Eco Meet CLE: Weaving a Sustainable and Local Textile Economy

In this episode, we bring you the conversation from Eco Meet CLE, a Cleveland sustainability event on February 20 featuring local innovators reinventing northeast Ohio textile production. Rather than today's exploitive and resource-intensive system, we can grow a regional, circular system that fosters economic integrity, ecological stewardship, and connection to people and place. Listen and hear from those working towards this goal -  Jess Boeke, the co-founder of Rust Belt Fibershed, a non-profit developing a bioregional textile community; Aidan Meany, a designer and the owner of Found Surface, a Cleveland clothing manufacturer that prioritizes sustainability and is setting a new standard for ethical fashion; Kat Novak, the Associate Director of the TechStyleLAB and the Faculty in the School of Fashion at Kent State University; and
Kelly Powers, a farmer and the owner of Powers Acres, a 50-acre certified organic farm in Medina, Ohio, and the future owner and operator of a fiber mill in northeast Ohio. Together, they are creating a fashion ecosystem that rivals the farm-to-table food revolution, only this time, it's with the garments we wear. It's a blueprint for a world where designers, farmers, and consumers all play a part in crafting an industry that respects our planet and community.
 
Guests:
Jess Boeke - Co-Founder, Rust Belt Fibershed
Aidan Meany - Founder, Found Surface
Kat Novak- Associate Director, Kent State University School of Fashion
Kelly Powers - Farmer and Shepherd, Powers Acres

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Transcript

Diane Bickett: 0:04

You're listening to EcoSpeak CLE, where the EcoCurious explore the unique and thriving environmental community here in Northeast Ohio. My name is Diane Pickett and my producer is Greg Rotuno. Together, we bring you inspiring stories from local sustainability leaders and invite you to connect, learn and live with our community and planet in mind. Hello, friends, in this episode of EcoSpeak CLE, we bring you the conversation from our February 20th event called EcoMeat CLE. We held this event at Great Lakes Brewing Company and over 100 people came to hear about what textile production can be, and we brought together a panel of speakers who envision a circular system that fosters economic integrity, ecological stewardship and connection to people in place. This is a regenerative model that replaces the exploitive, polluting and resource-intense system we have today. Our panelists included Kat Novak with the Kent State School of Fashion, jess Spoky, the founder of Rust Belt Fiber Shed, kelly Powers, who is a farmer of 20 years and the owner of Powers Acres Farm, and Aiden Meany, who is a designer and founder of Found Surface, a local manufacturing and textile designer. We're grateful to our speakers and also to our sponsors that made this event possible. Those include the company CollaborX, bright Energy Innovators Conscious Capitalism Northeast Ohio Chapter Feather, and Elm Shop Food Strong, graziani Multimedia, ohio Environmental Council, one Planet Media, rat3, job Corps, rust Belt Riders and the Sustainable Ohio Public Energy Council in Circular Cleveland. In addition, I would also like to thank Good Nature Organic Longcare for sponsoring this episode of EcoSpeak CLE.

Diane Bickett: 1:58

The founder of Good Nature Organic Longcare is Alec McLennan, and he founded his company over 20 years ago at an event very similar to EcoMeat CLE.

Diane Bickett: 2:07

Back then it was called Entrepreneurs for Sustainability and E4S, and he found some inspiration and decided to start his own organic longcare company to create an earth friendly approach to creating a healthy and beautiful lawn from the inside out, using organic fertilizers to nurture healthy soil and naturally thick grass. Our moderator tonight is Katie Novak, and Katie is the Associate Director of the Textile Lab and the faculty in the School of Fashion at Kent State University. She's a textile artist who specializes in embroidery, hand spinning, screen printing and digital textile printing. Kat has an MA in fashion from the University of Akron and master fine arts in textiles from Kent State University and, on fact, kat used to also be the local and responsible food coordinator here at Great Lakes Brewing Company. On our panel we have Jess Bogey. Jess is an educator, a textile artist and the co-founder of the non-covid Rust Belt Fiber Shed, which she started with her twin sister, sarah Cottle, who couldn't be here tonight because she is COVID, unfortunately.

