1.1 Background
Fast fashion is a phenomenon that has been booming since the past decade. There are many problems with fast fashion, but one being that many clothes are thrown away due to the cheap material. This causes people to buy more clothes, resulting in overconsumption. People buy 60% more clothes but keep them for half as long compared to 2000. Additionally, producing clothes has doubled since 2000. Overconsumption leads to wastefulness, both in manufacturing the clothes and throwing away “old” clothes, resulting in negative environmental impacts such as wasting water. Washing clothes releases 500,000 tons of microfibers into the ocean each year, which is equivalent to 50 billion plastic bottles. Essentially, fast fashion is destroying the planet and making people spend recklessly on clothes that they think are worth the money because of how cheap and “trendy” it looks.
1.2 Concept Description
A washing machine where the cycle never stops so people can’t reload the machines with new clothes. Future idea is to add a display for the amount of water wasted as time goes on and the number of microfibers released each second or possibly an art installation like a doll house displaying piles of clothes with one broken washing machine.
1.3 Feature List
The project demonstrates how people keep buying more clothes, leading to more wash cycles. However, with a broken machine it evokes frustration and confusion because they see the clothes in the machine but can’t use it. Since microfibers in clothing now are released into the ocean every time someone washes clothes, this project brings attention and urgency to the environmental impacts of fast fashion.
1.4 Technical Plan
This project was built using a motor and Arduino. There is casing involved using recycled materials for prototyping purposes. “Neverending Washing Machine” is version 1, and the plan for the final implementation is to include a display that counts the seconds and shows how much water is used and how many microfibers from the clothes are being released into the ocean.
1.5 Technical Limitations
There was an issue with trying to figure out how to change the speed of the rotations of the motor. Currently, this is in the prototyping/version 1 state, therefore it is rather incomplete in its design and technical aspects. Things that are still in the workings include possibly adding a display and learning how to display all the information on the same screen.
*Unfortunately, I did not take a picture of it with the miniature washing machine casing