Sustainable Theatre: Make Your Costume Department Eco-Friendly

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Here’s another post in my sustainable theatre series! This time, we’re talking about costumes, and I really can’t talk about sustainable costumes without addressing the fast fashion industry and the damage it has done to not only our environment, but local economies around the world. Unless your costume department weaves its own fabric and constructs every garment in-house, it probably participates in the fast fashion world and contributes to textile wastes. As I’ve said in my previous posts, there is little information on the exact carbon footprint of the theatre industry, so I’ve been using books like How Bad Are Bananas? by Mike Berners Lee and Annie Leonard’s The Story of Stuff to give a better idea of how the theatre industry participates in environmental degradation. Since this topic of costumes has such a strong connection to the fast fashion industry, I want to strongly suggest watching The True Cost (affiliate), a documentary highlighting the inhuman practices of the fast fashion world and how it contributes to pollution as well as the dehumanization of garment workers across the world. While most costume departments do not behave in the same way as individual consumers, we can still remain conscious of our participation in and monetary support of unsustainable and inhumane practices.

buy How Bad Are Bananas? from Bookshop or Amazon

buy The Story of Stuff from Bookshop or Amazon

ways your costume department impacts the evnivronment…

carbon emissions from production

In 2019, CBS News published an article stating that the fashion industry emits more carbon into the atmosphere than all airline companies combined. In fact, the industry accounts for 8 percent of the total global climate impact (Cerullo, 2019). Mike Berners-Lee estimates that a single pair of jeans has a total carbon emission of 6 kg, while the average pair of shoes emits 11.5 kg. As I’ve discuss before, the energy and resources it takes to create a new item is rarely considered when we talk about sustainability, but it can sometimes have the most impact on the environment. That’s why it is important to be conscious of the pre-production process when it comes to buying new items, and purposefully choose not to buy new items when it isn’t necessary.

fast fashion

Unless your department makes every single garment in-house, you probably have to go out and buy at least a few ready-made costume pieces, especially for more contemporary shows. This can often be the most cost-effective and time-efficient way to clothe your actors. However, today the fashion industry is prone to using cheaply- manufactured materials made by low-paid workers in life-threatening conditions (The True Cost). The point of fast fashion is to make clothes that only last for a “season” because by the time it starts falling apart from poor, sloppy garment construction, the buyer is ready to purchase the next “seasons” style and start the cycle over. It is inherently a wasteful industry, with abysmal pre- and post-consumer waste statistics. When we buy new, ready-made pieces for our productions, we are supporting these wasteful and inhumane practices.

waste from production

It is estimated that around 10-30% of of fabric is cut away and discarded during the making of a garment (Ethel Studio). This can be said whether or not your garment is being made in your costume shop, or across the world in a garment manufacturing warehouse. Cutting is recognized as the most wasteful part of the garment production process, leaving around 40 billion square meters of leftover textiles a year worldwide (Reverse Resources). While we have little control over what huge factories do with these leftovers, we can be more conscious of reducing such waste in our own costume shops and find ways to repurpose those fabric scraps.

post-consumer waste

The U.S. alone produced 32.44 billion pounds of post-consumer textile waste in 2014, 95% of which had the ability to be recycled or reused (Center for Eco-Technology). Most of this waste ends up in a landfill, usually in a different country (because colonialists don’t like to look at their own trash). You might think your impact is less harmful by giving your unwanted garments to charity shops, but often times, the clothes that couldn’t get sold at the charity shop are sent to poorer countries to be sold as resale stores. This model is harmful to local economies in those countries as small business struggle to compete with the abundant supply and extremely low prices at these resale stores. And when those resale stores can’t sell the clothes we send over, those clothes go into the landfills anyway.

why is all of this important?

If anything, I really want to highlight in this series the horrible trap we are currently in when it comes to consumer culture. Every part of this system is set up in a way that hurts individuals across the world and ultimately screws everyone over because it is destroying our environment. But there are ways we can help, and it is important to emphasize that businesses (like theatre companies!) will have a greater impact than individual consumers. Imagine of all the money spent buying fast fashion for costume departments went to purchasing from sustainable companies or even buying second-hand. That’s a lot of money diverted from fast fashion! As theatre makers, we have to participate in consumerism on some level, but because we are part of companies with large buying power (and I say large as in larger than individual people), we have an important voice in how consumer culture evolves in the future.

ways you can help reduce your costume shop’s environmental impact…

reduce waste by…

• Using what you already have! This is a sentiment I have repeated in each of these posts because it is truly the backbone of a sustainable model. It reduces the amount of new products being bought and it also requires you to keep your items for future use, which then keeps it out of the landfills!
• Recycling your offcuts. You might not be able to make a whole new garment out of your fabric scraps, but you could give them to other departments to use (think rags for cleaning, etc.) (@GreenTheatreUK).
• Giving your unwanted garments to textile recycling programs. Some programs (in the US) that accept all garments include: The North Face, & Other Stories, Helpsy (in the Northeast), Madewell (for denim recycling), & Levi’s (also for denim recycling).
• Renting your costumes (@GreenTheatreUK). Is there another theatre company that you could rent your costumes from? Could you set up a community exchange program so you always have access to different garments without having to purchase them new?
• If you have to buy a garment for a show, try to find it second hand.
• Stay away from non-sustainably produced textiles such as cotton or polyester.

save energy by…

• Using surge protectors in your costume shop and in the dressing rooms, and make sure to turn them off at the end of the day to save energy. If you want to get a little high tech, you can purchase a smart power strip (get one from Amazon or Target).
• Invest in an energy efficient washer and dryer (Broadway Green Alliance). We do a lot of washing and drying in the costume shop, so this investment will help save a lot of anergy, as well as money on the electric bill!
• Remind your staff and crew to turn off all lights and electronics when leaving the shops or the dressing rooms for the day.

more ways to be greener…

• Draft a purchasing agreement with your theatre. Making sustainable decisions at the higher level will help the entire company make greener decisions. A purchasing agreement outlines parameters for purchasing new items for the building or for a production. If can be as simple as stating “new purchases must be made out of 75% recycled materials”.
• Hold a donor drive! Have patrons and donors bring in items (think clothes, shoes, household items) they no longer use and see how you can use them in your company!

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for more tips on being green in the theatre…

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for further reading...

• Berners-Lee, Mike. How Bad Are Bananas?: The Carbon Footprint of Everything. Vancouver: Greystone Books, 2011. Print.
• Production. (n.d.). Retrieved August 23, 2020, from https://www.broadwaygreen.com/production-1
• Leonard, Annie. The Story of Stuff: [how Our Obsession with Stuff Is Trashing the Planet, Our Communities, and Our Health-and a Vision for Change]. New York: Simon & Schuster Audio, 2010. Sound recording.
• Morgan, Andrew, Michael Ross, Lucy Siegle, Stella McCartney, Livia Firth, Vandana Shiva, and Duncan Blickenstaff. The True Cost. , 2015.