The fast fashion boom of recent decades has accelerated the pace at which consumers buy and dispose of their clothing, at a growing cost to the environment and to the public’s health. Americans throw out more than34 billion poundsof clothing each year—a ten-fold increase since the 1960s—and two-thirds of these clothes are sent directly to landfills. Only 15 percent of annual textile waste in the US is recycled, and more than a third of the recycled waste is shipped abroad.
That means the majority of discarded clothing ends up polluting the air, water, and land in local communities as it decomposes in landfills and open-air dumps, releasing leachates and toxic greenhouse gases. Pollution is more than an environmental issue, it’s a public health crisis.
Dielle Lundberg (SPH’19), a research fellow in the Department of Global Health and a 2019 graduate of the MPH program, has worked for several years with researchers at Boston College (BC), where she completed her undergraduate education, to study and advocate for individual and policy-level changes that will reduce global textile pollution. This year, the team launched a multi-faceted public health art-activism initiative to raise awareness about the health impacts and environmental racism associated with textile pollution.
Led by Lundberg and Julia DeVoy, a developmental psychologist and social impact influencer at BC, the project includes three main components: a study in the journalWaste Management, which reveals how throwaway consumption disproportionately pollutes lower-income communities in the US and global south; free online modules that provide information about textile waste and what individuals and policymakers can do to reduce this waste; and an extraordinary sculpture designed by Mark Cooper, Boston-based artist and professor of the practice in the Art, Art History, and Film Department at BC. The sculpture features a landfill reactor simulator and a display of second-hand garments to underscore the waste generated from a culture of overconsumption.
The Activist Lab is partnering with Dielle and her team to bring this important work to the SPH community and beyond.
Past Events
'Aftermath' Art Installation
Date: September 19 – October 7 Location: Talbot Lobby (2C)
The Activist Lab is hosting the initiative’s art installation, “Aftermath” (2021), which features a landfill reactor simulator and a display of second-hand garments to underscore the waste generated from a culture of overconsumption, in the Talbot Lobby. Please take some time to experience the sculpture. There is a brief documentary to discuss the impacts of fast fashion on health and the ways that individuals can take action.
Aftermath (2021) is an experiment in interdisciplinary collaboration, research, and pedagogy. Spearheaded by developmental psychologist and social activist Julia DeVoy, and public health researcher and long-time collaborator Dielle Lundberg, the work’s various components—including the Landfill Reactor Simulator, the display armature, the Textile Waste Facts online learning modules, and the QR codes—have been sourced from an expansive network of scientific and design-based work executed by Boston College professors and students in disciplines as far-flung as applied psychology, art, engineering, environmental science, and education.
Goal: To face up to a global economy of throwaway consumption that disproportionately pollutes lower-income communities in the United States and countries in the Global South.
Call to action: Take a 30-minute crash course investigating textile waste as an environmental justice issue in the United States and globally. This course is designed to provide learners with the most important facts about textile pollution and to help them identify opportunities to change their own behavior and support systemic and structural changes.
Textile Waste & Environmental Racism: The Opportunities for Art to Impact Public Health
Date: Thursday, October 6 Time: 1:00 – 2:30 PM EST Location: Crosstown 305
This panel discussion will bring together researchers, practitioners, and artists with expertise in understanding the impacts that environmental racism has on health, as well as how public health research can be used to inform artistic expression and how the experience of art can influence social change to create healthier communities.
The Issue: Since 1960, the amount of post-consumer textile waste (PCTW) generated each year in the United States has increased nearly ten-fold to exceed more than 34 billion pounds in 2018 (U.S. EPA, 2017). This represents a significant portion of the more than 184 billion pounds of textile waste produced every year globally (Global Fashion Agenda and Boston Consulting Group, 2017). Of the PCTW generated in the United States, 66% was sent to landfills, 19% was combusted with energy recovery, and only 15% was recycled (U.S. EPA, 2017). The accumulation of PCTW in landfills and open-air dumps represents a serious public health and environmental problem that has impacts on biodiversity, water pollution, and greenhouse gas emissions (Bick et al., 2018).
The waste is often shipped to East and West African countries, many of which have attempted to ban second-hand clothing imports. Communities in these areas often have less advanced municipal waste systems, meaning that pollutants from decomposing textiles will more easily enter the environment and potentially affect groundwater and human health.
An opportunity: The arts have been shown to influence six broad areas of individual and population-level health and are widely utilized as a means for health education and wellness promotion in communities, but their applications are inconsistently recognized in the public health sector.
The Panel
Dr. Julia DeVoy Julia Devoy’s research and teaching are concentrated on the relationship of social class variables to the human lifespan, with a focus on social mobility among low-income global citizens that examines personal aspects, as well as ecological contexts such as family, faith, workplace, community and educational settings, which facilitate or constrain development. She is currently investigating ways in which economically disempowered individuals develop dual class-based psychological identities in order to transition to elevated economic levels while maintaining healthy emotional well-being and relational support. In the field, she advises on the design of social impact initiatives as interventions for helping address systemic social inequities.
Mark Cooper Mark Cooper is the creator of “Aftermath” (2021), which features a landfill reactor simulator and a display of second-hand garments to underscore the waste generated from a culture of overconsumption, in the Talbot Lobby. Please take some time to experience the sculpture. He also serves as the Director of Undergraduate Studies, Studio Art for the Morrissey College of Arts and Sciences at Boston College. In 1994, Professor Cooper was invited by the Capitol Children’s Museum to work with adolescents from the Youth at Risk Program, the National Learning Center, Neighborhood Schools, Police Boys and Girls Clubs, and Homeless Shelters. The project was to create 1,110 works of public art expressing the wish to Stop the Violence. He collaborates with the young people to create billboards and illuminated dioramas which are attached to public buses and displayed in the Washington, D.C. metro system.
苏
Dr. Philip J. Landrigan Phil Landgrigan is a pediatrician, public health physician, and epidemiologist. He serves as the Director of the Global Public Health Program and the Global Observatory on Planetary Health at the Schiller Institute for Integrated Science and Society. His research uses the tools of epidemiology to elucidate connections between toxic chemicals and human health, especially the health of infants and children with a particular interest in understanding how toxic chemicals injure the developing brains and nervous systems of children and in translating this knowledge into public policy to protect health.
