Fashion designer Jacqui Burke is unveiling a collection made from recycled or upcycled clothing, appearing at the Museum of Flights near Edinburgh on 23 July, in a fruitful collaboration with her own local council, Dunbar.
“Working with recycled materials and discarded garments, reinvigorating them with new life and value is so very rewarding,” she said. However, sourcing these items is a very expensive exercise. She praised Dunbar, which has taken decisive steps to divert textile waste from landfill and “put in place an infrastructure to reuse a very valuable and much needed resource.”
A national effort underway to reduce the impact of clothing on the environment is WRAP’s Love Your Clothes campaign, which features calls to action and advice on buying clothes to last, looking after them, upcycling old items and recycling or passing on what you no longer want to keep.
Dunbar describes itself as Scotland’s first “zero waste” town. The council works with the community to reduce waste to landfill and maximise the benefits of re-use and recycling. They focus on encouraging people to think about the way they purchase, use and dispose of their waste. By working with the Fashion School they have identified a valuable local resource, and the culmination of this work will appear at the 2017 London Fashion Week.
