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The Fashion Industry Has a Waste Problem: This Non-Profit With 2,000 Volunteers Is Helping Solve It
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The Fashion Industry Has a Waste Problem: This Non-Profit With 2,000 Volunteers Is Helping Solve It

Fabscrap, a New York City recycling service, takes fashion industry waste like textile scrap and leftover yardage and reuses or recycles it.

Social & Lifestyle

Fabric cuttings and textile leftovers are a difficult class of waste to recycle, but in a fashion industry first—a door-to-door New York City recycling service meant exclusively for textile waste is helping the uglier side of fashion get a green makeover.

Fabscrap runs an internet store and a physical location that’s part second-hand shop, part recycling facility based around fashion industry waste collected from top brands like J. Crew, Nautica, and Macy’s.

Jessica Schreiber, the founder of Fabscrap, discovered while working at New York City’s Bureau of Recycling and Sustainability that many of the city’s iconic fashion industry names were ringing her office asking what to do with textile waste.

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Being that NYC law requires the recycling of any material if it amounts to more than 10% commercial waste, she realized the problem represented an unfulfilled niche that would make a great business model.