Growing up in the city, Jessica Chan never really feared taking public transportation. During school breaks, she used to ride the subway alone and commute two hours a day from downtown Brooklyn to the Upper East Side to get to her job. “Yet, as an American of Chinese descent, I now worry for my life and the lives of those who look like me,” she said.
In all of 2015, about 75 pounds of clothing were thrown away per person in the United States. Several years later, that amount has only increased — the average American citizen threw away about 82 pounds of clothing during the year 2020. What many heavy consumers don’t realize is that when you throw clothes “away,” they still end up somewhere.