The 34,000 lb Art Display Made from Mixed Rags, a blog post by EcoGoodz

Have you ever seen 17 tons of used clothing in the same place? Here’s a little of what it looks like:

Maja Weiss, of the design collective Vetements (pronounced vet-MAHN) created this behemoth art installation for the Copenhagen International Fashion Fair. Of the project, she stated, “Everybody is looking at how clothes are made, from zero to the catwalk, and for me, this was about going in the opposite direction: looking at what happens to clothes when they’re discharged.”(source)

The clothing came from a textile recycling facility called Trasborg, which receives 50 tons of clothing every month. For those of you doing the math, you’re right; that’s roughly 3000 lbs of mixed rags every day. At that rate (of 50 tons per month), they receive 600 tons per year (1.2 million pounds). Do you know what else weighs 600 tons?

The Statue of Liberty is one of the most recognizable of the United States landmarks. Made of copper (now oxidized to its famous green hue), Lady Liberty stands 151 feet tall (from base to torch). Yet even she, in all her grandeur, only weighs a mere 225 tons (450,000). It would take almost three (2.67, to be exact) Statues of Liberty to equal the weight of the used clothing recycled through Trasborg!

The purpose of the “Second Fashion Cycle” installation was to inspire people to think about their relationship with clothing; to think about what happens to it after we’re done with it. We should be just as interested in where it goes at the end of its life as we are in where it began its life.

As a wholesale used clothing company, we, like Weiss are interested in spreading this awareness. Too much clothing is simply discarded as garbage and sent to a landfill. Nearly all the used clothing and shoes in landfills could have been resold, reused, or recycled.