Overall Rating Gold - expired
Overall Score 68.23
Liaison Josh Lasky
Submission Date March 5, 2020

STARS v2.2

George Washington University
IN-50: Innovation D

Status Score Responsible Party
Complete 0.50 / 0.50 Meghan Chapple
Director of Sustainability, Senior Advisor on University Sustainability Initiatives
Office of Sustainability
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Name or title of the innovative policy, practice, program, or outcome:
Clothes Are Not Trash: Clothing Recovery on a College Campus in the Nation’s Capital

A brief description of the innovative policy, practice, program, or outcome that outlines how credit criteria are met and any positive measurable outcomes associated with the innovation:

As a part of GW's zero waste approach, GW introduced permanent clothing donation bins on campus and has been increasing the amount of clothing diverted from the landfill every year. In the Spring of 2019, with support from the Urban Sustainability Directors’ Network (USDN) and the District of Columbia Department of Energy and Environment, GW launched an education and awareness campaign to improve students’ knowledge of how to properly treat clothing and other textiles when they are no longer wanted. The campaign served as a pilot study with the potential to be scaled and applied in municipalities that are members of the USDN. As part of the campaign, the Office of Sustainability partnered with faculty in the GW Corcoran School of the Arts to promote an exhibit "Fast Fashion, Slow Art", as well as a community wide conference on sustainable fashion, clothing swap pop-ups on campus, pop-up clothing mending stations on campus, and increased signage about clothing reuse bins. The partnership allowed GW to conduct a study on the impact of the campaign. GW learned that increased educational efforts did in fact increase understanding of textile waste issues and resulted in greater volume of textiles diverted from the landfill. This information has been shared with USDN for further deployment across cities. Results were presented at the Drawdown Research Conference in Fall 2019 at Penn State University.

The volume of textiles diverted from the landfill has increased over the years.
2014: 17.3 tons
2015: 24.0 tons
2016: 16.2 tons
2017: 28.2 tons
2018: 32.8 tons
2019: 48.7 tons


A letter of affirmation from an individual with relevant expertise or a press release or publication featuring the innovation :
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The website URL where information about the programs or initiatives is available:
Additional documentation to support the submission:
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Data source(s) and notes about the submission:
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