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, but our yarn too! But what does that really mean? 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, we're taking care of any well-loved saris that are discarded or any fabric from warehouses that are saved from the landfill. Once these saris are rescued, they are brought to our artisans. Our artisans hand-sew everyone of these skirts and choose which colors and patterns to bring together to make a reversible skirt. 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! This not only sustains 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 last year a few members of our skirt group dressed up as Mother Nature. (Skirt group member, Holly, rocking her Mother Earth inspired outfit) Let's keep this trend going. If you create your best Mother Nature outfit and post it to instagram using the hashtag #darngoodyarn and #earthday, you'll be entered in to our Earth Day Skirt contest. On Earth Day (April 22nd) we will select one lucky Mother Nature (or Father Nature) to win a $50 Darn Good Yarn gift card! Happy creating! <3 -Kate