Diane Bickett: 3:26

Together they created Rust Belt Fiber Shed to develop a bio-regional textile community to grow hope and resilience through local fiber labor and natural dyes. Jess and Sarah also founded Drift Lab Earth, which is a natural dye studio and recently hosted the Rust Belt Fiber Shed Symposium. Who's there? Is that one there? Yup, it was awesome.

Diane Bickett: 3:51

That event was held in January and it brought together hundreds from across the region for a day of learning and demonstrations and the one year one outfit fashion show, which maybe you'll share about later. And our next panelist is Kelly Powers.

Diane Bickett: 4:07

Kelly is a farmer of 20 years and the owner and operator of Powers Acres, which is a 50 acre certified organic farm located in Medina. There she raises Icelandic wool sheep for wool meat and hides. And Kelly is also the future owner and operator of a fiber mill in Oregon, ohio. So we wish her all the best. You can find Kelly in her wares at the Coyahoga Valley Farmer's Market and Fun Facts. Kelly is also a sign language interpreter. She can read your back there. Last but not least is Aiden Mimi. Aiden is a designer and founder of Found Surface. We met here at this event in October and one thing led to another and now he's on the panel.

Diane Bickett: 4:59

Found Surface is a clothing brand and manufacturer that prioritizes sustainable and regional production. His aim is to rebuild Cleveland's apparel manufacturing industry, setting a new standard for ethical fashion. Aiden is also the co-founder of Lattice, which is a research and development non-profit supporting the natural fiber ecosystem within Cleveland, and last year Aiden also opened the Impossible Arts Store, which is a creative hub for local artists and music. Music, too, yeah, okay, all right.

Kelly Powers: 5:35

And that is our panel, so I am going to turn it over to the next panel.

Kat Novak: 5:42

Well, thank you so much for being here. I love walking back through these doors and seeing familiar faces, and also a lot of it brought me to how I got here. Working at Great Lakes, I was always challenged. It was a different mindset and culture, perhaps in the back somewhere, and at one point he said we're going to rebrand, so can you just use 5,000 tap handles for something, because we're not putting them in a landfill. So of course those contacted me for a while and to my art studio was delivered pallets and my pallets. In my small studio space of tap handles I luckily found a carpenter that made them into bottle openers and if you think about what was created from that, he was able to pay his mortgage just from the funds alone from selling 5,000 of those, and he still, every time he sees me he's like, hey, that we will have tap handles.

Kelly Powers: 6:33

I'm like no, I had nightmares of that.

Kat Novak: 6:35

So for me, being here at this place, especially with this panel of folks I admire them, I respect the way they do things and really just not expecting like the status quo of what we're showing, like fast fashion things like that. Historically Cleveland, you know, in the early 1800s we were making everything by hand in the home. You might have had a tailor or a seamstress that you want to have your clothes made. Fast forward a little bit to the mid 1800s and the ready to wear scene came about so everybody had access to clothes. So you know we're consuming a lot more. And then the Great Depression hit and lost a lot of industry in Cleveland. So part of that we were kind of at closeness with New York City for fashion and clothing production. So there's just been, you know, studying fine and I'm excited to see all these new faces here with new innovative ideas of how to bring industry back, but in a thoughtful manner with really great attention to the environment. So just to talk about that.

Jess Boeke: 7:34

Thank you all for being here today Truly from my heart.

Jess Boeke: 7:37

I really appreciate all of you being here. Our textile industry today is a linear system, and that linear system is a destructive system. Because of the nature of this linear supply chain, we are disconnected to the source of our materials, the origin of our materials, and that means that, you know, in 2013, when the Rana Plaza collapsed and we were very aware of the human health costs that were there we understood and this became pop culture right that there were people who were getting paid barely living wages, that they were working in very terrible conditions, but they were hidden from the consumer's perspective and that's really important and that became popular knowledge and you know a lot of people are working towards fixing that aspect of it.

