By Kimberly Atkins Stohr

ALEX DABAGH SAT AT A loom in a factory in New York City’s designer district, swiftly but meticulously interlacing and tightening strips of textiles into a tapestry that would soon become a luxury item. At first blush, the fabric created by the leathersmith could be mistaken for the nubby opulence of Chanel tweed, with its rich, unique weave of bright green, white, and blue. But this material is not made of wool or leather. It’s made of trash — mostly plastics that other factories would have thrown in dumpsters destined for landfills. “I call it the epitome of the American dream,” Dabagh, a Boston Architectural College alumnus, said of the leather goods factory his father founded in 1982 after migrating from Beirut to New York City during the Lebanese Civil War. “I was my dad’s apprentice growing up.” Dabagh is more than an apprentice-turned-craftsman. As the fashion industry is facing an environmental justice crisis — producing more textiles than ever despite the fact that it is responsible for as much as 10 percent of global carbon emissions — he is an innovator. He’s among a growing number of fashion producers who are changing the way they make clothing and accessories with an eye on not only reducing or eliminating the negative impact of their goods on the planet but also protecting and empowering people in communities around the globe that will be hit first and hardest by the looming environmental disasters. And the biggest innovations are coming from the bottom up, in small, locally based operations like Dabagh’s.

Alex Dabagh, founder of ANYBAG, uses a loom at his company in Manhattan, on Feb. 10. Dabagh makes handcrafted totes out of plastic bags and other New York City waste material. (Jennifer S. Altman for The Boston Globe) UNDERLAY: Detail of ANYBAG material. (ANYBAG)

Alex Dabagh in the ANYBAG offices. (Jennifer S. Altman for The Boston Globe)

When he returned to the factory in 2005 after graduate school he had an epiphany: He could use the scraps of leather and other materials that would normally be discarded as waste to make something beautiful. “I picked through and created a traditional rag rug just out of leather and scraps of fabric,” Dabagh said, showing me an intricately woven piece that would be a stunning centerpiece in any room. “I was just taking something that’s existed forever and reinventing it and reimagining it.” Then, one day, he was taking out the trash at his own home. “And I thought. If this is what is coming out of my apartment, what are the other 8.5 million people in New York City doing?” Dabagh said. “Where is it going? So, I came in here and said, OK, we’re going to start collecting all the waste in this factory — all of the plastic that fabric comes wrapped in, all the poly bags, the shopping bags, and anything that comes through. Let’s hold on to it and use it.”

From that concept came the ANYBAG, styled to emphasize its New York City origins. The trash of Dabagh’s hometown, saved from ending up in a landfill, transformed by New York-based artisans into something beautiful, useful, and lasting. And now he’s scaling up, building a custom loom that will boost production, lower costs, and create new jobs. Ngozi Okaro, an environmental and social justice advocate, said this kind of innovation is crucial for bringing fashion into a sustainable future. “He saw a problem and he used his intellect to say, oh here is something I can create out of the problem that’s valuable and beautiful,” said Okaro, who is also executive director of Custom Collaborative. The New York-based organization trains and mentors women, particularly those who are Black and brown, immigrants, and low-income earners in the fashion industry with a focus on sustainability. And innovators aren’t just being altruistic. They’re proving sustainability can be profitable. “He said, this can earn me money while at the same time helping to solve an environmental problem,” Okaro said.

Despite the fashion industry’s growing focus on sustainability, the world is still producing far more new textiles than ever. According to a report by the nonprofit Textile Exchange, in 2021 global textile fiber production reached an all-time high of 113 million metric tons. That is quadruple the amount that was produced in 1975. By 2030, the report projected, that number will reach 149 million metric tons. This is despite the fact that there are enough existing clothing textiles on earth to clothe everyone for at least 100 years without producing a single new fiber. And less than 1 percent of that material is recycled into new clothes, according to a report by McKinsey. Not only does that surplus create environmental danger, it represents a missed revenue opportunity. According to the McKinsey report, recycling these materials could amount to $100 billion in additional revenues for the industry each year.

“There are so many end-of-life solutions for textiles that can create economic opportunity after we go through these linear models of extract, produce, buy, wear, throw away,” Okaro said. Innovators, Okaro said, are “creating a new way — then showing the rest of the industry that way.” Dabagh said one way to support upcoming brands truly centered on circular fashion is to provide better funding. While a growing number of investors and funders are helping to usher in a new generation of circular fashion brands, there is still a long way to go. That leaves innovators to find their own solutions. One is Bobby Kolade, a Ugandan designer who spent more than a decade working in Europe at luxury fashion brands like Maison Margiela and Balenciaga before returning to his hometown of Kampala with a clear goal in mind: building a new brand made of sustainably grown Ugandan cotton, creating jobs in the process.

