Swapping fast fashion for climate solutions
Ulwiana Mehta-Malhotra arranging items for a clothing swap. Photo by Maia Rayner
By Patricia Lane & Ulwiana Mehta-Malhotra
Ulwiana Mehta-Malhotra keeps clothing out of landfills and helps students stay hopeful. This 18-year-old from North Vancouver inspires highschool students to trade fast fashion for thrift shops and clothes swaps, and provides a newsletter that spreads good news about climate solutions.
Tell us about your projects.
Climate Conscious helps students understand the good they can do by resisting purchasing new clothes and donating what they donβt wear or need. Most of us in Canada have too many clothes. Globally, 85 per cent of all textiles go into landfills each year. Once students learn, there are easy ways to reduce the environmental damage caused by fast fashion, they often want to help.
I also help run Hope4Climate, providing middle and highschool students with good news stories about the environment and making it easy to add their own.
How did you get into these projects?
During the pandemic, I noticed how much food our household diverted from the landfill by composting, but realized we didnβt do it at school. When the lockdown ended, I started my middle schoolβs first classroom composting program. This got me thinking about other waste.
I attended a talk by a speaker from Family Services North Vancouver who said they needed clothes for teenagers. I looked for reasons to persuade my fellow students to donate their gently-used clothing and learned about the environmental damage from fast fashion. The combination of meeting immediate needs and helping with a global problem resonated with many, and we filled 20 boxes just from my own school! I gave talks to students in environmental clubs and assemblies in 15 other schools and built a website to spread the information. Hundreds of boxes of clothes have been kept out of the landfill and many young people in our community have more of their clothing needs met.