Workshop: Textiles

g’ROUND: Processing Textile Waste Tour and Seminar, Oct 2024

Podcast Interview with Lois Klassen about the event now live!

A Handful of textile shoddy (recycling phase), Goodwill Industries, 2024 image: Amanda White

Part 1. TOUR: Processing Textile Waste


On Wed Oct 23, 2025 Lois Klassen and Amanda White organized a group to tour the Goodwill Commercial Solutions facility in London, ON., led by the Circularity and Sustainability Specialist there. Throughout the tour, we received a behind the scenes look at how donated items and textiles are sorted, managed and recycled, and we heard about some of the innovative strategies for textile recycling and waste diversion that are being explored by this nonprofit social enterprise. Of particular note were their goals to find solutions to recycle ALL items, and to avoid re-selling textiles that could end up in waste streams.

Part 2. SEMINAR: Creative and Critical Responses to Textile Waste.

Lois Klassen, Practices of Everyday Ethics, Volume 2: Meditations on Textile Waste, Zine, 2023

On Thursday Oct 24th, 1-3pm we gathered for a seminar at the John Labatt Visual Arts Centre, where artist/scholar Lois Klassen led a hands-on workshop and discussion about textile circularity at the personal and global level. We discussed this massive problem, some of the global impacts and concerns, sharing some resources and videos from organizations such as the Or foundation and initiatives such as Stop Waste Colonialism and their emphasis on the need for a circular textile industry and extended producer responsibility. We also discussed some innovative and creative ways to manage textile waste at home and divert it from landfill.

During the seminar, participants assembled a set of meditation cushions based on the instructions and ideas from Klassen’s zine series “Practices of Everyday Ethics”. These Cushions were commissioned by the Centre for Sustainable Curating, and have been used as seating for events, conferences and other gatherings. The fabric for the outer shells was sourced from the Textile Museum of Canada’s Textile Reuse Program, and the shredded stuffing was sourced from Goodwill Industries (more info below).

The cushions are available to borrow through the CSC!

g’ROUND Cushion materials and construction:

Further Resources


Global Issue:
The OR Foundation. The Best Resistance Is an Alternative. https://theor.org/
Ricketts, Liz, and Branson Skinner. Stop Waste Colonialism: Leveraging Extended Producer Responsibility to Catalyze a Justice-Led Circular Textiles Economy. The Or Foundation, 2023, https://stopwastecolonialism.org/.
Podcast:  Serumaga, Nikissi, and Bobby Kolade. Vintage or Violence. project about fast fashion waste from a pan-african perspective https://www.vintageorviolence.com/

For Makers:
Podcast: Check Your Thread. a podcast about sewing more sustainably https://checkyourthread.com/
Fabric Sustainability Index & Fabric Life Cycle Assessment EXPLAINED | Core Fabrics. Directed by Core Fabrics, 2024. YouTube, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ALfq_QynRpo.
Canadian Fibreshed network. https://www.canadianfibreshed.org/
Lois Klassen, Practices of Everyday Ethics, Volume 1: Yoga Bolsters and Dog Beds“ (2022)  and “Practices of Everyday Ethics, Volume 2: Meditations on Textile Waste” (2023), Vancouver: Light Factory Publications. Both are also available for free download here – https://lightfactorypublications.ca/title/meditations-on-textile-waste/ 

Social Enterprise “recirculated textiles”:

This event is generously Supported by the Western Sustainable Impact Fund, part of the Ecologies in Practice podcast project. Presented in partnership with  the Centre for Sustainable Curating and Goodwill Commercial Solutions