Sarah Pottle - Clothing the Midwest Through Community and Craft

[00:00:10] Adam: Hello and welcome to another episode of Green Champions.

[00:00:13] Dominique: Thanks for joining us in a conversation with real people sharing sustainability success stories.

[00:00:18] Adam: From entrepreneurs to artists, scientists to activists, this podcast is a platform for green champions to share their stories and plant new ideas. I'm Adam.

[00:00:27] Dominique: And I'm Dominique, and this episode is a part of a mini-series in partnership with the Midwest Regional Sustainability Summit, which celebrates collaborative climate solutions in the Midwest region of the United States.

[00:00:36] Adam: In this mini-series, you'll join us in virtually attending this annual summit and meeting a few of the hundred speakers and key storytellers from this year's event. 

Today we are joined by Sarah Pottle. She's the co-founder and regional organizer for Rust Belt Fibershed, and an advocate for regenerative textile systems along with being the co-creator of a regional supply chain for sustainable fiber.

Today we're exploring how the Midwest can refashion the apparel industry through local fiber systems, ethical production, and circular design models. So thank you for joining us today, Sarah.

[00:01:06] Sarah: Thanks so much for having me. I'm really excited to be here and love how you all are sort of preemptively giving people an idea of what the conference is gonna be about.

[00:01:14] Dominique: Well, to start us off, can you tell us about Rust Belt Fibershed and like the vision that started it all?

[00:01:19] Sarah: So I'll just give sort of our mission statement and our vision first. So the Rust Belt Fibershed, the mission is to catalyze a circular bio-regional textile supply ecosystem within 250 miles of Cleveland, Ohio. 

[00:01:32] Dominique: And the vision is that we say that we see a future where makers and consumers alike participate in a reimagined textile ecosystem that cultivates care for people and for our planet. My first question is as a consumer myself, what does it mean to like, cultivate care? How do you describe what that means?

[00:01:52] Sarah: The majority of people don't generally think about where their clothing comes from. And so you're asking about care. And so care is what happens all the way in that supply chain until it comes onto my body. And then also, how do I care about the garment? How do I care about the workers? How do I care about the land? How do I care about the animals that might be involved? And there are so many aspects of care all along that supply chain that I'm happy to get into. But that's what we're trying to do is cultivate that community of care. So thinking about where stuff comes from, how it's made, the materials that are involved, the people along the way, and then the community that it supports 'cause it's an economical thing as well. And then after that, how am I caring where it goes? So much of our clothing ends up actually in the trash, in pollution areas.

The Atacama Desert, if you've ever seen the satellite image of the Atacama Desert, you can just Google "Atacama Desert Clothing," and there's a giant clothing, basically a dump there where people just kind of put their clothes that they don't want. Well, and not people, industry, puts the clothes that are no longer needed there and it's really a problem.

And so when we care about everything from its inception to the end of its use, as well as the people and the animal, and the land and the water along the way, we're really caring for our We're thinking about connection through clothing. Just one way to think about it.

[00:03:17] Dominique: I did just look that up, that Atacama desert image. And I have to say that I think everyone should see that. 

[00:03:23] Sarah: Just one site of clothing that is no longer in use. so yeah, it's really, it becomes a burden, all the extra clothing. And we have, the clothing in the last 15 years or 20 years has doubled. Clothing production has doubled but clothing use has gone down about 36%. And those are figures from the Ellen MacArthur Foundation, a study that they did in 2015. Clothing production doesn't double because the population doubled and needs more clothes. It doubled because the consumption of clothing and the clothes that just sit in our wardrobe and our closets are a lot more now. And then we're all faced with this problem of what do we do with all the extra clothes.

And I think that's something that culturally everybody can agree to, nobody feels good, no matter who you are, having too many t-shirts that are kind of cheapy in your closet, that's overflowing, it just doesn't feel good. That's a whole other side of the rest about FiberShed is what to do with the clothes that are already here. Primarily we talk about a soil-to-soil system.

