Mother Nature and Your Sari Skirt

With Earth Day coming up, I've been delving into the story of our recycled sari wrap skirts. Since Nicole started DGY back in 2008, over 1,200,000 pounds of waste materials have been reclaimed from landfills to create not only our beautiful sari wrap skirts and clothing, but our yarn too!

But what does that really mean?

A person from their shoulders down, wearing a black crop top, a white-red-and-teal tie dyed skirt, walking down a dirt path, surrounded by long grass.

The Industry of Pollution

The clothing industry, one of the largest industries in the world's economy, is one of the biggest polluters. From distribution, creation, and creation of clothing, each part of the clothing industry creates some kind of pollution.

Not many of us can do anything to change such a large industry, but we can make changes to our everyday lives to support our planet.

Over 95% of clothing that is thrown out can be recycled. You can donate clothing to local shelters and charities to help those in your own community. Even trading clothing with your friends is a better option than throwing out a perfectly good piece of clothing.

When you take a look at our sari wrap skirts, they're made out of 100% recycled material. We get the fabric from well-loved saris that are being donated, saris rescued from being thrown away, or any from fabric warehouse runoff that our artisans save from the landfill. Once these saris are rescued, they are brought to their next destination. These saris are cleaned, sorted, and then sent to be sewn into skirts, or to be torn and created into our yarn. For our skirt artisans, they hand-sew every single skirt and choose which colors and patterns to bring together to make a reversible skirt.

A man is crouching on top of large bags of recycled fabric. He is passing down the bags to two men who are waiting to take the fabric to be made into skirts. Sari fabric litters the floor, ready to be made into skirts or yarn.

An Artisan's Impact

On an individual level, this artisan has now saved anywhere from .5 pounds to 1 pound (depending on the size and length of the skirt) of fabric from their local landfills. We have over 600 artisans currently working with us to create skirts and yarn.

So, let's roughly estimate that there are 300 artisans that only make skirts and each of these artisans sew two skirts a day. If an artisan works from Monday to Friday, creating 10 skirts, this artisans would have saved roughly 5-10 pounds of sari fabric. Now if each of those 300 skirt artisans create 2 skirts a day, 5 days a week, they will have saved 1,500-3,000 pounds of waste materials sewing skirts in one week alone!

An Indian woman, wearing a red and yellow sari, is standing in front of a grey wall. She is holding a white sign that says 'I Made Your Skirt'.

Your Impact with DGY!

The sustainability of our skirts not only helps our planet, but helps sustain our artisans, their families, and their communities. By purchasing our wrap skirts, you are not only sustaining the planet, but sustaining another human. Talk about being a global citizen!

Our skirts, from start to finish, are really amazing. The love our artisans put into each skirt is reflected by how much love our customers put into their outfits. One of my favorite times of year is Halloween, and a few years ago some of the members of our skirt group dressed up as Mother Nature.

A collage of pictures from a model dressed as Mother Nature. She is taking pictures in front of her mirror, wearing a dark green skirt with a multicolored flower pattern, a long sleeved olive shirt, and a wreath of leaves around her head like a crown.
(Skirt group member, Holly, rocking her Mother Earth inspired outfit)

Thank you so much for joining us on our journey to improve the lives of our artisans and Mother Earth!

-Kate