Snipping, cutting, shaping, designing—fabric scraps inevitably clutter the floor of the MMC costume shop. MMC offers a Costume Design minor that allows students to build costumes for both Dance and Theatre performances in an on-campus shop. Students studying costume design are given hands-on experience with materials, which, of course, means that some fabric will be wasted. 

“Fabric scraps are an inevitable part of any clothing production, especially within a learning process. We try to be as aware as possible; our Costume Construction class even has a project based around upcycling; but there will always be some pieces that are not useable,” said Cassandra Deveau, Costume Shop Supervisor.  

Every year, residents of New York City dispose of 200,000 tons of clothing, shoes, accessories, and linens. Textiles make up 6% of the city’s overall waste. MMC is one of the contributors to this issue, but individual classrooms, like the costume shop, are working towards sustainability goals. 

“Setting MMC up with a FABSCRAP account was one of my first goals on campus,” said Deveau. “FABSCRAP is a wonderful organization that recycles fabric as well as providing reselling of unwanted pieces… FABSCRAP allows us to collect and have the scraps be properly recycled.” 

FABSCRAP is a nonprofit that was established to address the commercial textile recycling needs of New York City. Materials that would have typically ended up in landfills are now being recycled and made available for reuse. The service fees FABSCRAP collects cover operational expenses, enabling them to provide fabric to students, artists, local designers, and crafters for their reuse projects.

Each show put on at MMC has several pieces that are fully built by a student from the designer’s vision. FABSCRAP allows the Costume Shop to collect and have the scraps properly recycled, upcycling the students’ trash into someone else’s treasure. 

“We are continuing to grow and learn how we can best support our students every day,” said Deveau.