Jess Boeke: 8:31

A lesser known aspect of this destruction is our ecological aspects of the industry.

Jess Boeke: 8:41

The textile industry is the second most polluting industry next to the fossil fuel industry and it's interesting, there's actually a little bit of an overlap there, because 60% of our clothes are actually fossil fuel derived. So when you think about that, you know our waterways, human health, and that's just at the beginning of the linear system that doesn't take into account all of the pollution and the destruction along the way. And then the third piece that we're really looking at here is our economy, and so if human health and welfare doesn't get you, and if our environment doesn't get you, money will get you right.

Jess Boeke: 9:23

And we are outsourcing most of our production offshore to the global south, to the global majority, really making our clothing for not what it actually costs us to purchase it from, and that linear system where we are disconnected from the source of our materials. The longer that linear system is and the more time and space that's taken up by that linear system, the more that we, even the consumers, the wearers of the clothing, up here we are sold something and we don't even know what it is anymore, and that the disconnection is really the main problem and we see it in these three different areas.

Kat Novak: 10:08

So, I'm actually wearing a beautiful jacket. This is made from cotton from Texas and this is from Files. Sir, I'm going to talk a little bit more about where you're sourcing your materials from.

Aidan Meany: 10:21

Yeah, hey guys. So canvas wearing our magnetic jacket which uses cool magnetic closures mine in the US actually is super rare.

Greg Rotuno: 10:31

Yeah, super rare.

Aidan Meany: 10:34

So I started FoundSurfist in 2021 with the goal to just start making clothes in the US period without needing to import anything, which was a huge challenge. I didn't realize it would be as hard as it was when I started, but just recently, when we hired our team full time, I took my staff to all of our production partners in the West Coast early on, and now we're actually sewing, including Cleveland, which is awesome, and we're not even doing it in other states, but it was the first time many of them had even seen production. All of them were the backgrounds in fashion, got fashion degrees, went to some of the best schools in the US and they haven't even seen how clothes were made themselves, which was a shock to me. I went to Syracuse University before industrial design and it was a pandemic student and realized like, hey, I need to do some more work in my free time and I just started unraveling the issues of supply chain problems across the board. I was raised selling the background and selling it for family, but yeah, so Fonsort, this was started just even to source materials domestically.

Aidan Meany: 11:47

We found some really awesome mom and pop farms in Texas that we're working with now, but we're really focused on bringing everything together. So this year we'll kind of get into it. I think later I won't go too far into it, but we just got some really awesome equipment that's pretty cutting-edge and this is the future of textile painting and my painting, that we kind of agree. But yeah, we're really going to start making everything equally, like it once was, just like Kat was saying and we're really only focused on sourcing things the way that most people know. So I don't know if you know this, but 95% of clothing in the United States has come from China, comes from overseas. 95 is a great number. That's absurd. So, yeah, focused on really changing that.

Carin Miller: 12:37

I love to hear that and I love to hear about what's happening now.

Kat Novak: 12:40

So Jess is going to introduce us a little bit to the Fibershed movement that is currently happening.

Jess Boeke: 12:47

This is the fun stuff. Okay, the way that I like to describe what a fiber shed is. It's analogous to kind of a farm-to-table movement, and here at Great Lakes if you were to open up a menu, you would see that they even market where they have their what farms they're using, and that's important. That's important because it gives the consumer an understanding of value. Right, there's inherent value there. When you go to pick that thing, you know you are purchasing the Kilbuck mushrooms right From that farm and you know that Ohio City farm over across the street. You know that you're using their lettuce, right?

Jess Boeke: 13:25

And that is powerful because of that inherent value and you want to support that because something in us wants that story and wants to be connected to that.

Jess Boeke: 13:34

And you see the face of the farmer. You understand that. That is, you know, in my opinion, like that is nurturing food, right, it's not coming off of a Cisco truck or GFS or whatever. And you know the exact same thing, you know. And then you know they get the carrots from across the street, they chop the top off and they put it in the rustle. Riders take it away and it becomes soil again, right, that is a closed-loop system, that is a circular system.

