The consequences of the rush - Discarded opportunities

Fabrics and clothes impact the environment throughout their life cycle. The film talks about the environmental impact of the fast fashion industry: how the material gathered from the cotton field goes through the manufacturing cycle, how the craze of over-consumption makes people bring home more clothes from retail stores than they could ever need in their lifetime, which will travel on to a warehouse and often end up as landfill waste. What will happen next? The interviews help to understand the opportunities of material reuse for textile waste from manufacturing and discuss sustainable design, smart solutions and values. In the interviews, expert commentaries are given by an ethnologist, a designer and a creator of ‘trash-to-trend’ ideas. The installation environment used in the film was created with school students in the museum’s Participation Hall / DIY Gallery, where the young people analysed what is an ecological footprint, supply chain, sustainable waste handling and the possible new textile strategy for Europe.

The film relates to other objects on the digital platform: (1) T-Shirt – recycling and upcycling possibilities, such as the T-shirts from the Estonian XXVI Song Festival ‘Touched by Time. The Time to Touch’ in 2014. (2) The Recycled Dress from the permanent exhibition Encounters as an example of smart haute couture.