[00:04:22] Adam: Yeah. I'm curious, can you paint a picture for what the activities look like at the rest about FiberShed?

[00:04:27] Sarah: So we talk about soil-to-soil a lot. Like, we'll say farm to fashion is the sexy term for it, because farm to textile production doesn't sound quite as great. It doesn't really roll off the tongue. And people are like you lost me at textile supply chain. I don't really care.

Well, 

[00:04:42] Adam: Well, Even the word Fibershed, like I'd never heard the word Fibershed before, like. 

[00:04:46] Sarah: Yeah, a good way to talk about it is so, like 

we think about like food sheds, and food sheds are let's say a farmer grows an apple in a field, right? You pick the apple, you take the apple, all the baskets of apples, you take them to the local farmer's market. And you sell those apples and the consumer buys the apples and hopefully when they're done eating the apple, they have a compost pile in their house, and then they throw their apple core in the compost and it makes soil. And ideally that soil could go to grow more apple trees, right? And so it's very circular. There is no waste at all.

And so that is what we envision when we think about the future of textile production.We think about there being no waste. We think about it being circular and actually we think about it as regenerating more life in this region. Just like when you put an apple core in the compost, that creates more life in the soil for better apple trees in the future, that's exactly what we think about it. And it's not even a figurative comparison. It's a literal comparison where we grow the wool or the flax or the hemp or whatever fiber is required for clothing. And then we put it through manufacturing that's local.And then people use it. And then, because it doesn't have any artificial dyes, any plastics in it, it can literally be composted in your backyard, a sweater or whatever. And that's, that's what we're going for. So there's this absolute circular soil-to-soil system. 

 if we can work towards this system that is nourishing, and you asked the question about care that allows us to really care about our people at our place and it's hyper-local and we know the farmers and we know who we're getting our clothing from, it can be done and it can be done at scale. Not a huge scale of course, but a scale that makes sense. And so that's kind of what we're working towards. And so that's the analogy between a food shed and a Fibershed. And when I say soil-to-soil or farm to fashion, that's sort of what we mean. We're thinking more of a local scale.

[00:06:44] Adam: How did you first get involved in the world of sustainable fashion and fiber systems?

[00:06:49] Sarah: Yeah, that's a rabbit hole. So, as any like weird niche thing, I guess that, I guess to some people it doesn't feel like a weird niche thing, but to a lot of people it does. But you kind of put one foot after the next and you kind of stumble down those rabbit holes and that's what happened to us.

And when I say us, I usually am talking about my identical twin sister, Jess, who is also the co-founder of the Rust Belt Fibershed. And if she was on this Zoom, we could spin around and you wouldn't even know who's who. So it's fun to have talks with each other.

[00:07:19] Dominique: She had moved out to Baltimore to teach mid two thousands. And I followed her out there a year later to teach, just English public school teachers. And so we were out there teaching and we were like looking for something to do with our hands because all day in the classroom you are working with people's minds.

[00:07:36] Sarah: And so, we found some furniture on the side of the road and we started ripping it apart and we're like, let's like get into reupholstery. We were trying to figure out how to reupholster this furniture, where to get the right fabric from. So we went to JOANN Fabrics, we looked in their upholstery section and it was just like, not only were the patterns kind of icky, but the feel of the fabric, it wasn't just anything that we wanted to, I think when you're making something by hand, you like, wanna make sure it's right.

So, we started being like, what even is fabric? Like where does it come from? Like, what even is it? And so it was interesting that we hadn't really contemplated that before. 

So we started going down that rabbit hole. We really got into looking at how you can use plants to dye fabric or fiber. We started understanding what fiber was and what is plastic and what is real and cellulose and protein and all that stuff. And so we were doing all that for several years.

