Behavior Changes + Associated Costs What are you willing to do?

This week’s Untangling Circularity features everywhere , who make 100% recycled cotton basics, and Green Matters Natural Dye Company ,who overdye garments and fabric to keep them in use. They both have direct-to-consumer offerings: you can buy items on Everywhere’s website, and you can send in items to be overdyed with Green Matters.

This has me thinking about the costs related to buying responsibly and extending the lives of our favorite garments.

Category 1: Things I’m used to buying and have lots of options to choose from. I can choose what level of sustainability I want to pay for.

An Everywhere 100% recycled cotton t-shirt is $28. Would you pay this for a new cotton t-shirt? I think the likelihood of saying ‘yes’ to this question depends heavily on the person’s understanding of the garment supply chain. If you understand that this t-shirt is made from no virgin materials, but rather all recycled cotton textiles, it really puts that $28 in a different and more favorable light (for me personally).

For some people, $28 is right on target for a new t-shirt. For others it’s high, and for some it’s low. A comparable t-shirt from the Gap is $30 and at Old Navy it’s $13. Walmart’s hyped Made in the USA t-shirt is $15. So let’s say for most people, $28 is on the higher end for a t-shirt.

The t-shirt represents a basic item that most of us wear a lot, washing dozens of times, stain, rip, etc, and therefore buy multiple times per year, which I’m sure would also factor into the pricing decision.

Where I personally land on this is wanting to see the recycled garment marketed really well (tell me the story and why it matters), and I’d like to see the product differentiated in some way so it actually looks different than a conventional white t-shirt. I think the spread of the price differential matters a ton- if it’s less than a $5 difference, I’d be willing to pay for the recycled t-shirt, but if it’s a huge difference it makes the decision harder to justify. (Another marketing comment here: the Old Navy customer probably wouldn’t be willing to purchase the Everywhere shirt, where the Gap customer probably would consider it.)

Category 2: Exploring new behaviors and services to extend the life of a garment or item I want to keep using.

With Green Matters Natural Dye Company, you can have a garment or textile overdyed with natural dyes to make it feel new again, and likely hide some wear, tear and staining accumulated over the years. The ‘refresh my linens’ package caught my eye as a great example of extending the life of my high-quality linen sheets as their color starts to feel boring and faded. I particularly like their “Dye lot of the month” offering where they have rotating colors that you can opt into. It costs $35 to have an item overdyed in the color of the month. To maybe state the obvious, you’d have to really love something and it would have to be super high quality to put this extra money and effort into keeping it going. You’ll have to purchase the service, send your item in, wait a couple of weeks and receive it back. It’s not a quick fix. A lot of us just replace something when we stain it, and depending on the item, $35 might be more than we paid for it originally. BUT for something that you love, that you actually wear year after year, feels like you and fits great, I think it’s well worth the investment. They also have a “natural black” option for those of us who are more comfortable in dark neutrals most of the time. (That used to be me…. but I’ve since tried to eliminate black from my closet!)

To choose this overdye option, we have to fight the well-worn paths in our brains to just replace the thing. We have to go against societal norms and decide to invest in keeping the garment going by overdying it instead of replacing it. I underline this because I believe that the societal norms of replacing and buying everything new are the biggest hurdle we have to creating a more circular economy. (I struggle with this myself.)

An Idea Before You Go- Your Personal Clothing Longevity System

For those of us who love a cotton t-shirt, you could commit to buying super-sustainable/circular t-shirts, and as those shirts become dirtier, you could choose to have them overdyed (or overdye them yourself), or maybe better to cover the stains, tie-dyed. You could keep tie-dying them until they were really too dirty or non-functional, at which point they could become rags for your cleaning purposes or even patches for other cotton garments. This could be an ongoing clothing longevity system. I’m not really a white t-shirt person, but now I’m thinking about how I could create my own personal clothing longevity systems!

Have a great week,

Cynthia