The Urbana Park District and Jamtown hosted The Green Ball, a clothing recycling social event, at Cloud Mountain Kombucha inside Lincoln Square Mall on Friday. The Green Ball closed out the county’s Climate Action Week, a week-long program that includes various workshops and celebrations to raise awareness for climate change.
In a world where fast fashion has become increasingly popular and trends are constantly changing, clothes are often thrown out, building up waste in landfills. The Green Ball aims to raise awareness of this issue and to promote the sustainable upcycling of clothing.
Savannah Donovan, environmental program manager at the Urbana Park District, helped coordinate The Green Ball alongside Ellerie Ambrose, volunteer for Champaign County Climate Coalition. Donovan explained that the event’s main goal was to promote sustainability and local shopping.
“When we shop local, source local, recycle, reuse, consignment shop, all of that, we are stopping the shipping back and forth across the country (and) overseas (of) all of these products that are already here,” Donovan said. “We have the ability for our community to be really sustainable here, so that’s what we’re doing.”
This year’s theme for The Green Ball was “Stranger Things,” utilizing the retro look of Lincoln Square Mall, which is on par with a major plot point of the show. Guests received gift bags of “Stranger Things” merchandise donated by The Idea Store.
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The Green Ball’s main event included a clothing swap, where participants could take and/or leave free clothes as well as buy from racks of vintage clothing. The organizers’ goal was to see these clothes be repurposed through the event rather than tossed aside.
“Our concept was that it’s an event that makes people money and recycles stuff,” Ambrose said. “It’s like, ‘Let’s see how much waste we can alleviate just by hanging out.’”
In addition, the event also offered a space for local artists and musicians to showcase their work. Artist Dustin Kelly makes jewelry, toys, tools and other items out of honeysuckle, an invasive plant in Illinois.
“This is a plant that is regularly getting removed from parks, and then we have all this leftover plant material … So he’s really good at finding creative reuses for those materials,” Donovan said.
Throughout the event, live music was played on a small stage in front of the kombucha brewery. Patrons were invited to dance, shop and hang out while enjoying fresh draft kombucha.
Later in the evening, The Fashion Network, a University RSO, put on a fashion show. In flash mob style, the models came out suddenly, creating an ad hoc runway through the center circle of the mall. The models wore vintage upcycled and recycled University merchandise, which Ambrose compiled. Patrons of the event were also invited to join in on the show.
“I had curated a U of I rack when I recycled a bunch of clothes from swaps in the past two years, and so I just gave them the U of I curation,” Ambrose said.
Ambrose also said that her goal through the curation of the University rack was to highlight the circular economy of fashion by recirculating upcycled goods, evading them from the landfill.
Ashley Sierra, freshman in LAS, said she thought it was cool to see an event tackle such an important issue.
“You know, there’s a lot of waste with fast fashion and stuff being a really big problem right now, so I like that there’s stuff like this to combat that, ” Sierra said.
