🐑Textiles do more than clothe us🧑‍🌾

THE Bi-Weekly Newsletter

Welcome to Better Together’s bi-weekly newsletter, where we believe that the more we work together, the greater impact. Written by Rachel Ceruti Choi, of FABSCRAP.

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When you think of the systems that define modern life, do you think about textiles?

Welp, you should!

Fabric is usually framed as decorative or frivolous, something secondary to “real” technological progress (don’t even get me started on its connection to “women’s work,” too). But textiles were often the engine driving the systems that make up the modern world we know today: finance, global trade, industrial manufacturing, chemistry, even computing, just to name a few.

Today I’m covering:

Textile’s Influence on Agriculture

Plants: The cotton we know today mutated millions and millions of years ago, for an unknown reason, from an African species (most of the world’s dozens of cotton species are completely useless for making thread). Nonetheless, this mutation changed the game for early weavers and somehow ended up in Mexico.

Long story short: once humans came into the picture, they were able to cultivate longer & stronger cotton that directly influenced both the Industrial Revolution and the devastating Atlantic Slave Trade. Humanity’s domestication of cotton, and the resulting demand for textiles like denim, was an early example of [manually] Genetically Modified Organisms.

“A” is the African species, “D” is when it crossbred with a Mexican species. I do not know what the other numbers mean, apologies, but thought this was a cool visual.

Animals: “Over time — a very, very long time — human choices changed the nature of sheep.”
-Virginia Postrel, The Fabric of Civilization: How Textiles Made the World

(This is where I’m getting a lot of this info, btw. Check out this post for my book recs for more great reads!)

👋 Remember me?! OR nice to meet you!

I have SO much more info I want to share.

I’m just waiting for a bit more engagement before I write a deeper dive into textiles’ influence on modern society, “women’s work,” and more.

❤️SOOOO if you enjoy reading my newsletter, you’ve told me you like my newsletter, or you’ve ever clicked a link from one of my newsletters, PLEASE like, share, or comment on this post : )

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🔗Textile Resources

• FABSCRAP’s 2025 Annual Report just dropped!

• Fellow trash nerds: Eye-opening video on Tracking NYC Trash: Using Open Data to Understand and Improve the City’s Waste System.

• Textile [EPR] legislation:

  • This is a great read for NY

  • EPR Deadlines are approaching in California

  • SB707 tracker

• Rachel-approved Met Gala fashion:

  • Zero Waste Daniel in the house!

  • SZA’s Gown was made from fabric sourced on eBay

• A design for circularity win in tech

• Take care of the things you love, amiright?

  • I AM OBSESSED with what this company is doing. Has anyone used/purchased their products?! I’m trying to figure out what I want to get first.

• Plus-Size shoppers are powering circular fashion At ThredUp

• America’s Best Cleaners and Retold Recycling are collaborating in support of the #NoLandfill movement.

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👁️ Deep Dives

“GENIUS*”

I really like this idea of “in-app resale”. Klarna just released new data showing that users are increasingly using its in-app resale feature, with people reportedly making an average of $137 per sold item. The company frames this as a shift toward “circular shopping,” but it also raises an interesting question: are tools like this encouraging more conscious consumption, or just making it easier to justify buying things we don’t really need because we can always resell them later? I don’t really have a hard stance on Klarna specifically, but I do think Buy Now, Pay Later platforms can lean into overconsumption, which makes this whole thing especially interesting to me.

Learn More.

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“TRANSPARENCY”

Debrand just released their first Transparency Report breaking down what actually happens to textiles for “circularity” programs (I need to dive deeper into what they mean by “fiber reclamation” which accounts for a majority of their recycling channels~70%. Sounds like a fuzzy word that I’d like more info on). The numbers are not surprising, but I appreciate that the report is unusually honest about the limitations of textile recycling because it highlights something the textile industry doesn’t like to admit: circularity is a lot messier, limiting, and more complicated than most marketing makes it seem. There are great visuals too!

Learn More.

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“FAB 101”

Perhaps you’ve heard: I host a monthly webinar ALL ABOUT FABSCRAP. It’s truly my favorite hour of the month. The people who join are lovely (a great representation of the FABSCRAP community in general, which includes you!), we have great conversations, AND we all learn something. The webinar starts with yours truly yapping & presenting w/slides for about 30-40 minutes, then, the fun starts with a Q&A! Join us @ 12p EST (noon) on June 5th to dive deeper into the problem with pre-consumer textile waste, how FABSCRAP is solving this problem, and how anyone can get involved!

Learn More.

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Thanks for reading y’all! Hope to see you around the warehouse soon.

-Rachel