Our Impact
Responsibly re-homing clothing items since 2019
Our impact by count
2021 - 2023
Swapping
700+ unique swappers donated over 4,600+ clothing items & took home 2,600+ “new” items. We estimate our swaps have saved the planet over 2 million gallons of water just from cotton jeans & t-shirts (compared to new production of those items).*
Charitable Donations
1,300+ items donated to vetted charity partners - Thriftish, Integral Care, SAFE, & Val Verde Coalition.
Upcycling
200+ items donated to local up-cyclers Van Sol, Soul Studio, Formula S7 for “new” creations that generate funds for the local economy & divert textile waste.
Waste Diversion
3,800+ items diverted from landfills. We calculate this by assuming donated items to swaps could’ve gone to large donation centers where 84% would’ve been sent to landfills or incenerated.**
Sources:
*According to Textile Exchange, “to make a pair of jeans, conventional cotton would take 9,910 gallons of water…”and “to produce [a t-shirt], conventional cotton would use 2,168 gallons of water…” [SourceJournal]. Instead of demanding new production, we’ve received over ~375 cotton t-shirts and jeans that have been swapped or responsibly re-homed.
**According to the EPA, “84 percent of our clothing ends up in landfills and incinerators” [Reader’s Digest]. We received over 4,600+ items at clothing swap events that were swapped or responsibly rehomed to charities & upcylers.
Our impact by pound
2023 - present
About our impact reporting
Original Method
From Spring 2019 - 2023, our impact reporting method was to count each item received by category with the help of volunteers & self-reporting. These metrics along with vetted resources built our GOOD Reports (posted on Instagram).
We learned a lot along the way, realizing that our impact reporting process was laborious & created a bottleneck for swappers. The truth is that measuring the environmental impact of clothing without knowing its full history is extremely difficult and an industry-wide issue. We decided to pivot in Summer 2023.
Current Method
To align with the EPA & City of Austin’s waste diversion metrics, our latest impact reporting method is to weigh donated clothing items by pounds (lbs). We are still fine-tuning this process and seeking analytics support from our community.