“I realized that the consumption of clothing that was contributing to this excess [in the West] isn’t going anywhere,” Kolade said. “We have to answer this question and this problem.” From that came the idea of Kolade’s brand Buzigahill, which produces collections called Return to Sender: luxury clothing created entirely of imported Western used clothing, to be sold to Western consumers. And he wanted to make it a model that could be replicated by other companies. “Our goal was to come up with the processes that would show how it’s possible to make a sustainable business using secondhand raw materials,” Kolade told me on a video call from his studio in Kampala. “It’s working for us on a small scale, producing 100 jobs. I would say that’s a benchmark.”

Ngozi Okaro is executive director of Custom Collaborative, a New York-based organization that trains and mentors women in the fashion industry with a focus on sustainability. (Heather Sten)

RIGHT: A woman arranged items at Green Shop, a modern secondhand shop in Kampala, Uganda, on Oct. 7. In August, President Yoweri Museveni of Uganda announced a ban on the importation of used clothing into Uganda. (BADRU KATUMBA/AFP via Getty Images)

ABOVE: Bobby Kolade founded Buzigahill, which produces a luxury clothing line created entirely of imported Western used clothing that is sold to Western consumers. (Buzigahill)

Kimberly Atkins Stohr is a columnist for the Globe. She may be reached at kimberly.atkinsstohr@globe.com. Follow her @KimberlyEAtkins.

Editors: Marjorie Pritchard and Amy MacKinnon Designer/Photo Editor/Project Manager: Heather Hopp-Bruce Producer/Audience Engagement: Rami Abou-Sabe Copy Editor: Jessie Tremmel Developer: Andrew Nguyen

Rags to runway

PART 3

But after doing some research, he discovered a problem: The country’s cotton industry — which decades ago was robust enough to clothe the whole nation — had fallen into a state of decline, with some ginneries operating at only 10 percent capacity. In fact, Uganda was importing far more textiles than it was producing. And the vast majority of the imports come from the United States and Europe in the form of used clothing. Uganda is a top importer of the Western world’s castoffs, which have become a principal source of affordable clothing for its residents. But like in other African nations, the used clothing also creates an environmental hazard in the country, with tons of textiles piling up in heaps in landfills, burning and releasing toxic fumes, and washing into rivers and out to sea.

While Kolade’s return to Uganda was meant to be a break from the fashion industry in Europe, he now wants to partner with Western brands to replicate what he’s building. “People really are interested in what we are doing, and the way we are doing it. So that is the kind of partnership that is next for us,” Kolade said. “We are leaving the realm of our studio and opening up the rest of the world. We have to.” Like Kolade, Dabagh has begun partnering with other fashion brands. He said part of his purpose is to show that circular fashion can be achievable and scalable — and some research bears that out. A recent report by Global Fashion Agenda said that if fashion companies invest more in existing recycling technologies and infrastructures — no thinking out of the box required — the industry can be 80 percent sustainable by 2030. But if they don’t, according to the World Bank, the fashion industry’s contribution to greenhouse gas emissions will grow from 10 percent to nearly 50 percent in that same time frame. “A lot of bigger brands don’t really want to step into real sustainability because what they are doing now is making them money,” Dabagh said. “So it’s really up to us to create the solutions to create things that are clearly recycled and regenerated, as the next generation, to show them the way.”

Alex Dabagh’s hands lay upon fabric on a large wooden loom. The fabric is white and blue strips of material being woven together with bright lime green string.

Kat Hoelck, with long dark hair parted in the middle and wearing a black shirt, stands at a table under long fluorescent lights with Alex Dabagh, who has short black hair and is wearing a white T-shirt. They are looking at three bags on the long table in front of them; Alex is holding one made of lime green fabric with raspberry colored piping and straps.

Alex Dabagh, who has short black hair and is wearing a white T-shirt, dark pants, and sneakers, places a large roll of blue, yellow, and purple fabric onto a ceiling-high shelf filled with similar rolls in a large room. Stacks of boxes and another shelf are in the foreground, giving the appearance of a crowded storeroom.

Alex Dabagh and Kat Hoelck, director of partnerships and founding partner of ANYBAG, inspected the final product. Bags are priced between $98 and $248 on the ANYBAG site. (Jennifer S. Altman for The Boston Globe)