Jess Boeke: 13:58

That is a food shed, right, and a fiber shed is similar. We are looking at clothing and textiles that can be grown or remade in our bio region and we are looking at that in a way that promotes the health of our economy, the health of our ecologies and the health of our people. And you know our particular fiber shed, rust belt. Like there are many fiber sheds, right, just like there are many food sheds, many water sheds, our particular fiber shed, called rust belt fiber shed, works within 250 miles of Cleveland, ohio, because we have so many assets, so many gifts, so many talented people farmers, institutions, makers in our area to connect as a network, and that is what rust belt fiber shed does.

Jess Boeke: 14:46

So one of the things that we work to do is to connect producers, and that is something that we are really working diligently on this upcoming year is to create this network of farmers and producers artisans makers, processors, and make that information accessible to anyone who is interested in that and get funding and microgrids all that amazing stuff for those people.

Jess Boeke: 15:12

The second thing that rust belt fiber shed works to do is create community programming, which I think many of you in here some of you in here see familiar faces are actually a part of some of the projects.

Jess Boeke: 15:23

And those projects work to make this education real for people, because we know that if we are bringing an industry to this area that without consumer buy-in it's not going to work. And to just tell people that they have to buy local when local can be more expensive, we need to show and explain and put projects and tangible things in people's hands for why that really does matter. It matters for them, it matters for the health, it matters for the connection that they feel to the source of that material. And then another thing that we do is research for soil and water and we're looking for some support to do that this year for our climate beneficial certification program for farmers. Rust belt fiber shed is an affiliate of a larger fiber shed with the capital F, and so we have the benefit of getting inspiration and sharing resources and information with other fiber sheds globally there are 72 of us actually so we have been able to distill best practices from that and we're really excited to move forward with all of that.

Kat Novak: 16:36

So, speaking of farmers, we have the lovely Kelly Powers, girl Powers Akers. She's going to share with us a little bit about what she's doing to get some separate ways to grow and things like that.

Kelly Powers: 16:50

Yeah, so I'm Kelly. Powers of Powers Akers.

Greg Rotuno: 16:54

And.

Kelly Powers: 16:55

I want to start with my favorite USDA statistic. In Ohio, in one year we produce over 460,000 pounds of sheep's wool, and I know that you don't see it anywhere, but we are producing it here and we have no major processing mills, we have no major purchasers of fiber, so the farmers are growing it as a garbage, they're composting it, they're burning it. It is a waste stream which should not be a waste stream, and it's also become a cost to the farmers. So every year, we shear our sheep. If you raise wool sheep, you have to keep shear them every year, and if that wool goes into the garbage, it is a cost instead of a revenue stream, and so I think we need to reclaim this wool what we do at Powers Akers, if we take all of our fiber we process it into yarns and felted products and sell it at the farmer's market.

Kelly Powers: 18:02

But wool is just this magical fabric it wakes moisture, it's temperature-regulating, it's naturally antimicrobial, it's like 100% biodegradable. It's the first original high-performance fiber and we are growing 1.5 million pounds a bit away every year in this state.

Carin Miller: 18:23

So that's where the farmers are.

Kelly Powers: 18:27

It sounds grim, but we are working towards building, working in collaboration with everybody here and beyond to bring the textile opposite back to Ohio.

Kat Novak: 18:41

So yeah, I actually have two sheep placed in my back seat from our neighbor Chuck. So, if that tells you anything, he was excited that I was going to use it. So I'm bringing it to my students and we're going to skirt the fleece together, because that's what you do extra credit in my class. So I'm not losing hope. I know there's so much that we can do here. I want to know a little more about Lattice and what the founder of that means and what type of equipment you're looking into.

Aidan Meany: 19:09

Yeah, so in addition to FoundService, we have a guy in said we've got a research development nonprofit called Lattice that we just started last year.

