Majority of the conversation around fashion waste revolves around finished products that end up in the landfill. But around 12 % that is around 6.3 million tonnes per year is sent by brands to the landfill in the design and development stage. These would be sample booklets with swatches and unused fabric rolls and prior to Fabscrap they ended up in the landfill. We talk with Jessica Schreiber CEO and founder of FabScrap, a non-profit whose 80% of earned income comes from service fees and fabric sales. They receive service fees from brands to Fabscrap to pick up their textile waste, similar to when they pay for recycling or trash pickup. They do this with an army of volunteers, almost 100 unique ones per month and their staff in Brooklyn and Philadelphia. Their staff take extra precautions to assure brands that their copyrighted materials are shredded and don’t reenter the market. Fabscrap also sells the fabrics to quilters, sewing enthusiasts, fashion students and assuring nothing that is picked up by Fabscrap goes to the landfill. With the long-term goal to influence habit and policy they create impact reports that they share back with their brands - how much and what fabric they picked and how was it sorted and if reused or not. Jessica believes that this makes the brands internalize the cost of their waste and may help them reevaluate and optimize their design and planning process. Learn more about this first of its kind initiative and organization on this episode of Mindful businesses.

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This episode has two parts - in part one, we talk with Amy Peterson, the co-founder of Rebel Nell about her inspiration and motivation to start Rebel Nell. While living next to a homeless shelter in Detroit, MI, she got to learn up-close the women who lived there and their challenges. One day out on a jog she finds a piece of graffiti that she envisioned could be repurposed into meaningful wearable art. A fusion of these two ideas gave birth to Rebel Nell. Amy with her co-founder Diana Roginson started Rebel Nell in 2013 with the mission to provide employment, equitable opportunity, and wraparound support for women with barriers to employment. They seek to embolden women, to embrace their infinite strength, and to define their own future.

They partner with local organizations to seek out women who have struggled to find and retain employment. Their goal is to help the women move from a life of dependence to one of self-reliance, overcoming barriers to employment through the fruits of their own labor. Rebel Nell’s product line starts with repurposing graffiti, after it has fallen off the walls.

These are women who when hired have no background in jewelry become creative designers who make incredibly intricate and unique piece each one more beautiful than the next. In the part two we chat with one such woman - Ethel Rucker, Production Lead at Rebel Nell.

In addition to on-the-job training and guidance on how to make jewelry, Rebel Nell also provides them with life management, financial training and business education to make sure they have the confidence and knowledge that will enable them to leave homelessness/dependence behind permanently and move forward as strong independent women. Listen to this powerful story in this episode.

https://www.rebelnell.com/

To hire Ethel Rucker for your next photoshoot contact her via her website https://harteclectic.com/