The fashion industry faces a significant challenge with textile waste, a problem often highlighted by images of discarded garments polluting landscapes. However, a less visible but equally pressing issue is pre-consumer waste, which includes fabric samples, swatches, and prototypes. This type of waste accounts for approximately 12% of the industry's total fabric consumption. For the past decade, Fabscrap, a New York-based non-profit, has been dedicated to addressing this specific waste stream. Founded in 2016 by Jessica Schreiber, an employee of the NYC Department of Sanitation, Fabscrap emerged from Schreiber's recognition of the need for better solutions for brands to manage their excess fabric. Camille Tagle joined as co-founder and executive director a year later, bringing her experience as a luxury eveningwear designer and a strong commitment to combating the industry's wasteful practices. Under Tagle's leadership, particularly after Schreiber's departure in 2025, Fabscrap has refined its operations, focusing on collecting pre-consumer waste from local brands and maximizing material recirculation, with only minimal amounts directed to downcycling or landfills. The organization implements a 'pay as you throw' model, adjusting fees based on donation size, and has significantly improved its sorting efficiency and reduced material backlogs. Fabscrap's work spans over 900 brands across the US, cultivating a community of brands and volunteers dedicated to sustainability. However, the non-profit emphasizes that broader industry collaboration and a shift towards circular design principles are essential for achieving substantial progress in waste reduction.
Fabscrap's mission extends beyond mere waste collection; it actively engages the public through its volunteer programs, creating a strong community of individuals passionate about sustainability and textile reuse. The organization also plays a crucial role in industry education, advocating for standardized practices that facilitate recycling and reuse. Despite the growth of textile-to-textile recycling initiatives, Fabscrap highlights the complexities involved, particularly with varied material compositions and embellishments that make recycling challenging. By sharing insights and developing tools like the Smart Swatch Scorecard, Fabscrap aims to guide brands and manufacturers toward more sustainable design and production methods, ultimately fostering a more circular fashion economy. While significant challenges remain, the organization's decade-long effort demonstrates a powerful model for tackling textile waste and inspiring systemic change within the fashion industry.
Measuring and Reducing Textile Waste
Fabscrap's approach to tackling fashion waste is rooted in the principle of 'first measure, then reduce.' The organization meticulously weighs and catalogs all brand donations before sorting them, recognizing that accurate data is fundamental to understanding and mitigating environmental impact. Each brand receives an annual report detailing the weight of materials collected, the frequency of donations, and how these materials were processed—whether reused, downcycled, or sent to landfills. This data-driven strategy empowers brands to assess their ecological footprint and encourages them to adopt more sustainable practices. After collection, materials are prepared for volunteers, who play a crucial role in sorting. Larger pieces of fabric, prototypes, and reusable items like leather scraps are set aside for reuse, which includes selling them through Fabscrap's online and physical thrift stores, generating a significant revenue stream for the non-profit. However, a key challenge arises from brands' 'proprietary' labeling of waste, often preventing perfectly usable fabrics from being recirculated due to concerns over revealing design elements. Fabscrap actively educates brands on the importance of re-evaluating these classifications to maximize material reuse and minimize landfill contributions.
The processing of materials that cannot be immediately reused, such as torn or stained fabrics, involves downcycling. These materials are shredded and used for insulation, typically by Fabscrap's partner in North Carolina. This process requires considerable manual effort from volunteers, who carefully remove any non-textile components like stickers, pins, buttons, and zippers, all of which are either reused or recycled separately. This highlights the intricate nature of textile recycling and the importance of meticulous sorting to prevent contamination. Fabscrap's engagement with over 10,000 volunteers over the past decade underscores its dual mission: to make a significant environmental impact and to educate the public about the complexities of textile waste. Volunteers not only contribute to sorting efforts but also gain a deeper understanding of material composition and the challenges of recycling, often taking home fabric scraps for their own creative projects. This community-building aspect fosters a shared commitment to sustainability and textile reuse, which Tagle emphasizes as an unexpected but valuable outcome of Fabscrap's operations.
The Critical Need for Standardization in Circular Fashion
The fashion industry's aspiration for textile-to-textile recycling has attracted substantial investment, yet achieving this goal remains elusive due to significant complexities, particularly the lack of standardization in textile production. Fabscrap's decade of experience reveals that despite efforts to separate materials like cotton and polyester for recycling, qualifying materials rarely exceed 4% of total donations. This underscores the prevalent misconception that fabric recycling is straightforward. The fashion industry's emphasis on novelty and diverse embellishments, from sequins to elastane blends, contaminates feedstocks, making disassembling and recycling extremely time-consuming and costly. During a visit to Fabscrap's Brooklyn warehouse, the intensive labor required for sorting and disassembly becomes evident. Much of the waste originates from design rooms, comprising a chaotic mix of fabric samples, prototypes, and headers—swatches sent by mills to showcase seasonal ranges. These items lack uniformity; developmental samples often combine various materials and fibers, while headers vary in size, backing materials, and attachment methods. This inherent lack of standardization makes automation nearly impossible, necessitating extensive manual sorting by volunteers.
Recognizing the critical barrier posed by non-standardized materials, Fabscrap is championing industry education and collaboration to embed circularity upstream in the design process. The organization released a white paper recommending a framework for 'smarter swatches' designed for easy disassembly, recycling, or reuse. Ideally, headers would be smaller than two yards, devoid of backing materials, and include simple stickers detailing material content, weight, and origin. Such standardization would not only streamline Fabscrap's sorting process but also reduce costs and environmental impacts for fabric mills by eliminating unnecessary components. To encourage adoption, Fabscrap developed a Smart Swatch Scorecard, which grades header designs based on component complexity and ease of disassembly. Tagle's vision for the next decade centers on fostering this industry-wide shift, helping stakeholders understand how their choices can accelerate circularity. Addressing the 'puzzle' of unwanted waste requires collective action and a fundamental rethinking of design and production practices, paving the way for a more sustainable future in fashion.
