Blue planet, green ideas | The thousand and one lives of an old shirt

A hot water bottle, a sleeping mask, a tart holder, a cushion cover and a multitude of hair scrunchies. This is what Anaelle Nedelec manages to make from a single shirt.

In the workshop she has set up at home, surrounded by boxes where piles of clothes and scraps of fabric await, her sewing machine knows little respite.

“I can make more or fewer objects from a piece of clothing, depending on its size, or whether it is damaged or not,” she explains.

Giving clothes a second life

His small business, Unel, collects clothing donations brought by people wishing to get rid of them. It is with them that Anaelle first sorts, to determine what could still be worn and donated to thrift stores, then she sets about transforming the faded, damaged or worn clothes. She also often goes to bazaars to find clothes considered unsellable.

She has just reached the milestone of collecting a ton of clothing, after a year and a half of activity.

“I haven’t transformed everything yet,” she explains.

Since she founded Unel 18 months ago, more than 1,000 creations have already left her workshop, half of which have been sold in points of sale scattered throughout Montreal, or at artisan markets.

She also takes personalized orders, with companies or individuals, “to prevent clothes that we love, but that we no longer wear, from remaining in a closet,” she explains.

Last summer, under his sewing needle, old Rugby Club Montreal team jerseys became around thirty colorful hats distributed to players and supporters.

One order particularly moved her at Christmas: two cardigans from an elderly woman who had just passed away, from which Anaelle made a fanny pack and a satchel for her two children.

“I found it really beautiful, that these clothes continue to have a new life with them,” she confides.

From genius to sewing

Before Unel, Anaelle was destined for a career in biomedical engineering. A graduate of Polytechnique Montréal, she was an engineer for five years, before questioning this life choice.

“I originally studied biomedical engineering to help save lives. But I realized that living healthy on a polluted planet doesn’t work,” she explains.

She therefore decided to take the leap into entrepreneurship by embracing her passion for sewing, which she had been cultivating for several years.

With his creations, his objective is twofold: to extend as much as possible the lifespan of fabrics that would have been sent to landfill, and to prevent new objects from being purchased new.

She hopes to reduce overconsumption of clothing and textile pollution, one hot water bottle at a time.

A stone in the building

Across Quebec, there are still few recycling solutions for clothing that can no longer be worn, but certain initiatives are starting to make headway^⁠1.

“It would take a lot of Anaelle to manage the tons of textiles that go to landfill every year,” underlines Claude Maheux-Picard, general director of the Center for Technology Transfer in Industrial Ecology (CTTEI).

She reminds us that the important thing above all is to reduce at the source, and to learn to consume differently, in particular avoiding the temptations of short-lived fashion.

“But any initiative to extend the lifespan of clothing is welcome. We must encourage these local companies who come to provide solutions. Even if the volumes are low, it also helps raise awareness,” adds Claude Maheux-Picard.

With Unel, Anaelle also strives to raise awareness of this issue among the general public on social networks, and regularly gives workshops so that people can learn how to recycle their old clothes themselves.

“It’s certain that we play against very big players,” admits the entrepreneur. But the more we are small businesses like mine, the more weight we will have and we will be able to move in the right direction. »

Visit the Unel website to make a clothing donation or custom order

1. Read “Eternal dead end for worn out clothes? »