Reusing, recycling and upcycling of clothes is gradually increasing in Malta as people become more environmentally aware, according to green activists.
People tend to try to sell their old clothes online instead of simply throwing them away, said a spokesperson from Fashion Revolution Malta.
“There’s also a growing number of artisans who centre their small business around upcycling, people who make scrunchies from recycled material, people who paint on second-hand clothes. When people buy second-hand, recycled, or upcycled clothing they tend to get excited about that garment’s history and its uniqueness. That, in itself, is becoming trendy.”
Mark Schembri, one of the founding members of Facebook Page Recycle Malta (Free Items Only), which has 63,000 members, said: “On my page, clothes never stop showing up. In my opinion, recycling is big… some use clothes for a few months and then give them away.”
Schembri thinks the trend of people donating clothes had picked up before the coronavirus pandemic.
According to a recent study carried out by SaveOnEnergy.com/uk as people spent time indoors during the pandemic, many took the opportunity to reorganise their wardrobes, resulting in an increased interest in clothes recycling.
The study showed that one of the positives of the pandemic was a change in attitude toward old textiles and how we recycle clothes. It looked at how 27 EU countries ran Google searches like “clothes recycling” in the last 30 days.
The highest was Ireland where 12,670 people Googled ‘how to recycle old clothes’. This was followed by high search results in Germany and the Netherlands.
At the other end of the scale there was Luxembourg, Slovenia, and Slovakia. Malta also ranked among the lowest.
But people in Malta might not be resorting to Google to help recycle their clothes.
Fashion Revolution Malta said that, over the past few months, new accounts around upcycling and second-hand clothes that have been set up.
“We’ve seen some people creating masks from recycled materials,” she said.
“There is a growing interest, but potentially it centres around the environmentally-conscious crowd. We hope to see it continue to grow among other demographics too,” she said, adding that one had to be aware of the distinction between recycling and upcycling.
Upcycling reuses discarded objects or materials to create a product of a higher quality of value. Recycling is when waste goes back into production and is transformed into a reusable material that can be transformed into a completely different item. Using second-hand clothing is considered reusing.