Aidan Meany: 19:19

This is essentially taking all of the busy work really hard to navigate work that FoundService wants to achieve and do so through a nonprofit.

Aidan Meany: 19:30

So the top project we're working on right now is actually with Kelly and pretty much everyone here, so it's like who would be up here with people that I see Actually I see frequently when we talk to a lot. What we do at Lattice is study the existing farming network here in Ohio kind of beyond the Bosovo High, because it's already really hard to do and identify ways in which brands like FoundService can start producing using only 100% rich or produced goods. So we're focused right now on getting usable alpaca and sheep fiber and understanding what needs to happen, not only on a networking level between farmers to understand what kind of grain of wool they need to then supply to a mill to then produce material for a barrel or for whatever use you're going to do In our minds it's mostly a barrel, but we're starting there but also there's a ton of work that needs to happen on the infrastructure level. Just for a minute. So, like I mentioned, with kind of going, to school.

Aidan Meany: 20:38

Ok. So there's these incredible machines which all I can kind of touch on too, but they're called stone-bedding machines. They are hands down in the future of producing a barrel here in the US in a way that directly would keep you with overseas production.

Kat Novak: 20:54

So mainly when.

Aidan Meany: 20:54

I say that I'm talking price point so that we're making things that isn't breaking the bank for people or is meeting a price point that we're all used to, and not just having to be like, well, sorry, it's three times the cost, Like there's no other way. There is another way, and in my mind it's through stone, and so the lattice is working on right now is getting reusable sheep and alpaca fiber to essentially work on the machine. So we're figuring out what breeds of sheep work, what grades of wool work, and then we're knitting all these samples right now.

Aidan Meany: 21:26

So we're just knitting and knitting, and knitting and trying to understand what's going to work. I'm proud to say that, as of a few weeks ago, we actually did the first successful few samples, so we'll actually work well on the way to accomplishing some really awesome 100% original produced wool products here in the lever-leaning state of Ohio and then, obviously, sharing that with people. So found surface, as of today, actually signed up the final paperwork to get their own stone machine to start producing these. Yeah, which Kent has a topic. Kent is like the leader of this and they're the reason why we got in touch and we're able to do it. But there's really an awesome potential here.

Aidan Meany: 22:07

With this equipment, it takes the pressure off having to squeeze a margin out of a sewing line, which always falls on the burden of a person sewing, which is just not what we're in the interest of doing. We're in the interest of business. This thing is a little parallel. That works for everybody, even those waiting in. So, yeah, super excited, like lattice is the thing that is getting done. All the stuff that found surface can't worry about because at the end of the day, it's a poor profit thing. So, yeah, Great.

Kat Novak: 22:39

So I mean, I love touching upon the knitting aspect. Kent's doing in this whole fashion, a lot of initial knitting, so we keep our grants and getting more machines. We've quite a few. We're actually having a knitting symposium next month if you want to attend, but one of the really beautiful things sitting here is that we're opening it up to more people. So we've had Kelly Spieger and the knitting machine. You've worked with the knitting machine.

Kat Novak: 23:02

You've connected all of us to all these people to use these and the really amazing thing about them is they can be zero waste. So I want to knit a sweater. It's a lot of like computer programming or coding, so I design it where it's just either maybe just a sleeve, maybe just a collar it's only going to knit that out. I don't have to have a piece of fabric that I'm cutting and wasting anything. I can also knit an entire garment, so it takes a lot more time, but I can knit it and she just pull it off the machine and put it on immediately. So it's a really thoughtful way of designing. We're creating more interesting designs together and we can utilize local products and we can have everything made within 250 miles. But speaking of, we need a little bit of help because we have no where to process Fiber.

