“I’d go the place that I last remembered it was, but sometimes the bin was there, and other times it was moved,” said Goncharova, a recent graduate of Fordham College at Rose Hill.

That experience is one of the things that inspired Goncharova, who studied economics and environmental studies, to research consumer incentives for recycling unwanted clothing. Donating and repurposing textiles is a critical way that consumers can reduce landfill waste, she said. However, the process must be efficient to create impact.

“The final step of the supply chain is the disposal aspect, and that’s the thing that companies don’t usually think about,” she said. “Recycling bottles and paper comes easy. Everyone knows where to put them. But when it comes to clothes, particularly those from fast fashion brands, it becomes difficult to know what to do with them when you don’t want them anymore.”

According to Hitwise, a consumer insights firm, the fast fashion industry—which includes brands like H&M, Forever 21, and the web-based Boohoo.com—has grown 21 percent over the past three years. But this growth has presented a lot of challenges, particularly for the environment, Goncharova said. According to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Americans discard about 13 million tons of textiles annually, and only two million tons of those clothes were recycled.

Goncharova believes this can change if consumers and businesses work together to recycle textile materials instead of throwing them out.

“I love sustainability because it allows us to create a self-sustaining supply chain,” she said.

Identifying Motivations for Sustainable Fashion

Through a Fordham-funded research study, Goncharova hoped to identify ways to motivate consumers to recycle their unwanted clothing. She recruited a randomized group of 100 students from the University and conducted a preliminary questionnaire via email that was focused on demographic information, the participants’ shopping habits, and their knowledge of sustainability.

Next, the participants were given eco-friendly plastic bags that were manufactured from 25 percent recycled HD plastic, with three types of options for shipping. They could use shipping labels that were prepaid, and send them to the recycling companies Give Back Box and Schoola; schedule a donation pick-up with the Salvation Army for free; or pay their own shipping to send their clothes to denim recycling companies like Blue Jeans Go Green and Patagonia.

“One of the goals was to see if people would be more inclined to donate clothes if shipping was free or if they received a shipping label for donations in-store at the time of their purchase,” she said.

Along with the donation bags, participants of the study were given a follow-up questionnaire about their reactions to the mailable donation bags and the likelihood that they would use the bags again.

Through the study, Goncharova found that participants given the prepaid labels were most likely to recycle. Results from the questionnaire showed a significant correlation between a participant saying they would recycle clothes if it was as easy as online returns, and if brands themselves offered rewards for recycling. They also showed that prior knowledge of sustainability was not related to the participants’ desire to recycle once they were offered this option.

“A lot of people want to donate their clothes, they just don’t know what to do with them,” she said.

Goncharova stressed that creating opportunities for sustainable fashion should be just as important to companies as it is to consumers.

Some companies are already working to reduce landfill waste. In 2013, H&M launched an in-store recycling initiative, which allows customers to drop off unwanted clothing from any brand. And Madewell, a brand that generates most of its sales from denim, partnered with Blue Jeans Go Green, a denim recycling company. Other companies, like Patagonia, allow customers to trade and repair their brand’s used clothing.

“Businesses have a role in this,” she said. “They can’t just throw their hands up, and say, ‘I’m not a part of that.’  These materials are part of the supply chain and they can still add value to it by putting materials back in.”

The competition, which runs through March 31, will once again measure the amount of paper, cardboard glass, metal and plastic the members of each building collects, as well as how little solid waste they generate. The event seeks to increase recycling on campuses and highlight the work done by universities’ sustainability programs.

Last year was the first year the University participated in the contest, which began in 2001 and has grown to include 576 schools. As in the past, Fordham will be competing in the “benchmark” division of the competition. Although the University will not be directly competing with other schools, the individual dorms on campus will be ranked against each other.

Weekly updates will be issued by sustainability consultant Great Forest and sent to the residence halls weekly so students can track their progress. At the end of the competition, the winning dorm will receive a trophy, along with the satisfaction that they’re greener than them all.

For more information, visit recyclemania.com.

Queens Court, the three-building complex comprised of St. John’s, St. Robert’s and Bishop’s Halls on Fordham’s Rose Hill campus, beat ten other residence halls at Rose Hill and Lincoln Center in the University’s first RecycleMania contest.

The ten-week long national competition wrapped up last week, and when the final numbers were tabulated, Queens Court had recycled both the most paper and cardboard at 35.93 pounds per person, and the most glass, metal and plastic, at 42.22 pounds per person.

McMahon Hall, the lone residence hall at Lincoln Center campus, took home first prize for an achievement of the opposite sort: Residents there generated the least amount of trash generated over all, at 84.15 pounds per person.

This is the first year Fordham participated in the contest, in the informal “Benchmark” division. Rounding out the rest of the results were:

Paper/cardboard:

1. Queens Court: 35.93 pounds per person, or 4,850 pounds total

2. Campbell Hall: 27.51 pounds per person, or 7,570 pounds total

2. Walsh Hall: 26.32 pounds per person, or 10,950 pounds total

Glass/metal/plastic

1. Queens Court: 42.22 pounds per person, or 5,699 pounds total

2. Salice-Conley Hall: 39.13 pounds per person, or 8,765 pounds total

3. Campbell Hall: 38.91 pounds per person, or 8,133 pounds total

Trash

1. McMahon Hall: 84.15 pounds per person, or 74,137 pounds total

2. Loschert Hall: 115.28 pounds per person, or 29,512 pounds total

3. Alumni South: 122.93 pounds per person, or 37,125 pounds total

While the rest of the residence halls were not far behind the leaders, there were some exceptions. Martyr’s Court, for instance, recycled 17.23 pounds of paper and cardboard per person and 22.90 pounds of glass, metal and plastic per person. Those weren’t the lowest numbers for either category—those honors belong to McMahon Hall and Tierney Hall, respectively—but they do help explain another number: 482.11, the number of pounds of trash generated per person there.

Robert Freda, director of the Custodial Services department, said two issues were at play at Martyr’s Court that they would work with the Department of Residential Life to address. Although magnetic signs distributed by RecycleMania were posted around the building, he said student awareness could be improved.

They also need to re-examine the locations of the collection bins in Martyr’s Court. Because some of the closets where trash is collected are not big enough to also accommodate recycling bins, Freda noted that some of the bins had to be placed in lounges instead. That absence of consistency, and not residents’ apathy, was probably the cause of the spike in trash.

“The containers are there for recycling, but we want to make it as easy as we can for students to know where they are,” he said.

All told, the average diversion rate over the past ten weeks for the residence halls was about 22 percent, according to Great Forest, a consulting firm that crunched the numbers for Fordham. So the competition provided a good look at the ratio of trash to recyclables generated overall from the residence halls.