A thrifting paradise is coming to campus thanks to UNI students who are working to educate the campus community about the harmful effects of fashion waste.
UNI students Kendall Lienemann, Paige German, Haley Ham and Kate McAlister have been busy folding and organizing hundreds of donated clothes for Revitalize to Rewear’s “Rummage Rampage” on Monday, April 15 from 10:30 a.m. – 3:00 p.m. in Maucker Union’s Ballrooms. Shoppers will have the opportunity to fill as many bags as they can with thrifted clothes of their choice for a cost of $5 per bag.
“We have a lot of good items,” Lienemann said. “We have a lot of expensive items that people have donated that they just never wore, we have clothes with tags still on, and some designer clothes as well.”
All proceeds from the Rummage Rampage will be donated to the Cedar Valley Angels, a local non-profit dedicated towards supporting children in the foster care system. Additionally, any clothes leftover from the sale will be donated to the House of Hope, a non-profit which provides single-mother families and women who age out of the foster care system with support and transitional housing.
“The leftover clothes will all find a home,” German said. “It won’t just be sitting in someone’s basement waiting for the next thrift sale. It’s going somewhere to people who need it.”
The Rummage Rampage is run through the Iowa Waste Reduction Center in collaboration with the John Pappajohn Entrepreneurial Center and UNI’s Business and Community Services. Lienemann said she hopes this event can inspire less fashion waste, and more conscious consumerism.
“It’s kind of been a passion project for me,” Lienemann said. “I just really like clothes and I really like thrifting. I kind of had a little side business and my coworkers and boss saw what I was doing that and they asked, ‘Hey, how can we tie this into environmentalism and reducing waste?’”
From there, Lienemann created a partnership with German and began to research fashion waste in preparation for a clothing drive.
“This has been a multi level process,” German said. “We started doing research going into it and understanding the stats and the problem. We started doing interviews and went around campus asking students about fashion waste and no one really knew anything about it.”
German said fast fashion and keeping up with trends has contributed towards the harmful environmental effects of clothing waste. As college students, German said it can often be easy to hop on the fast fashion trends.
“We’re all broke college kids,” She said. “We’re just trying to look cute, but I’m hoping this will open students’ eyes to shop local and possibly avoid fast fashion.”
For those who attend the Rummage Rampage, exact cash or Venmo are accepted as forms of payment.
