Stop the stigma, save the Earth and walk in someone else’s shoes

landfill with shoes, clothes

They say you can’t judge another person until you’ve walked a mile in their shoes. And as one who recently walked a mile in another person’s shoes, I did: I judged them for their good taste and ability to take the rights steps when the shoes no longer fit - by passing them forward.

I was wearing those adopted shoes while pushing my infant grandson in a stroller over uneven sidewalks in Baltimore, feeling grateful. The soft, flat, brown leather shoes acquired the previous week were carrying me smoothly over a treacherous spot of rutted sidewalk that had previously made me trip, fall, and land in urgent care - in different shoes.

I’d never bought such sensible shoes as these ones, mostly because I’m on the shorter side and need the lift a decent heel gives. But there was this classy, comfortable, nice- looking pair offering itself up at no cost as I was preparing to leave Des Moines to help with baby-care. It turned up at a yearly event some friends and I cooked up nearly two decades ago called Swap. The name is a misnomer but the premise is simple: We bring our still-presentable clothes, footwear and, at various times, jewelry, lamps, kitchenware, artwork and more, to pass on to others who like them.

No quid pro quo, and you’re not required to bring anything to take something, or many things. A kind of socialism, really, and a great way to socialize. While sipping on wine or iced tea, nibbling on sushi or cake, you might be trying things on for others’ assessments. Sometimes there are 20 people but there might be 50 - a diverse amalgam of writers, teachers, mothers, professors, activists, women in business or nonprofits. Old friends bring in new friends.

Swaps fulfills many purposes for us: As consumers, we get to engage with styles we might not have imagined ourselves in — like my shoes. Instead of scouting out styles in a store, as my friend Wini Moranville observes, you have, “20 good, stylish friends who have all these clothes they’ve already picked out… you get this very curated selection and it’s all free!”

Another benefit is the uncluttering. Knowing Swap is coming up, you have to go through your closets and set aside things you haven’t worn or used in a while.

“The real effort,” says Vicki Goldsmith, one of the original swappers who has taken on the role of organizer, “is not to get more stuff, but to purge our spaces of stuff, take home a couple of little treasures, and give to charity.”

An event of this kind is now assuming greater importance with evolving cultural, economic and environmental trends. As America braces for the fallout of Trump’s ever-changing trade wars on countries we import from, we could see a surge in domestic prices. And amid mass layoffs from federal budget cuts and grant eliminations, many people could have less disposable income to spend on basic needs like clothing and shoes. It was recently reported that more upper-income people are shopping at Dollar General stores. Swaps could help fill in some gaps.

Also, the need to recycle is growing more urgent for other reasons. Environmental organizations report that many clothes are worn a mere seven to 10 times before being tossed - a 36% decline in usage over 15 years. And those used clothes typically end up in landfills in countries such as Ghana, “where they are buried and sometimes explode from the chemicals in them, especially those not made from natural fibers,” according to Goldsmith, who belongs to an environmental study group. She says rivers in Bangladesh have been ruined by the dyes used to make jeans.

“Swap keeps things circulating and used instead.”

There are other, cultural aspects to these trends. Goldsmith says online shopping sites, which offer clothes at lower prices than stores can, encourage young people to buy several of everything, in different sizes. But the ones returned mostly end up in the landfill “because it is too expensive to restock them, cheaper to just throw them away.”

Susan Houts, whom I met at the last Swap, has been studying climate and the environment for some years. She links the crisis to the ways clothes are now made. A report from the environmental organization Earth.Org finds that four times as many clothes are being bought every year than were two decades ago, due in part to what’s called "fast fashion. That’s a term used to describe new, cheaply-produced synthetic clothes made to look like trendy high fashion seen on celebrities. They’re reportedly mass-produced under inhumane conditions, and designed to have limited lifespans to keep up with changing design trends. Houts says 85% end up in landfills, helping the clothing industry contribute about 10% of global greenhouse gases to the atmosphere every year.

Some of those clothes get donated and end up in developing countries “in amounts that they can't use,” said Houts - only to be buried or burned. “They are left to deal with our castoffs without a lot of infrastructure to deal with it.” Made of nylon, acrylic and polyester - materials once shunned for their low quality - they contribute to the climate crisis by taking hundreds of years to biodegrade. And that’s not to mention the water pollution and depletion of groundwater caused by “microplastics.”

Shoes, alas, play a big part in environmental damage. More than 20 billion pairs are made every year, using chemicals thar help account for 30% percent of our carbon - well - footprint. Shoes are one of the biggest contributors to worldwide carbon dioxide emissions. People in the U.S. throw out over 300 million pairs a year, nearly all of which wind up in landfills. They take on average 30 to 40 years to decompose.

This extreme binge and purge culture we’ve turned into where clothing and footwear are concerned is unsustainable. These trends demand major, concerted responses in policies and practices by business, industry and government — and at some point, perhaps, a cultural shift that values sustainability over star-studded definitions of style.

Swaps, as our little group has come to define ours, may not be to everyone’s tastes. There’s a lingering stigma about wearing something once owned by someone else, as if it speaks to a lack of means. But at the opposite end, we’re reaching a point in our consumption habits where some larger defining values and principles may need to be woven into how we choose to shop and dress and think about the ways our clothes and shoes were made.

If you’re concerned about saving the planet, at least once try walking in someone else’s shoes. I recommend comfortable ones.

I’m a proud member of the Iowa Writer’s Collaborative. Click below for the full roster.

Iowa Writers' Collaborative