from within 25 miles of Philadelphia for all of the garments it designs and produces. This allows the business to bypass the global textile supply chain and its massive contributions to climate change. “Global supply chains are really anti what’s good for the planet,” says McGlonn. She adds that Grant Blvd’s hyperlocal operations also allows the business to use fashion as a vehicle for educating consumers on the unethical nature of the global supply chain. “We often overlook lands that have been colonized and the burden that has been placed on them to maintain these supply chains,” McGlonn says. “I’m interested in making sure we’re centering sustainability conversations around conversations about ethics.” Another key piece of getting to textile circularity is enacting policies that support circular practices, something that Circular Philadelphia is well-positioned to advocate for.

Both Stokes and Turner think that extended producer responsibility (EPR) and disclosure laws that require brands to take responsibility for the textiles they’re putting into the world are important for advancing a circular textile system. Statewide, there are opportunities to ban textiles from landfills, like Massachusetts will do beginning in November 2022. The last piece of the puzzle–and possibly the most confounding one–is how to change the habits of individuals, designers and brands to curb consumption and overproduction. Gerred believes that consumers need to better understand how the downcycling process actually works. She says that for too long the message from clothing donation organizations and major brands that offer textile “recycling” led consumers to believe incorrectly that once they drop off their unwanted textiles, they truly are reused or recycled. The problem is that’s not true. While high-quality clothing donated to thrift organizations typically finds a new home domestically, low-quality fast fashion and clothing with stains or holes in it is downcycled for rags or shoddy or shipped overseas to become a developing country’s waste problem. “As long as the perception exists that when you recycle your sweater, it gets turned into a new sweater, we can’t solve this problem,” argues Gerred. Mednick concurs. “Really the problem is overconsumption, and until we solve that problem, we can’t solve the overarching waste problem,” she says. As does McGlonn.

“We need to find a way to medicate the consumptive addiction of society,” argues the Grant Blvd founder. “We need to resist this idea that we should get what we want immediately when we want it. If we don’t make that shift, then I feel less optimistic about us as a collective to slow down climate change.” Lobo Mau is tackling the issue of overconsumption head-on by encouraging customers to buy less. “We’re succeeding if customers are coming to us for an investment piece that they’ll cherish for years and are only doing that every so often,” says Haddad. His company plans to achieve full circularity by implementing a take-back program and then shredding down those clothes and the fabric scraps in their overflowing bins for use in a new line of home decor and soft home products they’ll be launching soon. Beyond educating consumers, Fabscrap believes education should extend to designers and brands, and they run programs in partnership with design schools like Drexel University to educate students about the waste that is produced in the design process. “The program we have with Drexel is the perfect way to challenge them to use what already exists and integrate techniques like zero-waste patterning,” says Fabscrap co-founder Tagle, who leads educational programming. “These are techniques they then can take with them into industry and have the experience to implement those options.” In their educational programs for brands, they dive deep into what happens when they recycle with Fabscrap so that brands can make better decisions knowing what happens at the end of their product’s lifecycle. Getting brands on board with designing

for end-of-life recycling is integral to making it easier for consumers to do their part. “It’s really hard for residents to act responsibly when it comes to disposing of textiles,” says Helena Rudoff, waste reduction programs lead for Philadephia’s Office of Sustainability. “But collective action really does matter.” She says that Philadelphia residents can take action by contacting councilmembers to ask for pilot programs that focus on textile waste and better data collection. They can also contact brands they like and ask them to implement take-back programs. Collective action may be what saves us from our crushing textile waste problem and gets us to a truly circular system that combats climate change. Each organization that touches textiles in some way has a role to play, be it design, production, collection, sorting, reuse, recycling or education. Every individual has a part, too, from changing consumption habits to advocating for circular practices and laws that support circularity. It remains to be seen how quickly Philadelphia can make this transition, but there is reason to believe that we will get there. Even though there is still a lot to do, a core group is working on textile circularity with the skills and passion to make it happen. As McGlonn puts it: “There’s so much work to be done that having one more large organization committed to and working towards change in the region is something we should be celebrating.” With Fabscrap’s expansion to Philly, one more piece of the puzzle falls into place and the future of the region’s textile system begins to take shape. From a distance, it looks like a circle. ◆

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