Only 20% of clothes donated to the Salvation Army are in condition to be sold; the rest thrown away.
Inspired by a memory of ripped clothes being tossed into a charity bag, a desire to reuse, and a passion for creativity, the Mosaic Reuse Project was formed to save ripped, soiled, and unsellable clothes at op shops from being thrown away. Instead, it aims to use the discarded pieces to make something beautiful and useful.
To make the project a reality, the Mosaic Reuse Project worked with Salvation Army Family Stores who provided the material for volunteers to make into useable items such as tote bags or coin pouches to put back into the stores.
This project was first started by Amy Huang, a friend at RISD and a fellow New Zealander.
The main gist of the idea was to connect specific Salvation Army stores to volunteers who would take to-be-discarded op shop donations and repurpose them into other useful soft goods. The products would then be sold through Salvation Army, allowing them to keep the profits.
I felt inspired by the mission of the idea and recognise the importance of lengthening the product life cycle of existing things, so I partnered with her early in the process and we developed the project together.
Since I'm from a different part of New Zealand to Amy, I initiated the Mosaic Reuse Project in Auckland while Amy did the same in Christchurch.
I started the project in Auckland by proposing the idea to a Salvation Army who showed interest and even offered to deliver the clothes to volunteers.
I got in touch with Diocesan School for Girls' soft tech teacher who was already teaching a class about sustainability. After pitching the idea to the teacher and her class, they took a project pack and made it into an afternoon club that took place for 6 weeks and involved the efforts of 11 students.
I reached out to a student from the high school I graduated from who was in the International Baccalaureate diploma programme. She was looking for a CAS (Creativity, Action, Service) project to complete for her diploma, and thus took up the Mosaic Reuse Project and made it a school club for two years.
The system we designed ensured that the volunteers and leaders we handed the resources to would be able to sustain the project and maintain the loop between them and the Salvation Army Family Stores. From initial repurposing projects to the final touch of creating logo patches for the items, everything was planned for, meaning that these projects could exist even without the supervision of Amy or me.
Mosaic Reuse Project ongoing in Diocesan School for Girls
Some of the bags made by the girls at Diocesan
Kristin School coin pouches
When first contacting volunteers or stores, we would send a document that outlines our proposal. After connecting with volunteers, we prepared material to share with them:
You can find the Google Drive folder that we send to volunteers here.
Poster
The name 'Mosaic' accurately describes our project, as it founds itself in the concept of piecing together various parts of disposed materials to create something valuable.
When it came to branding, we designed with an hand-embroidered logo in mind, as we intended to sew a logo patch onto each item to to raise awareness for the project and encourage people to get into the mindset of reuse and upcycling.
Alongside printable pdf documents of instructions, we also made a website that everyone has access to.
Mosaic Reuse Project logo
Mosaic Reuse Project logo patches
Our website!
Special thanks to:
Amy Huang, for being an amazing teammate and making winter in New Zealand during a summer break more bearable.