New York City Textile Repair Map

To develop this visualization map, NYSP2I and Hyloh conducted interviews with different key stakeholders, surveyed New York City residents that actively participate in reuse and repair, and collected data on informal reuse and repair outlets that exist in New York City.

Research Exclusions + Explanations

• Upcycling: In this research study, we are only including upcycling as it pertains to worn garments (including textile-based accessories and shoes).
  • Examples of qualifying upcycling activities include taking apart two ripped jackets and making them into one, extensive patchwork, or using a t-shirt as the lining of a jacket.
  • Examples of exclusions include taking used t-shirts and making them into a quilt or using denim scraps to make upholstered furniture.
• Brands: For the purpose of this research study, we are not including clothing brands in the key stakeholders list, nor are we fully mapping out their participation in the visualization map.

• Textile-waste reduction hierarchy:
  • reuse
  • repair
  • recycle

Who we interviewed:
Hyloh conducted 12 interviews with key stakeholders within the textile repair community of New York City. Below is the breakdown of the stakeholders represented by organization type.

The following is a breakdown of the categories that the stakeholder organizations represented.

Who we surveyed:
Hyloh distributed a survey of 15 questions to residents of New York City, targeting individuals that actively participate in reuse and repair. The survey was made available in both English and Spanish. A total of 247 valid responses were collected. The following is a brief overview of the demographics of the respondents.

• Informal repair and reuse: Organizations without well-established entities running them, such as neighborhood clothing swaps or repair cafés.
• Formal repair: Repair businesses either with a brick-and-mortar or searchable virtual storefront.
• Formal reuse: Established organizations with systematic approaches to incoming and outgoing donation management.
• Textile repair: Fixing, mending, or altering an item to a usable condition. It includes worn garments, textile-based accessories (e.g., bags, scarves, hats, etc.), and shoes. It does not include upholstery, linens, and other household textiles. There are invisible and visible types of textile repair. Examples of invisible repair include fixing or mending an item to a usable condition without noticeably seeing the repairs (e.g., sewing a button on a shirt, mending a seam on a skirt). Visible repair means fixing or mending an item to a usable condition with noticeable signs of repair, u changing how its original appearance (e.g., darning a sweater with an embroidered design, using a decorative patch to fix a jacket’s elbow tear, dying a t-shirt to hide stains).
• Repurpose: To use an otherwise unwanted textile item for a different purpose, such as using a ripped or torn clothing item as a wipe for cleaning. The specific end use of a repurposed textile—whether it is reused as is, repurposed, or recycled—is often unknown to the person dropping the article off.

While developing the visualization map, we identified the following opportunities for continued research: 

• Brand perspective: This visualization map seeks to understand the perspectives of textile repair among both New York City residents and local repair businesses. Our next step will be to understand how clothing brands engage in repair. As the producers of the products that consumers are purchasing, wearing, reselling, repairing, and discarding, their voice in clothing repair is crucial.
• Repair audit: You can’t manage what you don’t measure. In order to fully understand the levels of garment repairability that donation centers and textile sorters are receiving, we need to perform an audit.  Data indicating the types of repairs that garments require when people drop them off for donation will allow us to act on some of the opportunities outlined in this research.
• Product returns: Further understanding of the complexity of product returns from the viewpoint of retailers, as well as consumer habits, is necessary in order to continue to grow the textile repair sector of New York City and beyond. Product returns are often a thorn in retailer’s businesses, but it is a service that consumers have come to expect. As clothing consumption has increased, so has the barriers retailers face when it comes to absorbing returns back into inventory. A better understanding of the returns system will allow for a deeper grasp of how repair could decrease textile waste.
• Technology: Repair is a very manual, laborious process, both in terms of mending garments and assessing their condition. In our research, repair businesses mentioned that finding high-quality labor to perform textile repairs could often be the most difficult piece of running a repair shop. Dedicated research into potential technological tools that could help streamline repairs may prove to be valuable to furthering textile repair and reducing textile waste.

• New York City residents can search for local clothing and textile drop-off locations at nyc.gov/donate.
• New York City residents can search for local clothing and textile recycling drop-off locations at nyc.gov/textiles.