Circular economy entrepreneur and Muuse founder Brian Reilly passes away

As the cold weather begins & the holiday seasons are upon us, catalogues are arriving every day and tempting us with new fashionable clothes. However, shopping for new clothes- Fast Fashion- is generating 14 million tons of textile waste into our landfills. Textile waste can take up to 200+ years to decompose, releasing methane gas and toxic chemicals & dyes into our groundwater & soil. The average American discards approximately 80 pounds of textile waste -clothing, towels, linens, purses, shoes, etc.-each year.  Almost every kind of fabric if it is clean & dry, can be recycled, even the oldest pair of underwear, but not in curbside recycling bins. (www.greenmatters.com) Recycled textiles are sorted by type, fabric (synthetic versus natural fibers) & color, then pulled into fibers or shredded, re-spun into yarn to be woven, or compressed into filling such as insulation.

As bad as things are this year, I confess that I remain an optimist and believe we will figure out the crises we now confront and make the world less bad than it is today. COVID-19, climate, equity, racism and poverty are real and daunting public policy problems.