Clothing Waste: A Dartmouth Story

Written By: Tobin Yates, Photography Intern for the Dartmouth Sustainability Office

Isabelle Sullivan-Rackliff ‘26 moving discarded student clothing into LISTEN thrift store

I first noticed the discarded piles of clothing filling dorm hallways at the end of freshman spring term. My friends and I explored the campus buildings, finding useful items including room fans, brand new shoes, and winter coats. For years, the mountains of waste have been left to Residential Operations staff to handle. Clothing, in particular, was thrown out due to its difficulty to clean and sort, as well its sheer volume. This overabundance represents a modern era of fast fashion, in which personal items are bought, worn, and thrown away at a rate faster than ever before. Increased globalization of clothing production has driven prices down, enabling more frequent, “low-risk” purchases of cheap options that can be trashed if they fit poorly or lose their relevance. Increasingly, purchased items are not even worn before they are thrown away, as Roan Wade ‘25, a Sustainability Office intern, notes she and her friends have discovered new items upwards of $500 in trash cans. 

The social pressures of a college campus setting, Roan describes, can lead to “continuous purchases from individuals with heightened spending power.” Within the Greek system, themed parties encourage a constant cycle of purchase and disposal. This, when combined with broader social trends of clothing, leads us to a perceived mantra: In order to fit in, the expectation is to look the part.

While this cycle of waste and consumption takes place in all periods of life, at Dartmouth it runs hand in hand with the revolving door of 10 week terms, housing waitlists, and changing D-plans. Our transient lifestyle heightens the difficulty of holding on to additional items, particularly those reserved for themed events or certain seasons of the year. Extra clothing also means higher costs for paid campus storage over breaks–money we could save to buy something new later. The result of these factors is the sobering reality of neglected waste at the end of each term. 

Levi ‘26, a Dartmouth Free Market employee and Sustainability Intern

Levi Konrad-Shankland ‘26 got involved with Dartmouth’s sustainability office as a first-year in the Sustainability Action Program, working on a project to reduce and redistribute move-out waste. Currently, he works as a Dartmouth Free Market employee with Roan, a student-led campus thrift store for clothing. His current focus is to improve Free Market outreach with outside organizations, helping to move resources into Upper Valley communities as the Free Market fills with items. 

Waste management at Dartmouth transcends clothing, with sustainability interns including Orlando Valladares Fernandez ‘26 also working to repurpose used dorm supplies, preparing them for campus events such as the Sustainable Moving Sale. 

Orlando ‘26 cleaning and repairing discarded minifridges at a storage facility

Levi ‘26, pictured at the on-campus Sustainable Moving Sale

As an intermediate step, the Sustainability Office utilizes a local warehouse to store student discards as Free Market overflow, while also preparing the supplies for recycling and redistribution. From there, they work with mutual aid organizations, thrift stores, and animal shelters that might find uses for the clothing and other items (Konrad-Shankland). 

Marcus Welker and Isabelle ‘26 transferring clothing to LISTEN with the help of employees

The clothing industry also carries a large environmental impact. In addition to accounting for almost 10% of global carbon emissions, the industry is responsible for 20% of global waste water and 10% of microplastics dispersed into the ocean each year (Igini). Of the clothing that does manage to get recycled or reused (15%), roughly half is sent overseas, predominantly to the Global South where the fabric ends up in landfills due to its poor quality and slowly releases methane (Lundberg). Not to mention that the average college campus wastes twenty to thirty thousand pounds of clothing every year! 

Discarded clothing following the spring term of 2024

It is easy to blame large corporations for “dominating markets, controlling product supply, and prioritizing profit margins over reducing emissions and producing higher-quality clothing,” as Sustainability Corps Program Manager Marcus Welker states. However, a more effective course of action is to improve student and community education on the true cost of clothing consumer behavior and waste generation. This approach improves the current lack of awareness of the industries’ environmental impact while challenging the prevailing consumer culture of overconsumption and frequent purchases.

Moving forward, Roan and Levi hope for the Thrift store to expand into a community hub for the undocumented, working class, queer, and trans students at Dartmouth. Community care and increased redistribution networks play an especially important role in creating safe spaces within a college environment.

As students at Dartmouth, we are in a unique position to push for change. By initiating student-led projects geared towards increasing education and awareness, we can create lasting change within a campus student body that completely changes every four years. “The best projects are often the ones that make people better off, protect the environment, and help the college to do its job. Don't be too afraid to ruffle some feathers (Konrad-Shankland).”

You can get involved by visiting and donating to the Dartmouth Free Market Thrift store (located in the North Mass basement), as well as attending Sustainability events around campus. Follow @sustainabledartmouth on instagram for more information.

SOURCES:

Igini. "Statistics about Fast Fashion Waste." Earth.org, https://earth.org/statistics-about-fast-fashion-waste/.

Konrad-Shankland, Levi. Personal interview. 15 July 2024.

Lundberg. "The Aftermath of Fast Fashion: How Discarded Clothes Impact Public Health and the Environment." Boston University School of Public Health, 2022, https://www.bu.edu/sph/news/articles/2022/the-aftermath-of-fast-fashion-how-discarded-clothes-impact-public-health-and-the-environment/.

Wade, Roan. Personal interview. 14 Aug. 2024.

Welker, Marcus. Personal interview. 19 Aug. 2024.