This TED Talk features sustainability sower Amit Kalra, recorded live at TED-at-Tami 2017.

A few years ago, I found myself looking for the most cost-effective way to be stylish.

So naturally, I wound up at my local thrift store, a wonderland of other people's trash that was ripe to be plucked to become my treasure.

Now, I wasn't just looking for your average off the secondhand rack vintage t-shirt to wear.

For me, real style lives at the intersection of design and individuality. So to make sure that I was

getting the most out of the things that I was finding about a sewing machine, so I could tailor

the 90-style garments that I was finding

to fit a more contemporary aesthetic.

I've been tailoring and making my own clothes from scratch ever since,

so everything in my closet is uniquely my own.

But as I was sorting through the endless racks of clothes at these thrift stores,

I started to ask myself, what happens to all the clothes that I don't buy?

The stuff that isn't really cool or trendy, but kind of just sits there and rots away at these second-hand stores.

I work in the fashion industry on the wholesale side, and I start to see some of the products that we sell end up on the racks of these thrift stores.

So the question started to work its way into my work life as well.

I did some research, and I pretty quickly

found a very scary supply chain that led me to some pretty troubling realities. It turned out

that the clothes that I was sorting through at these thrift stores represented only a small fraction

of the total amount of garments that we dispose of each year. In the U.S., only 15% of the total

textile and garment waste

that's generated each year ends up being donated or recycled in some way,

which means that the other 85% of textile and garment waste

...