And maybe around 2013 we came across an organization called Fibershed, which we call the Mother Fibershed, capital F in San Francisco. And Fibershed was doing this panel talk and it was a talk of people who were talking about personal health with ecology, with farming, with fashion, with art, with community. 

And the conversation was just amazing. How you can connect all of those things through one thing that people think is cool, which is clothes and personal style. And so we were like, we're all in on that.

And so, it took a few years. We had both moved back to Cleveland, And we were like, this is where we're from. Let's start a Fibershed here. 

And so there are affiliate Fibersheds throughout the world, actually. We're one of 72 affiliate Fibersheds. Not all of them are very active. We're probably one of, maybe 20 to 30 really active Fibersheds. And so we chose our location. We talked to Fibershed. We went and visited them. We said, "This is what we wanna do," and they said, "Okay, cool. Be an affiliate." So that's how it started. And it just started with us in 2017 with a website and a project and trying to get on alpaca farms and talk to people about where fiber comes from. And setting up at tables in just different fairs and stuff. 

It's really cool to get that like image of all these collective Fibersheds that collaborate and are part of one ecosystem. Are they all like nonprofits? How does that work? How are you able to go to alpaca farms and build relationships and how does that actually work?

The reason why there are only 20 to 30 active Fibersheds out of 70 is I don't wanna say it's really hard 'cause we're trying to change our mindset around that. It has proven to be challenging to get funding to be a Fibershed in the past.

And I hope that with the change in a lot of things that it will be easier. But most people, including ourselves, who are doing this work are not getting paid, including ourselves. So it is all volunteer.

[00:10:24] Dominique: How does this whole thing move and what would stop it from moving?

[00:10:28] Sarah: I think the reason why we're still doing it is we're passionate about it, but that only lasts so long when you only have so much time in the day and you gotta work and all that, but the reason is, is because we started out a little differently than other Fibersheds. And I think it's our biggest blessing in disguise is that because we didn't quite come from the industry I mentioned, we came from education.

We came at it from like, let's start teaching people about what's happening with their clothing and let's start building community fun art projects and like cool things that we can all do together and let's start doing that and then we did that for five years.

And we have I think one of the largest engaged communities of maybe any Fibershed, aside from Fibershed, capital F, in that ecosystem of Fibersheds. We have so many people in this region because we've just been doing the work of building community because we haven't had any funding, and community building is fairly free, right? It's like, meet at this park, let's talk about this thing. But I do think that things are changing and I think that we see some light on the horizon in terms of sustainability of the organization.

[00:11:33] Dominique: Yeah, you kind of sound similar to like how content creators build. And then have an audience and have a following in a community, and then they capitalize on that and build something that requires risk and cost intensive stuff because they have a community to lean on. 

 I think that seeing how you've built safely and slowly, that's very inspiring and very transferrable, so that's awesome. 

[00:11:54] Sarah: Yeah. I totally agree with that. And now that we have built such a community and for example, we just had our second which the Cleveland Foundation, I will say did take a chance on us. And they said like, we'll give you 10 grand to start as like seed money for the symposium that you wanna run annually.

And we were like, that's just enough to like, get us going, and so we have had two symposiums now, two annual symposiums with over 600 people in attendance of each one of those throughout the day, which is pretty incredible for what I think for our region. And now that we have that to show, it's easier to go to people and say like, "Look, we have this community, we have this metric." People do care about it, and it just continues to work from there.

[00:12:35] Adam: What kind of transformation have you seen from your educational events? From the symposium?

[00:12:41] Sarah: It's interesting because well people very generally are just, thinking more about, I think the upcycling side of it or like the care, like for example, the mending of your clothes or how you maybe engage with things like clothing swaps and thinking about when you do need to make a new purchase versus when you can maybe buy vintage or thrift something.

And then if you do make a new purchase, are you buying a natural fiber or are you buying something that's plastic? 

 What we're trying to build towards is the ability to make, like I said, at that human scale. We don't have some of those weaving or knitting capabilities. We have a few knitting machines that could do that now, which is really exciting because that's just sort of happened over the last year or two.