Kelly Powers: 23:49

Kelly Working on it. So what we're doing currently at Powerzaker is we are sorting, skirting and washing, we're doing all of our wool on our farm and we're bringing in the other local farmers wool as well and then we drive it out to New York to Stroudwa Fiber Mill. She uses belt fast mini mill equipment called Stroudwa. She's mentoring me on how to use the equipment, how to run a fiber mill, and so we're working with her to make all sorts of products, and so the end goal is to bring a fiber mill here to partner with ground surface and be their supplier of local yarn wool for the mid-wear. So a big collaboration with everybody to bring a truly farm to garment product, which is really not being done in too many places. Little bits here and there you'll see around the country, but to actually have it grown, processed and manufactured all in the same fiber chip is rare, I would say, and very exciting.

Kelly Powers: 25:09

So I'm looking forward to see what mid-wear products can come out of my sheep and my neighbor's sheep.

Jess Boeke: 25:19

So, yeah.

Jess Boeke: 25:21

Yeah, when Kelly is saying this is not happening in the rest of the country, she's right on. I mean, there are some pockets in California where people are creating garments from fields of closet or however you want to say it, and then in New York as well, but other than that Midwest, this is why Cleveland is so awesome, because we have such an opportunity here that we really do not want to sleep on. This is something that we have the people, we have the know-how, we have the understanding of what needs to be done, and now it just has to be done. And that is so exciting.

Jess Boeke: 26:00

And, as Kat, said earlier we were second to New York once upon a time in the garment manufacturing and I think this is the opportunity that, while California and New York are doing their California and New York thing, the Midwest can really do this right and responsibly, with a lot of insight and thoughtfulness, and I think that's the piece that I don't want to brush over for all of us here that we're not just recreating a textile industry like that.

Jess Boeke: 26:29

Bring it back and we're doing this in a very thoughtful manner to make sure that we're actually sequestering carpet with our grazing of our sheep and paying attention to our waterways and how they're being impacted by any sort of dyes that we might be using and using wastewater and all of that sort of thing. So that's a really important piece of the puzzle here.

Kat Novak: 26:56

So, looking to the future too, at Kent State we have a lot of students that are getting upset Like they're mad. I want them to be mad about this, because these are the ones that are going to make things happen and are going to make changes. We have our curriculum that our course is sustainability, and walking away. Meeting a student before they take that class to after is night and day. I'm the advisor for the fabric pantry, so what I do is take any donations. I've driven to hospitals on the Super Bowl to load my car with she totally ate bags of dresses. It was 45. I have my husband's box truck and I brought them upstairs. I had students take them just for the fabric. They're going to remake them for a fashion show. Maybe they're just keeping them, but it was a way of keeping all of those out of the way stream again. So it's gotten me inspired to write grants.

Kat Novak: 27:48

I've talked to some of you that I'm not a fan of writing grants, apparently, but I'm that excited and passionate to make it happen. So we're trying to establish a natural dye garden on campus and it's one of those amazing things that I never thought. I'd be sitting in a meeting with the person talking about liquid crystals. I did not have much to add to the conversation, but I was very excited to be in that conversation and their full support. So this is something that can be dynamic and changing the soil. We can get our fibers from there, we can get our dyes from there, and it's keeping it all within our community and hopefully establishing some sort of template for other universities or communities to do.

Kat Novak: 28:29

Yes, I'm excited about that and very tired. I'm also trying to establish a farmer with fashion class, just because, again, kind of reiterating what we've talked about tonight is losing touch a little bit about where everything comes from and sort of knowing your farmer, knowing where you have what you're doing. But so what do you guys think about any? How can we as consumers be better at making options better for ourselves? And what can we be as consumers to buy water?

Jess Boeke: 29:01

I mean, there are a number of things that we can do actionable steps, like right away. You know, keeping our clothes that we currently own in circulation is something that is a really important part of this. So if you have clothing that you love or has a hole in it, maybe you can mend it, maybe we can clothing swaps. There's a number of ways to keep clothes in circulation right now Shopping, secondhand, shopping, vintage that's always really important. But really, you know, also, in addition to all of that, the consumer really has to consider what it is that they are purchasing, if they are going to go to a small business and support something that's ecologically made.

