UPCYCLING

If you follow the Farm Shmarm page then you know I love to upcycle.  And it's not because I'm a hipster or anything.  It's because upcycling is awesome!  What is upcycling, you ask?  Well upcycling is turning anything previously used and no longer wanted in its current form, into something new.  For instance you can make old pallets into this:

                            
Or this:
 
Or this:

Burnt out bulbs become:

And this: 

 

 And so on...

I love this for so many reasons.  I believe the creativity knows no bounds when it comes to playing with unwanted items.  It's a lot cheaper than going out and buying newly manufactured materials.  It keeps trash out of our ridiculous dumps.  Not to mention it doesn't add to that crazy island of trash floating in the Pacific...

The main way I choose to upcycle is through clothing.  I am no fashionista, but I do love putting on an awesome outfit every now and then.  I can't afford anything that I like.  I go to used clothing shops, but they still want $20-$30 a skirt.  I get it, they have overhead costs, but I don't want to spend that kind of cash when I can get a skirt at Salvation Army for $2.  However, most of the stuff I like doesn't really end up there, so what do I do?  Take this skirt, that skirt and a sweater, combine them with my sewing machine and viola! A skirt I love!

I don't believe that anyone should have to spend a decent portion of their cash flow on new clothes when there are so many clothes out there, ready to be worn for a fraction of the cost.  And here's what else: I hate the idea that a skirt I could spend $50 on was made by a worker in China making $0.44 per hour.  That's the social justice side.  The environmental side is that the cotton industry is nasty.   You should seriously click on that link to see what I mean.  The GMO cotton is horrific.  It not only destroys the soil and corrupts the local ecology but because of it's inferior growing capabilities it has been linked to massive farmer suicides in India. 

Next you have the textile industry.  Here's a copy and paste about that: The textile industry consumes huge amounts of water during the process of dyeing and printing on fabric, producing a large volume of water wastage. In developing countries such as India, the water wastage often falls into the reservoir of clean drinking water. They contain dyes (indigo, azoic) and heavy metals, bleaches and acids, which are dangerous to animal, fish, birds and human lives (Philp 2005 19).                    Click here to read more.

We can then talk about the cargo ships burning massive amounts of fossil fuel to get the cotton from one part of the world to another.  Then the textiles to the manufacturers.  Then it's all shipped to America.  Oy.  This is so different from when people around sheep wore wool.  And where there are silkworms, there's silk.  And those neat tribal people in Papua New Guinea wearing that grass stuff.

Awesomeness.

Anyway, this whole system is screwy.  And while I can't change the world, I can definitely make small changes in my life, such as buying used clothes and remaking them into funky little things I love.  Like this toddler dress I made from my neighbors sweater:

 

So visit the Farm Shmarm page on this Sunday, January 26th, to see more of my upcycled kid's clothing for sale.  

And here are some ways you can personally improve the world: