Student Entrepreneurs Take On Ocean Pollution and Fast Fashion

It can be argued that taking discarded materials and transforming them into something useful is the essence of recycling. That’s how Logan James, a finance major at Utah State University, is working to bring sustainability to fashion.

James is the founder of ThriftJam, a vintage clothing store selling handcrafted clothes made from discarded clothing. ThriftJam operates from a refurbished school bus to meet consumers in the middle ground between brick-and-motor stores and online shopping. It was originally conceived as a side hustle to raise funds for college, James said.

“We initially started by just curating vintage collections, which is very common,” James told TriplePundit. “After about two years of doing that on the side, we got involved with the Center for Entrepreneurship at Utah State … They really pushed us and were like, ‘Hey, you know what? You could make this a full-time thing if you put a unique spin on it.’”

That’s when ThriftJam started selling its own designs from unwearable old clothing. 

“We figured, there’s a lot of different types of fabrics and materials that if we’re able to cut out the wearable parts, the usable parts, we could potentially create some new pieces out of them,” James said. “We just got started on some designs and got very lucky with a connection to one of our vintage suppliers, who owns a recycling center.”

ThriftJam got "very lucky" again when its first recycled high-end piece was a big hit, he said.

“We sold enough of them to pile onto that idea and design new pieces and keep rolling with it,” James said.

About a year and a half ago ThriftJam reached a potential turning point when one of its designers suggested they use pieces of recycled garments alongside some new fabrics to ensure a higher quality product. 

“We really thought about that for a long time because it would really streamline our manufacturing and bring down prices,” James said. “It’s far more expensive to use recycled materials than it is to use new materials … But at that point, we decided that we didn’t want to feel like we were lying to our customers in any way, so we decided to stick with 100 percent recycled materials.”

James is among several budding sustainability entrepreneurs from across the globe whose efforts are documented in a video series that follows their progress through the Global Student Entrepreneur Awards called “Start it Up.”

Sponsored by the nonprofit Entrepreneurs’ Organization, the competition hosts college students from around the world who run a business with at least $500 in revenue or $1,000 in investment. Those featured in the video series are their countries’ sole representatives in the finals, having already won local and national competitions where their entrepreneurial skills and businesses were judged. 

The competition is unique because it focuses on “the individual and their capacity to sustain in the face of challenges in their entrepreneurial journey,” said Tamarin Morrell, director of Entrepreneurs’ Organization. 

Another contestant, Yara Yousry, an architecture and engineering major at the American University in Cairo, launched the social enterprise Bahtinet to address declining fisheries and lost fishing gear pollution. Bahtinet aims to introduce local, sustainable, biodegradable and affordable fishing nets manufactured from banana tree waste to fishing communities, creating more jobs for Egyptian women in the process.

Yousry studied the decline of the fishing community El-Bahtiny in an urban design course, particularly the impact of the increasing cost of fishing nets. Traditionally, fishing nets in Egyptian communities are made of nylon or silk, expensive materials made even more costly because of the devaluation of the Egyptian pound. Yousry teamed up with three mechanical engineering students to seek a solution. 

The group discovered that a locally available material, banana tree fiber, could be used to fashion fishing nets that were sustainable and much cheaper. But convincing the residents of a conservative fishing community to listen to four female university students wasn’t easy. In a more conservative community like El-Bahtiny, fishermen usually like to talk with other fishermen or to community anchors, Yousry said. 

“That’s why we started reaching out to community anchors, communicating with them our idea and our initiative,” she said. “And they were very, very open to promote the product to other fishermen.” 

Yousry and her colleagues handle the logistics of sourcing banana fibers, provide training for men and women in weaving the nets, and teach the fishermen about the importance of using sustainable materials in fishing. 

Half of the people who work in the Egyptian fishing industry are women, who have historically woven fishing nets from materials like flax before nylon nets became more commonly used. Training women to weave the fishing nets puts them “back on the wheel of economic development” in ways that aren’t disruptive to social norms, Yousry said. 

Yousry and James didn’t take home the first-place prize, but they gained plenty from the competition in other ways.

“I think if you interviewed any of the people that were involved in the competition, they would say the same thing,” James said. “The connections they made with not only the other competitors, but the mentors there who are also from the whole globe, that’s by far the most valuable part of the competition in itself.”

Yousry echoed the sentiment. 

“It was a life changing experience, and it somehow showed to me what true entrepreneurship is really about,” she said. “It’s about making an impact. It’s about supporting each other. It was a safe space to share ideas and grow together.”