We have a couple mills that have come back on in business since we've been starting. So aside from like individual acts of mending your clothing or thinking about where your clothing goes when it's done, or having clothing swaps or something like that.

There's been so many networks that have been created that have helped actual businesses thrive and be created. Little artisan businesses like leather making businesses or like I said, two mills and a knitting machine that have come back into our region, which is really, really exciting.

And I think maybe one of the most exciting things is the creativity that's come out of it and the ability for people to be like, "We're gonna try this. Like, we're gonna try creating these very small scale, we're gonna try engineering and 3D printing a very small scale mill that a farmer could put in their backyard and process their sheep's wool from there." Yeah, all sorts of innovations that people, because they think that there's this community and this power behind it aren't afraid to try, which is really exciting.

[00:14:26] Adam: There's something very powerful about that, of saying, "Hey, you're planting these seeds at building this community and seeing that those connections are leading to change and new ideas. But I think what you said was so important is people see that that community is there. 

[00:14:40] Dominique: Yeah. And it's cool how you're rethinking how like the farmers, the mills, the makers play together in this space and like how the Fibersheds work together. And I liked at the beginning when you mentioned like the cultivating the care and talking about the consumer side of we need to better understand where things come from because part of that is caring where things originate, but also how we care about what we have.

What is the barrier of knowledge on the maker side? What is their hurdle to caring or understanding? 

[00:15:06] Sarah: The barrier for the farmers is that they don't have a fair wage to sell it or a real place to put it. We had a huge wool co-op that went out of business a few years ago where people were buying waste wool. And waste wool is the term for meat sheep who need to get sheared to stay healthy. But what happens to all of that wool? Well, now it just goes in the trash or it gets composted at best. Because there wasn't the demand for somebody.

And that wool and this is why it says like, textile supply chain, not just fashion 'cause that wool is excellent for insulation. Or even, if you take it a step back where it doesn't have to be cleaned- landscaping applications. Excellent as mulch, it's excellent as fertilizer. But we just need sort of that idea.

So I'd say that's a barrier for farmers is like, what's the financial incentive in it? And how do I organize so I can get my wool somewhere. So that's a problem that we're working on too. It's getting better with mini mills. And the idea of just people buying local wool, but we still have yarn. So really the local wool that we have now ,local Alpaca fiber is really relegated to people who like to hand knit. And it's not really spun in cones that can be put in these big knitting machines, aside from a few that we have in our region. And we have almost no real weaving industry in our region. 

[00:16:26] Adam: So in order to really get to that next step in volume, that means being able to branch into those supply chains where there is higher demand or people using it at a higher volume.

[00:16:35] Sarah: Exactly. Yes. And it's sort of like building the plane while flying it, which I hate like how that sounds. But it sort of is what we're doing 'cause we've done some projects in the past with local flax. 

We're in our six year of community grown local flax, which flax is actually linen. And so there's a lot of excitement around the potential for linen in this region. It grows really well. It's a very strong fiber. But there is zero linen processing in the United States at all. So if you wanted to get USA linen, you literally cannot do that. It doesn't exist. The machinery for it doesn't exist here.

So things like trying to explain to farmers who are like, "I am ready, I heard you guys are growing linen. I'm excited about it. I wanna put 10 acres into linen production." We're like, "Hold on, because it's being stored literally personally in my barn right now", you know? So like we would have to get a lot of people out there to pick it by hand. Like just, that doesn't work yet. But explaining to people who are interested in coming in with money and saying like, "we have farmers who are ready to put their land into linen production for local production here. We need the infrastructure for processing that." And so it's having those sorts of conversations which are happening and it's really exciting actually.

And with hemp too. Hemp is becoming a larger crop for all of its different purposes and a lot of linen production and hemp production can be done on similar machinery. So, that's exciting too, that we could kind of use that as well.