Jess Boeke: 29:47

There's a lot of greenwashing that's happening and these folks here are really working with their own businesses to combat that, but that's a reality. So you have to kind of be judicious in your consumer behavior. And another thing is we are living right now in a very disposable culture. We're living in a culture that has normalized a lot of clothes in our closet where we don't really have that. We don't wear all the clothes in our closets, and so just really being conscious of how much we actually maybe do need and then when we do want to purchase something we support our small businesses.

Aidan Meany: 30:31

Stop getting stuff with plastic in it. Is that working? Yeah, that's huge, Like so much. An early project that we considered at phone service was recycling bottles and turning that into a usable thread. We quickly stopped that because we realized just how much microplastics were getting released in our washroom. So there's no plastic in our clothes. It should not be in our clothes period. Please stop buying clothes in plastic.

Kat Novak: 31:05

I'm gonna try. So I sort of want each of us to say our call to action, like how can people get involved or do things? So if anybody has a call to action, I'd love to hear what you have.

Kelly Powers: 31:25

So I guess my call to action has to be I'm trying to open a Fiber Mill in Northeast Ohio. It's a mini mill, but it is going to have great impact across industries here and it's gonna be a real ripple effect and it supports the producers, it supports the designers, it puts into play a new material that is currently not in play right now in our market and the benefits just are come happen. And so we are looking for financial support to make this happen, to make this a reality, and so if anybody has a connection or would like to talk to me after I do have a good one thing, and there is fundraising going on At this point in the business planning I think what I really am looking for is a partner, is a financial backer partner who wants to make this happen with me.

Kelly Powers: 32:39

So if that's, you or you know somebody if you want to connect with somebody, or yeah, just from talking to me after I get it.

Jess Boeke: 32:50

My call to action is support for these mills and also, you know, we have an amazing community of people here in the Rust Belt region, like tiers, jaw-dropping, amazing people here. So if you want to get connected with anyone who is doing the work in Rust Belt Fiber Shed, we actually have a forum for that on our website and you can go to.

Jess Boeke: 33:21

I think it's like join the community or something on our website, rustbeltfibershedcom, and it's open to public but you can also there's some private chat stuff. You can make a profile and just like there's people post you know amending meetups and people post about the work that they're doing and it's just such a cool community. We also have community projects that we would love people to be a part of, so you can check those out on our website as well. The Crocheted Bikini over there it was a collaboration from. Emily. Kichler made that for the one-year went-out good project and that is with homegrown flax for linen and fun fact about flax there is no linen domestic linen production at all in North America, so it's a great full stop that moved overseas. So any sort of domestic that's another thing that RustBelt FiberShed is working on as well, but Emily made it handspun, homegrown, handspun crochet bikini. You gotta check that.

Kat Novak: 34:27

I don't know if I can follow that up. I mean, it's quite beautiful also. So, personally, I just think educating yourselves and other people around you and supporting the students, that's kind of my biggest thing. Is why the Keeva teachers? Because I remember being a student and having instructors that supported me and listened to my weird, crazy ideas and then seeing them come to fruition. You know it's like altering them, so just supporting people and education.

Aidan Meany: 34:57

Saving your clothes for your kids. That's a big thing. I know I'm like young I haven't done that, but my parents did that and I really appreciated it and a lot of stuff that everyone my age was wearing was like handed down and I think you know a big inspiration that I take at FoundSurfaces is to make clothing that will last, so that actually can happen. So a lot of stuff we keep in mind is like what is something that we want somebody young now to say to give to their kids later and know that it'll stay on the test of time and be cooler, you know, with age. So think of clothes like wine.

Diane Bickett: 35:32

There's a couple points that I wanted to make quick announcements. Sherri Renee, where are you? Sherri, do you?

Kat Novak: 35:38

want to mention something about your store with us.

Diane Bickett: 35:42

Sherri is with Cleveland Soes, thank you.

Shari Renee: 35:47

Hello.

Carin Miller: 35:49

Good evening everyone.

