Guest Speaker Talk: UseDem

UseDem company: the first denim upcycling company in Shanghai

We were introduced to the company UseDem which is run by a Russian-born lady that was previously in the fashion industry but realized the amount of pollution that the industry contributes to the environment and decided to make a change. During the talk we learned that 70 million units of denim clothes are discarded by Shanghainese. We also learned that jeans require special conditions to decompose although they are decomposable. A concerning fact was that the washing process for 3 jeans is 16000 liters of water, which is shockingly enough water for a person for 22 years. Jeans require a disconcertingly long process to be created. 5% of a company’s jean production are thrown away and discarded and often never repurposed. The main idea behind the company is not the production of a product but rather the production of the idea and message of saving the environment.

 

She released that one pair of jeans can make 1 backpack. One backpack retails for 660 rmb. The company’s main competitor is the company Freitag which also uses plastic materials and upcycles them to create different variations of bags with unique designs. In addition, the company encourages donations of jeans from consumers, which results in a discount for that consumer should they wish to purchase a backpack.

I found the guest speaker talk particularly interesting as it presented a creative and innovative way to repurpose textile waste, significantly decreasing the environmental pollution, with a primary focus in denim fabric.