To dramatize and draw attention to the need to recycle clothing on Earth Day, Savers/Value Village, the global thrift store chain, sponsored an interactive art installation at Alki Beach. Taking the form of a "clothing spill" a kind of mock environmental disaster, the art asks people to consider their clothing footprint and to rethink reuse.

Every year, North Americans send 10.5 million tons of clothing to landfills, 95 percent of which could have been recycled or reused. This installation is made from thousands of pieces of used clothing and represents the impact your decisions about how to dispose of used clothing have on the environment. This visually arresting wake-up call asks people to rethink reuse—spare landfills and resources by donating your used goods/ buying stuff that lasts/ buying used clothing.

As a purpose-driven thrift store chain focused on reuse, Savers/ValueVillage kept nearly 650 million pounds of reusable items out of landfills last year—including more than 45 million pounds of clothing, textiles and other items from local landfills in Washington state. https://www.savers.com/rethinkreuse

Rep. Joe Fitzgibbon was on hand at the event along with Savers CEO Ken Alterman.

"The whole model of the company," said Alterman, "was to figure out a way to monetize re-use and help non-profits within our community."

"This is effectively a clothing oil spill. The amount resources it takes in order to make this is extraordinary. Not that it's not necessary in many cases. But if everybody was able to re-use some things that's number one. But unfortunately the majority of what you are seeing here winds up in landfills. It' doesn't get re-used."

Alterman said his company has proven they can re-use virtually everything. He said they are looking at ways that cities and other municipalities can create dedicated clothing recycling capabilities. "We have tested this in some smaller areas but what we have to figure out is how not to fill those bins with garbage."

Fitzgibbon said, "The impact of producing cotton alone is huge in terms of the water use and the pesticide use and the other big thing for me is that we're not producing textiles in Washington State. We don't have those crops, we don't have textile manufacturing. But what we do have is textile recycling. By making sure to keep used textiles into a recycling bin at the end of their lifecycle, those are the only source of local jobs in that industry that we've got."

Fitzgibbon said that the state's role is primarily in education and awareness about recycling.

The installation due to be taken down at the end of the day was created by Edelman, an ad and public relations company and Electric Coffin an art creation company.