Aaron Newport

Wedding season is a joyous time filled with celebrations, love, and countless opportunities to dress up. However, with the growing awareness of environmental sustainability, many of us are rethinking our wardrobe choices for such events. The good news is that there are several sustainable ways to dress for weddings that not only look great but also minimize our ecological footprint. Rent A Look For The Night Renting a dress is one of the most sustainable options for wedding guests. Instead of purchasing a new outfit that you might only wear once, renting allows you to enjoy high-quality, designer attire without the associated environmental impact. Companies like Rent the Runway offer a vast selection of dresses suitable for weddings, from elegant evening gowns to chic cocktail dresses. The benefits of renting are numerous. It reduces the demand for fast fashion, cuts down on textile waste, and saves money. Renting also provides the opportunity to wear a variety of styles and brands that you might’ve otherwise never tried. The process is straightforward: browse online, choose your dress, and have it delivered to your door. After the event, you simply return it, often with dry cleaning included. Shop Your Secondhand Style Thrifting, or shopping secondhand, is another excellent way to find a unique and sustainable wedding outfit. Vintage and thrift stores are treasure troves of stylish and affordable clothing. By choosing to thrift, you give a second life to garments that might otherwise end up in landfills, contributing to a circular fashion economy. When thrifting for a wedding, look for dresses in good condition made from high-quality materials. Consider classic styles that can be accessorized to suit the wedding’s theme and formality. If you don’t have any thrift stores near you, try browsing online at stores like Thread Up. Not only does finding a dress secondhand reduce waste, but it also offers the chance to find a truly unique piece that stands out from the typical retail selections. Revisit Your Closet and Alter Altering an old dress is a fantastic way to refresh your wardrobe sustainably. Whether it’s a dress you’ve worn to previous events or one that’s been sitting in your closet for years, alterations can give it a new lease on life. Tailoring can transform an outdated dress into a fashionable piece that fits perfectly and suits your current style. Consider adding new elements to an old dress, such as changing the hemline, adding embellishments, or adjusting the fit. A skilled tailor can help you make these modifications, ensuring that the dress feels new and unique. This approach not only saves money but also reduces the demand for new clothing production. After The Wedding For those concerned about the environmental impact of dry cleaning their wedding attire, utilizing our GreenEarth Cleaning process is a sustainable choice. Traditional dry cleaning methods often use harsh chemicals that can harm the environment. In contrast, GreenEarth Cleaning uses a silicone-based solvent that is gentle on fabrics and the planet. By choosing an eco-friendly cleaner, you ensure that your dress is professionally cleaned without contributing to pollution. This method is particularly useful for delicate fabrics and intricate designs that require special care. Stop by our location today to begin your sustainable journey. Dressing sustainably for the wedding season is not only possible but also enjoyable and rewarding. By renting a dress, thrifting, altering an old dress, and using GreenEarth Cleaning powered services, you can make eco-friendly choices that benefit both your wardrobe and the environment. By integrating these practices into your wedding season preparations, you not only look fabulous but also participate in a broader movement towards a more sustainable and conscious lifestyle. Happy wedding season!

At GreenEarth Cleaning, we have spent the past decade immersing ourselves in sustainable fashion. This journey has led us to discover and curate a list of the top five fair trade and eco-friendly clothing brands organized by budget. As we become more conscious about our purchases, we must consider the origins and impact of the clothes we wear. Our spending choices can either support or harm the people and resources involved in making our clothing. Choosing sustainable fashion, and even better, secondhand options, can significantly reduce the detrimental effects of fast fashion on our planet. Why Wear Sustainable Clothing? If you’re new to sustainable fashion, you may be surprised by the price tags. However, it’s important to understand that these brands are not meant to be consumed at the same rate as fast fashion. Sustainable fashion brands prioritize eco-friendly practices, ethical production standards, timeless design, and high-quality essentials that last. Unlike fast fashion items that often need replacing every season, these pieces are designed to be worn for years. When it’s time to update our wardrobes, we turn to slow fashion brands. Each of the five brands listed below is committed to ethical and transparent garment production, considering both people and the planet. Many of these brands have third-party sustainable and ethical certifications. Creating a more sustainable wardrobe doesn’t require buying everything new at once. Start with what you have, mend pieces you love, and build your closet slowly and intentionally. Top Sustainable Fashion Brands tentree Best For: Cozy, casual essentials Sustainability: Fair Trade certified ethical manufacturing Size Range: XS–XXL tentree makes Earth-first essentials using sustainable materials. For every item purchased, ten trees are planted, with over 73 million trees planted to date. The brand offers lifestyle and loungewear made from Tencel, hemp, and organic cotton. Tentree’s commitment to the environment and community is evident in every piece.   Pact Best For: Fair trade organic cotton basics Sustainability: Fair Trade Certified, organic cotton, recycled & biodegradable packaging, donation program for used clothes Size Range: XS–2XL; up to US 20 Pact is dedicated to making super-soft sustainable clothes for kids and adults that also benefit the world. The brand ensures its entire supply chain, from growing organic cotton to final sewing, is responsible and clean. Pact is our go-to for basics and underwear, offering carbon-offset shipping for a more sustainable purchase. Kotn Best For: Egyptian cotton wardrobe staples Sustainability: Organic cotton, safe & fair labor standards, plastic-free packaging, nontoxic dyes, gives back to Egyptian communities Size Range: XXS–XXL; up to US 16 Kotn offers luxury basics made from Egyptian cotton. The brand creates garments in a fair and safe environment and helps suppliers transition to organic cotton. As a certified B Corp, Kotn has impacted over 100,000 lives in Egypt by building schools and funding farms. Its high-quality tees are designed to last beyond 30 wears. Fair Indigo Best For: Organic basics Sustainability: Organic cotton, safe dyes, fair wages, artisan-made, gives back via Fair Indigo Foundation Size Range: XS–XL; up to US 18 Fair Indigo focuses on creating long-lasting clothes, like the Forever Organic Tees made from organic Peruvian Pima cotton. The brand’s garments are made with sustainability and ethical practices in mind, offering affordable organic basics and artisan-made accessories. Quince Best For: Affordable silk & cashmere Sustainability: BCSI-certified ethical production, sustainable & organic materials, OEKO-TEX certified, virgin plastic-free Size Range: XS–XL; up to US 16 Quince aims to make ethical and eco-friendly clothing accessible to everyone. The brand offers versatile, effortless basics like Mulberry silk tops and cashmere cardigans, all delivered in plastic-free packaging. Quince’s mission is to make sustainability the standard, not a luxury. Making a Sustainable Choice Embracing sustainable fashion means making informed choices about what we wear. By choosing brands committed to ethical practices and environmental sustainability, we can reduce the impact of our wardrobe on the planet. To ensure your new sustainable purchases stay fresh and last longer, bring them to your nearest GreenEarth Affiliate store. Our eco-friendly cleaning methods protect your garments and extend their lifespan, allowing you to enjoy your thoughtfully chosen pieces for years to come. Visit our store locator to find the closest GreenEarth Affiliate and experience the difference our gentle, planet-friendly cleaning can make.