Shari Renee: 35:53

Good evening everyone. I am from an organization called Cleveland Soes and we are a nonprofit program where we do educational and workforce development programming in the community. We focus around circular manufacturing and inclusivity, focusing on marginalized communities and uplifting them through the work that we do. So every year we do an annual give back in the way of either a point-to-drive or this year we're doing a sewathon, and the sewathon this year is really about a theme that we call social manufacturing, and the idea really is around looking at manufacturing and kind of saying, well, maybe we didn't get the right idea going with globalization and what does it look like to reskill our communities and produce products closer to the place of consumption.

Shari Renee: 36:51

And so what we're doing on May 4th is we are inviting the community to St Vincent Charity Hospital. They are our recipient this year with their Visually Kitchen and Pantry program, and, for those of you that are not familiar, the hospital closed, unfortunately, a year ago, but they took down all the drapery and they had it laundered and dry-cleaned and we're going to be repurposing that into reusable tote bags for their pantry program. So we want to invite all of you to come and work together as a team to create a product at scale that day, so you don't have to be a sewist, you can be a non-sewer. We need everyone to make the magic happen, but the idea is that really, in creating this inclusive economy, that we need to start to talk to one another and we need to start to get to know each other so that we can actually start to build this together as well, and so that's sort of the idea around the social part of the manufacturing and looking at a new way to create this kind of music. Our community.

Diane Bickett: 38:08

Thank you, karen. Ok, one final announcement. Karen Miller, do you mind coming up and talking about the Fixit Clinic? We could be here all night, but I know you want to have another drink.

Kat Novak: 38:19

I'll be fast, I'm Karen.

Carin Miller: 38:21

Miller with the Solid Waste District and we have a couple of things going on. So if you haven't heard of Fixit CLEE, that is an ongoing series of events in collaboration with us, the City of Cleveland and with, I think, the OXA case. There are ongoing events we're also partnering with Cleveland.

Carin Miller: 38:40

Public Library. They're going to be having events roaming around at their different branches throughout the year. Thank you, thank you. But then we also have a one-day event happening on Saturday, march 23rd, from 10 to 2. I have my cheat sheet up here so don't forget. It's called our Reduce, reuse, repair Fair. We did this whole thing. Our second one, march 23rd, it's at the City of Independence, at their fieldhouse.

Carin Miller: 39:09

And the idea behind this event is we have a lot of local vendors coming to. They have anything to do with waste reduction, reuse, repair. A lot of the vendors there are going to be textile related and then we have also other things like furniture refinishing, mending, repairing items. There will be an on-site fix, a clinic there where you can bring a small appliance or something else that wants some help fixing.

Greg Rotuno: 39:37

We don't guarantee that we will fix it for you, but we do our best to help.

Carin Miller: 39:41

So please come to that event. Or if you know anybody that might be a good vendor that has anything to do with reduce reuse repair, please have them contact for you, or then contact us at the Solid Waste District. We still have space for vendors. Thank you, all right.

Diane Bickett: 40:03

Well, I'd like to final thank you to our panel. Thank you, kat, aiden, kelly and Jess for doing such a great job explaining this very deep and complex concept and for all the work that you're doing. And thank you to our sponsors and for Great Lakes Brewing Company for hosting us tonight. So bars open for a little while longer. Drive safe, keep the conversation going, thank you.

Greg Rotuno: 40:33

We hope you've enjoyed this episode of EcoSpeak CLE. You can find our full catalog of episodes on Spotify, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. New episodes are available the first and third Tuesday of each month. Please follow EcoSpeak CLE on Facebook and Instagram and become part of the conversation. We hope you've enjoyed this episode of EcoSpeak CLE, or if you'd like to become a sponsor of EcoSpeak CLE, you can email us at hello at ecospeaksclecom.

Greg Rotuno: 41:02

Stay tuned for more important and inspiring stories to come. Please follow EcoSpeak CLE on Facebook and Instagram and become part of the conversation. If you would like to send us feedback and suggestions, or if you'd like to become a sponsor of EcoSpeak CLE, you can email us at hello at ecospeaksclecom. Stay tuned for more important and inspiring stories to come.