[00:17:55] Dominique: Is it just a lack of knowledge thing? Like if it grows so well here and there's such a great opportunity in an industry for linen, like why hasn't that been something that's been local before?

[00:18:04] Sarah: All the stuff that we're talking about actually, was up untila hundred years ago, maybe not even that much in some cases. it's cheap manufacturing, it's less environmental regulation overseas, and all of that brings the cost down for people here.

So when you say there's a local USA made and grown linen shirt and it's only $150, people would be like, "What?" Like that's, "I can't", and so it's a culture shift of how do we get the scale right so it's reasonably affordable. But how do we understand that the cost in a very cheap item is not necessarily the true cost of it? The cost is in the land and, slave workers overseas and in polluted rivers overseas and all of that stuff. So it's really understanding that and then it's at the same time, yeah, just shifting the culture around what is important to people and maybe not having so many clothes.

[00:19:00] Dominique: When thinking about like your impact as an organization and the ways that Rust Belt Fibershed contributes to reducing carbon emissions and having environmental footprint and impacting and educating people, can you share any stats or any impact you've had so far that you're really proud of in terms of just like what it has looked like to have success as an organization?

[00:19:20] Sarah: We do have KPIs and things that our board looks at in terms of impact. And we're proud of some of our stats that have come along in the last couple of years. Different amounts of people that have come to our symposiums. And people we've reached through workshops or other talks. Different businesses that have been set up and income that has been generated through those businesses. So we're proud of those numbers.

But one of the things that I think is really cool is the intangible, the more qualitative sort of feedback that we get from folks who are participating in this community. And people have said that like the Rust Belt Fibershed to them feels almost like it's like a part of their identity. It's a part of who they are, and it's something that is really very special to them. People have made friendships that like this coming up Saturday, we're hosting a camp out for anybody who wants to come that's in our One Year, One Outfit project. That's not really in our KPIs is like, how many friendships were formed? But how is that any less important? How is building community any less important? And yeah, so our One Year, One Outift project I think is one of those, because we do it as a cohort. We have one year to spend to source all of the materials for the project from within 250 miles of Cleveland.

And we take a year to make an outfit from scratch, from like sheep's wool, from grown flax, which is linen, from grown hemp, from those sorts of things. We take one year to make our outfits together. We design them together. And you could work in a team, you can work independently. We have meetings throughout, we have hangouts throughout, so maybe, somebody in Pittsburgh is like, "Hey, I'm meeting up at this brewery. I'm gonna talk, do some knitting" and then some other people join or whatever. Throughout that time, because it's such a long period of time, we have the opportunity to build that community, which is really cool. That project has grown. 75 people joined the project this year.

At the end of the year, we have our clothing our outfits at a really nice, like a professional gallery space so people can see them displayed and big celebration stuff. And so it's just, anybody can join. You don't have to be a "artist". You don't have to submit a portfolio. You don't have to pay any money. You can just join if you're interested.

And I think that's something that has really helped to create community that our other community project that has helped that too is our flax project. We're going on year, oh gosh, my twin sister Jess is gonna, if I get this wrong, I think it's year six of this grow project. And people grow flax, which is linen in their yards or in their little farm patches, in their front yards are even better because then people can walk by and see them if you live in a walkable sort of neighborhood. And we have signs that say like, "You're growing a t-shirt, you're growing a thing", and people are just like, "wait, what?"

Because I think so often folks don't think about where their stuff comes from. And then we have some picking parties and we do some talks and then we can process that fiber. And it's again, it's all by hand right now. Nothing is being processed in any sort of mechanized way.

But even just that act of coming together to do something. I think also, like In our culture now, I think it's hard for people sometimes to come together without something to do. It really helps break the tension of getting people together if it's like, "All right, we've got this much flax. We're gonna put it through this hand break, and then this sketching tool, and then this thing, and let's like form a line" and everybody does, and then everybody chat.

