Seneca’s New Dumpster Dive exhibition tries to encourage students to donate most of their unused clothing rather than throw them away. The exhibition started at the beginning of the semester after Professor Sabine Weber and her students decided to collaborate with Seneca’s website, Sustainable Seneca. The Fashion Department professor started this initiative with her students to show changing your clothing style doesn’t mean you need to waste what you don’t wear.
“I started this initiative because I wanted people to see just how clothes go into bins and are wasted each year, and these are clothes that you can still wear. They’re perfectly usable and you could just donate it instead” said Weber.
The Dumpster Dive exhibition lasted for a week and students analyzed all of the wasted textile before the new year. For two days students in Weber’s class looked at the material and sorted the clothes from the garbage. They had it cleaned twice, while someone professionally supervised their work so that the material was still wearable.
To showcase some of the work from the fashion department, students put together a collection of the pieces on mannequins. They want to send a message that people are throwing away clothes in good condition.
Marcia Grace, the secretary of the fashion department says students could donate some of the clothes they didn’t want to a bin outside of the boutique store.
“You know this whole thing started when students found so much of unused clothes in dumpsters and there is so much of it that can still be re used. I think that the more that people waste, the more chemicals there actually putting into the air and the more there just polluting the environment” says Grace.
“What Sustainable Seneca is doing, to try and encourage students to conserve rather than waste, is a great thing. I really think that Seneca is trying to reach a goal and I don’t only mean with this, I mean with our donations as well for the Dumpster Dive and were really getting there. My students enjoy this, and they really like what were doing here” says Weber.
All the items that student donated will be given to an organization, but students have until this Friday to still donate anything that’s clean and they don’t want. Any unused clothes will be dropped off at the textile mountain in the cafeteria and students can go the boutique where there will be a box for donations as well.
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