Instead of buying new fabric for your upcoming project, consider upcycling a bed sheet; reusing linens is both cost-effective and eco-friendly and to help you out, we’ve rounded up 10 awesome ideas for using and/or re-using bed linens.   10. One of the most economical things to do with bedsheets is to make curtains. Fabric can be pricey. So can commercially-made curtains. But by using bedsheets, you can save green while going green. You don’t even need to know how to sew...

Jigsaw is a London-based clothing company with a message: Clothing is for life, not landfill. “We design and create products for life, not just for a season,” their website states. In their Fall/Winter 2015 ad campaign, they juxtapose older used clothing and accessories (borrowed from actual customers) with new pieces from their collection. A new blazer with an older sweater underneath. A new dress with an older purse. Even more interesting are the vignettes that accompany...

The Space Needle has been a fixture on the Seattle skyline for more than 50 years. Its concrete foundation reaches 30 feet underground and weighs 5850 tons (11,700,000 lbs). The needle structure stands 605 feet tall and weighs 3700 tons (7,400,000 lbs). But there is something in Seattle that weighs more than four times as much as the Space Needle. Your used clothing. Approximately 39,464 tons (78,928,000 lbs) of used clothing and textiles are disposed in King County, Washington (Seattle...

Each of us discards (on average) 80 lbs of used clothing per year, adding up to a staggering 25 billion pounds of used clothing for the entire population of the United States–every year! To put it mildly, that is not good. And so, in this world where clothing is increasingly devalued and treated as a disposable commodity, it’s refreshing to be reminded that each of us has an emotional connection to the clothes we wear; memories and feelings seem to be hidden inside the very fibers...

Artist Derick Melander creates large, impressive art installations with meticulously folded and formed pieces of used clothing. The one below is called “Drift” and was created for the No Waste/Zero Waste exhibit at Columbia College in Chicago in 2011. The exhibit promoted “awareness about the temporal nature of fashion,” and helped “to produce sustainable design opportunities that can bring some balance to the system.”   “Drift” stands...