ASHEVILLE, N.C. — When you think of recycling, you likely think of plastic, glass and paper, not clothing. It is, however, what North Carolina designer Leanna Echeverri, thinks of. She makes new garments out of clothes she found at thrift stores.
It all started when she was growing up, her mom and grandma would take her thrift shopping, but it became a way to sustainably create fashion and help the environment.
Now, she's teaming up with Goodwill Industries in time for Earth Day - to promote reducing, reusing, and recycling clothes.
"I don't know on what level people understand, like you could take a deep dive with what happens when you're producing say cotton, for instance, even just producing cotton to create it and make fibers to turn it into fabric they use a lot of really toxic things and all that stuff ends up in our environment," Echeverri said.
According to a 2020 Fashion On Climate report - the industry produced more than 2 billion tonnes of greenhouse gas emissions two years ago, about 4% of the global total.
Sara Butner with Goodwill says small changes, like buying secondhand, can make a big difference.
"You can make such a big impact," Butner said. "The small changes, the resources that are used to make something new, but we also don't think about the packaging in the shipping involved in when you're purchasing something new."