“The Earth is what we all have in common.” In a year when our differences have certainly been on full display and we often need to be reminded we have more in common than what divides us, the quote from American author and poet, Berry Wendell feels even more impactful on this trip around the sun.  It’s why, since the beginning, our mission statement has been doing business without doing harm. It’s our goal to provide the best possible fabric care with the lowest overall environmental impact. It’s also why the month of April continues to be a landmark month for us. While our Network of over 2,000 dry cleaners worldwide spends 365 days out of the year working to minimize our carbon footprint, Earth Month brings us the opportunity to celebrate those accomplishments and lay out goals to improve upon them for the year to come.  Simply by choosing your local GreenEarth dry cleaner, you too are having a positive impact on our planet. Not only will your clothes and household items be cleaned in the most sustainable way possible by the industry’s leading best-in-class professionals, but you’re also extending the life cycle of those garments and reducing the amount of textile waste making its way to landfills. Because GreenEarth isn’t just good for the environment, it’s gentle on garments too, allowing them to look newer longer.  Start to finish, the GreenEarth Cleaning system marks off all of the boxes for sustainability and that is by no accident. From the environmentally non-toxic solvent at the core of the system, to working to reduce utility usage, to coordinating national clothes drives preventing landfill waste, our team will continue to improve our sustainability initiatives and leave a better planet for generations to follow.  So here we are, calling on you to join us in celebrating Earth Month by making a commitment to put an end to fast fashion and join the sustainable fashion movement. It can all start by making the decision to care for your textiles sustainably, using your local GreenEarth cleaner.

The significance of diversifying your business has never been more prevalent than it is in the current state of our global economy. We’ve witnessed businesses around the world—not only in dry cleaning but in all retail spaces—dependent on over-the-counter sales with no other source of revenue, forced to shutter their doors. It’s an unfortunate case, but it’s the reality of the situation. Those businesses that quickly adapted and diversified—if they were not already—have in large part been able to weather the storm.  In the early weeks of 2020, prior to the onslaught of the COVID-19 virus, GreenEarth partnered with a Brooklyn suit retailer, 9tofive. This partnership of course was slowed down due to public restrictions, but we’ve continued to grow our partnership and have introduced relationships between 9tofive and several Affiliates across the country, providing an opportunity for additional revenue for 9tofive as well as our Affiliates. The service offered by GreenEarth Affiliates for 9tofive customers is the tailoring of the suits purchased online, as well as one dry cleaning paid for by 9tofive.  For years, alterations have been an excellent method for diversifying your business, reaching a new audience, and optimizing your existing customers’ spend. Even through this past year, many of our Affiliates have reported alterations as one of the contributing factors in their ability to remain open and bring customers to their store. Whether those customers have purchased items online, they’re getting married, they’ve gained weight, they’ve lost weight, or maybe they’ve saved some money this year and have acquired some high-dollar garments they want to fit perfectly, there is a need for alteration services.  We recently spoke with GreenEarth Affiliate and the owner of Kingbridge Cleaners in NYC, Richie Aviles. Kingbridge operates a large, upscale tailoring business as a part of their store. Richie shared some of his thoughts with us in regard to his tailoring business. “Being able to provide pickup and delivery and having different types of customers through TV shows and hotels were all things that saw us through the pandemic. But alterations were also a huge part of that. Dry cleaning pieces unilaterally changed in volume, but the tailoring business was interesting because people weren’t buying clothes, they were sitting at home wearing Lululemon. Maybe they were gaining or losing weight, or only shopping online and unable to buy the correct size. So naturally, their next stop was to the tailor. I don’t want to say that our tailoring business was gangbusters. Volume dropped off significantly, but tailoring sales have really helped through COVID as contributing to overhead. Even prior to COVID, we have certain customers that come to us because we can tailor and clean their garments; we’re a one-stop-shop. Having all your eggs in one basket is incredibly dangerous, having multiple means of income hedges your risk. Diversifying our business has allowed us to be very positive for what the future will hold.” Understandably, we’ve all experienced the overwhelming feeling of uncertainty. The question of “how do we get through this?” has been front and center in everyone’s mind. There’s clearly no one simple answer to that question, but from the thousands of conversations we’ve had with GreenEarth Affiliates over the course of the last 10 months, there has been a common theme around those cleaners who have been able to weather the storm, and that is finding ways to diversify your business in order to drive some sort of revenue.