A swap for the planet

That’s exactly the kind of shift organizers of the clothing swap hope to entourage. Hosted by the Climate Fellows, a graduate student group focused on environmental justice, the swap invited students to drop off clothes they no longer wanted and pick up something new, all free of charge.

“The fast fashion industry is very destructive for the environment. It’s extremely unsustainable, it’s bad for climate change and it also just can be very wasteful. Clothes just go through factories, they get thrown away, they’re not made thoughtfully,” said Emma Corinne, a marine policy graduate student and president of the Climate Fellows. “The industry as a whole can be very damaging for climate change.”

“But a clothing swap is a really cool way to promote reduce, reuse, recycle into the clothing industry,” she added.

For Corinne, it’s about making the connection between personal habits and global impact.

She encouraged students to swap clothes “instead of buying a t-shirt from H&M or whatever – I don’t want to single out a single company – stores where clothes are shipped directly from China, which is also part of the climate change impact that you’re putting tons of material on ships and sending it across the ocean. That’s emissions,” she said. “So, instead of doing that, we’re taking clothes from students at UD and giving them to students at UD. There’s no carbon emissions.”

Gen Z’s thrifting power

“I would attribute it to a couple things. One is just an awareness, and it’s almost an awareness to the point where it’s become a trend,” Corinne said. “People want to get their clothes sustainably because I feel like back in the day maybe that wasn’t seen as the trendy thing to do, whereas now thrifting is all the rage.”

“I think the other thing is they realize that they’re the ones impacted by climate change. They’re younger, they’re going to live through it,” she added. “And if they don’t do something, they realize that those consequences [will] come back to them in the future. And because of that, they have a motivation to practice sustainable shopping.”

That awareness appears to be translating into action. According to a recent Capital One Shopping report, more than 60% of Gen Z prefer to buy secondhand — a shift shaped by both values and value, especially in an era marked by inflation and rising retail prices.

“Obviously, I’m a single person so it’s a small change, but at least it’s something,” Dziemian said. “When you have cool clothing … and then [people] ask where it’s from and you say you thrifted it, then they get inspired to do the same thing.”

“You’re not going into a store and going to be wearing the same thing as everyone else. It’s very unique to your own style,” she added. “You can really get to experiment, which I think is the most fun part of it.”