Or like, we're gonna harvest flax together. And people come, even if they're afraid, maybe like they're not so social, but they come because they're like, "Oh, there's something to do." It creates a real like, social sort of lubricant. Which I don't know, in our experience, it's been nice. So that's a roundabout way to answer a question of how we're reaching our some metrics of success. 

[00:22:57] Adam: I gotta say that's so cool. That one, this idea that people are growing flax in their backyard and they get to be part of that process. And I love how you stress that point of it's not just about, "Hey, here's how you do this and make a t-shirt at home," but it's about coming together as a community, really connecting people over that.

[00:23:12] Sarah: Yeah like, 'cause, like what are we going for here? What are we doing it all for? We're doing it all so that we can like, have lives that we really want, which is mostly based on connection, friendships, not being lonely, being healthy, getting outside, like enjoying things. 

If you had to leave listeners with one learning about textile production in the Fibershed, what would that one thing be?

There is so much fiber that's already here, , "fiber." We know it as like old t-shirts and fabric and like stuff that we wanna throw away. And like, there is so much that we could do with that even before we start thinking about where new stuff comes from. Learning how to mend a pocket that's, being ripped off your jeans and saving those jeans and making it cool, that is not only something that can keep those jeans in circulation, but it's cool. 

So I would say, look at what you have, think about how you can mend or upcycle. It's pretty easy. You can buy the tools like some needle and thread and stuff for five bucks.

It's not, it's a very low barrier to entry. Clothing swaps are another great one. Have your friends over. Everybody takes out clothes that are like maybe similar sizes or something. Just swap 'em around. Like there's so many simple low hanging fruit things that we can do to be more sustainable with our clothing choices that don't involve, like bringing in a mill and trying to make local linen. Those are great things too, for the future, but there's a lot that we can do.

[00:24:34] Adam: I love that. I'm really glad that we could have you on today. I'd never heard of a Fibershed before. So really diving into that understanding, that was really cool. And really the superpower that you have around building community and getting engagement and kind of what's possible through that. 

[00:24:49] Sarah: How can people connect with you? How can they learn and support the work that you're doing?

You can go to rustbeltfibershed.com or rustbeltfibershed.org. You can also email me sarah@rustbeltfibershed.org. We're on Instagram, @rustbeltfibershed. We've got like a newsletter comes out. But really cool is that we have a, if you go to the Rest Belt Fibershed website, there's a place where it says get involved. You can click on that and then you can go to join our community totally for free. And you can even like view it for free. You don't have to give your email address just to see what's up. You can just click on there and you can see all sorts of things like where are people doing clothing swaps, like what is tanning locally look like or what are some dye flowers?

And you can post things up there and it's really cool. It's a really cool resource, so I highly recommend if you're curious at all, at seeing what this community is, checking that out because you can snoop on it. You don't have to, you can just look and see what's going on. 

[00:25:40] Adam: Awesome. And when does your cohort usually start for the One Year, One Outfit?

[00:25:44] Sarah: We'll probably start in March or April for cohort four of 2026.

[00:25:48] Adam: Well, thank you so much again, Sarah. This was really interesting. I've talked to a lot of folks about like textiles and you're the first person to make me just wanna walk away and be like, I wonder if I could build an outfit in a year.

[00:25:59] Dominique: Honestly, I would love to learn more, so that's awesome.

As always, our guests have found a unique way to champion sustainability. We're here to put real names and stories behind the idea that no matter your background, career, or interests, you really can contribute in the fight against climate change.

[00:26:14] Adam: You can find our episodes and reach us at thegreenchampions.com. If you wanna stay in the loop, give us a review and follow us on your favorite podcast platform.

[00:26:21] Dominique: Our music is by Zayn Dweik. Special thanks to the Green Umbrella, host of the annual Midwest Regional Sustainability Summit. Thanks for listening to Green Champions. We'll be digging into our sustainability success story in our next episode. 

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