Teens in Nigeria’s largest city are recycling trash into fashion for a runway called a “Trashion Show.” The show was created to help raise awareness and fight pollution.

Source: africanews/YouTube

Chinedu Mogbo, the founder of Greenfingers Wildlife Initiative, said that the initiative is helping recycle as many plastics as possible. The organization is helping teens do the runway show in Lagos. Lagos has a population of more than 15 million and generates 12,000 metric tons of waste each day, according to authorities.

The Greenfingers Wildlife Initiative is organizing trash clean-ups in communities, and the plastic litter is then being transformed into fabrics for the show.

The fashion industry has a large carbon footprint and accounts for 10 percent of global human-emitted greenhouse gasses. The environmental impacts of the fashion industry are, in addition to the numerous human rights concerns regarding the treatment of textile workers in factories across the globe.

Movements toward biodegradable fashion are pushing for environmentally-friendly dyes and alternative fabrics that do not take hundreds of years to decompose. Comprehensive changes in the fast fashion industry can help end sweatshops and exploitation work practices, heal the health and environments of communities where garments are produced, and also aid the global fight in mitigating climate change.

We need to preserve our planet! 13 million tons of clothes end up in our landfills and fast fashion has changed the way that we think about clothes. It’s always best to recycle clothes and go to second-hand or thrift stores when looking for new clothing. The recent boom in secondhand clothing is reducing fashion’s impact on the planet and showing that secondhand shoppers are eco-conscious and savvy, not just “hipsters”!

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• The Future of Fashion is Circular. Here’s What You Need to Know!

Easy Ways to Help the Planet:

• Eat Less Meat: Download Food Monster, the largest plant-based Recipe app on the App Store to help reduce your environmental footprint, save animals and get healthy. You can also buy a hard or soft copy of our favorite vegan cookbooks.
• Reduce Your Fast Fashion Footprint: Take the initiative by standing up against fast fashion Pollution and supporting sustainable and circular brands like Tiny Rescue that are raising awareness around important issues through recycled zero-waste clothing designed to be returned and remade over and over again.
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• Do What You Can: Reduce waste, plant trees, eat local, travel responsibly, reuse stuff, say no to single-use plastics, recycle, vote smart, switch to cold water laundry, divest from fossil fuels, save water, shop wisely, Donate if you can, grow your own food, volunteer, conserve energy, compost, and don’t forget about the microplastics and microbeads lurking in common household and personal care products!