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VIDEO: Fabric recycling nonprofit Fabscrap moves to Brooklyn Army Terminal

April 12, 2018 By Liliana Bernal Brooklyn Daily Eagle
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The 4,100-square-foot warehouse at the Brooklyn Army Terminal in Sunset Park is now the new home of Fabscrap, a nonprofit that recycles unwanted textiles from design companies in New York to create a thrift shop for fabrics.

The initiative is part of the new sustainable fashion movement that fashion companies have begun to embrace. Fabscrap’s goal is to keep fabric out of landfills.

“Even though in New York City as a business, if 10 percent or more of your waste is textile, you’re supposed to recycle it,” said the organization’s founder Jessica Schreiber. “All the businesses we’re working with, before Fabscrap, threw out the material or in some cases, it was incinerated.”

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“Fabscrap is a way for companies to comply with recycling regulations and it’s also a good opportunity just to measure what they’re throwing out,” she added.

The textile recycler keeps meticulous data on everything it picks up, how it stores it and where it goes. The organization then provides this information back to the companies, allowing them to know of their waste.

Schreiber said that most nonprofits tend to focus on post-consumer clothing and not the pre-consumer textiles, which positions the startup at the forefront of pre-consumer sustainability in the fashion world.

Prior to starting Fabscrap, Schreiber ran the city’s clothing recycling program at the Department of Sanitation. After more than 30 designers reached out to her asking what they could do with their fabric waste, she realized there wasn’t any program to support them. That was the springboard and foundation for Fabscrap.

Camille Tagle, the organization’s co-founder and director of reuse partnerships, joined Schreiber after seeing firsthand the waste that accumulates from the sampling process in design during her years as a luxury evening wear designer.

“It was a huge motivation for me to want to make a switch into trying to find a way to reuse fabrics and kind of promote more sustainable practices,” Tagle said.

Since it was launched in 2016, Fabscrap has collected 100,000 pounds of textiles from more than 150 brands, including Mark Jacobs, Express, Eileen Fisher, Oscar de la Renta and Mara Hoffman.

They pick up the unwanted fabrics from designer offices and bring them to their warehouse, where around 600 volunteers store the textiles and classify them as recyclable and reusable items.

Any piece that is longer than a yard is saved for reuse and resold at the warehouse showroom as well as in their e-commerce store. Small pieces that aren’t big for reuse are sorted by fibers and then shredded to become insulation, carpet paddings, moving blankets and other items.

“I’ve been so excited by how many people have contacted us to use the fabric and how many volunteers who’ve come in, spent time here and helped us and are part of our machine,” Schreiber said. “I think all of that surpasses every expectation that I had.”

Fabscrap is hosting a warehouse warming party on April 29 from noon to 4 p.m. for anyone interested in volunteering with them or learning more about sustainable fashion.


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