Reusing school uniforms
An innovative way to reuse school uniforms and reduce production waste in textile products.
I have first-hand experience with this problem, so I can evaluate it from both the producer's and the customer's perspectives. We know that every student must receive an education. Each and every year, some materials are purchased; however, they are usually not used. In this case, I will be focusing on one thing: uniforms.
Regardless of their age or academic year, every student purchases a uniform at the start of each year. Because the times when we go to school are also times when we are developing. This is required by the administration of the school. Imagine buying new uniforms for millions of children every year. Can you estimate how many of these uniforms that were purchased were a waste? Nearly everyone who has a child is affected by this situation, specifically in Turkey, where I have lived since I was born. So if school administrations make these uniforms mandatory, how are these clothes wasted?
The educational system in Turkey is among the most challenging and complicated in the world. Although the educational system requires the purchase of these uniforms at the beginning of each school year, we have observed that they have become more flexible in this regulation over time. As a result, a few months after school starts, students stop wearing uniforms. In the middle of the year, we can no longer see one student wearing a uniform. Unfortunately, as the student's physical and biological development continues, this repetition occurs every year. Even just in my community, there are officially close to 20 million students.
This process harms the environment greatly. Our resources in the world are limited now, there are important problems in the future that we do not know how to deal with, for example, water scarcity. The most effective and best way to make good use of these resources and use them economically is to use the products we bought for a long time and not to buy new ones.
For the production of a t-shirt, 2700 liters of water is consumed, which is 900 days' worth of water. During the production of 450 grams of cotton, 150 grams of chemical fertilizers are used. 90 grams of fertilizer and 4 grams of pesticides are used for one t-shirt.
Along with this, during the transformation of raw materials into t-shirts, 550 grams of fossil fuel are used for only one t-shirt. These fossil fuels release 6 grams of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere for each t-shirt. Not to mention the energy consumed by the washing machine during the lifetime of each t-shirt. Therefore, look at the damage we cause to nature just to buy a new t-shirt.
Also, due to the recent global and Turkish economic crises, these costs appear to have become a significant problem. It is becoming increasingly difficult for these types of families to purchase such expensive uniforms for each child on a yearly basis. According to many official news websites in Turkey, such school expenses are increasing daily and becoming unaffordable.
My personal motivation for global warming is collaboration. First, I asked myself ‘If there are millions suffering from this issue, how can we bring those together?’. This mindset of mine never changed. I acknowledge that there are ‘millions’ who think they are ‘alone’. Do the math and leave the rest to your imagination.
Since we are in the digital age, it is the best and most effective way to reach millions of people through the internet. Therefore, I developed an online platform. On this platform, the features are easy to use and access. This website will allow users to donate or sell the uniforms and other school materials. They would post the pictures of the product and inform the users about its usability. There are comment and rating sections for each post. There are 2 different options: Donate or Sell. This way, before publishing the product, the seller can decide whether to donate it or sell it in an affordable way.
Since there are a lot of different schools, I decided the best way to keep this organized is to choose a representative for each school. These representatives will help manage this platform. For instance, they would make sure that users can reach out to them to receive the items of the school and that the items are good to use. Also, they would help the users about receiving the items by cargo in the shortest time.
I am confident that this way, we will ensure that the uniforms are never wasted and that low-income families can afford to receive the uniforms for their children for free or in a very economical method. This will result in a huge reduction in the amount of clothes waste. We would assist financially strapped households while preserving the environment.
Not only does my idea empower a large number of individuals, but it also simplifies the lives of students and their families all across the world. We can say low-income students and their families if I have to address it specifically. I would like to implement this first in my own country and then introduce it to the rest of the world.
This solution would greatly benefit the environment while also ensuring that students and their families will not be concerned about financing their education. I do not doubt that this approach will significantly reduce the amount of waste in textile products and greatly positively impact the environment.
Let me explain the damage this waste causes to the environment. The fact that "one" uniform is bought "every year" for "every child" in the family and millions of families do this even in the region where I live, harms the environment greatly. Our resources in the world are limited now, there are important problems in the future that we do not know how to deal with, for example, water scarcity. The most effective and best way to make good use of these resources and use them economically is to use the products we bought for a long time and not to buy new ones.
This is where the solution I will talk about later comes into play. To elaborate on the problem, let's consider the simplest way of producing one of the uniform parts, a t-shirt. Let's say a t-shirt we are going to buy is cotton, there are many environmentally harmful substances such as
-The cost of workers picking this cotton
-Scarcity of cotton material and the cost of finding it
-The fuel used while transporting this material
-The harm caused by this fuel to the environment and the gasses it emits
-Chemicals in dyes used to color T-shirts
-The cost and water wastage of washing each T-shirt every 2-3 days.
For the production of a t-shirt, 2700 liters of water is consumed, which is 900 days' worth of water. For clothes, not produced from organic cotton, the use of pesticides and fertilizers is quite high. During the production of 450 grams of cotton, 150 grams of chemical fertilizers are used.
In a year, 35% of pesticides used all over the world are used in cotton fields. This means that 90 grams of fertilizer and 4 grams of pesticides are used for one t-shirt.
Along with this, during the transformation of raw materials into t-shirts, 550 grams of fossil fuel is used for only one t-shirt. These fossil fuels release 6 grams of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere for each t-shirt. Not to mention the energy consumed by the washing machine during the lifetime of each t-shirt. Therefore, look at the damage we cause to nature just to buy a new t-shirt.
Surprisingly, this huge problem can be solved by taking little steps. For instance, my solution enables people to buy fewer uniforms and eliminates all the costs I listed.
At the same time, it will greatly help families who are barely able to raise the education costs of their children and will undoubtedly enable them to send their children to school comfortably and confidently.
This platform will unite students from all over the country and provide them with a feeling of community. Family members will no longer need to purchase brand-new, overpriced uniforms for each child every year; they will handle this process for free or much cheaper, which will support the domestic economy and at the same time allow them to be responsible for the environment and beneficial to society.
As I began to ponder what future career I should pursue, I realized that I dream of running my own company to be beneficial to society. Over my high school years, I had the chance to be introduced to many occupations and fields of study via career fairs and webinars, which expanded my vision toward science and technology. Being in a science and technology school has many advantages, such as taking robotics, artificial intelligence, programming, and web design classes. I also got the chance to take advanced math classes and improve my computational thinking, which led me to decide that computer science is the ultimate discipline that I can focus on while being able to combine it with the areas of business, management, and economics.
To build a strong theoretical background, I realized that I had to master 21st-century skills. Through an online program designed by IBM, I developed my problem-solving and critical-thinking abilities. Then I got the chance to implement what I know in real life by taking three leadership training courses that took me months to finish. In addition to this, I aimed to expand my understanding of entrepreneurship and took an online course titled "Bootstrapping for Entrepreneurs" by MIT, which helped me learn how to harness innovation communities for entrepreneurial problem discovery and problem-solving. I had the opportunity to practice how to apply innovation toolkits in product innovation and development and examine case studies. I analyzed the problems that we see in the world and evaluated their potential for entrepreneurial innovation. To enhance my math knowledge, I took advanced extra mathematics classes in school that prepared students for the Turkish Mathematics Olympics. These classes lasted 2 years and included university-level subjects like calculus, statistics, linear algebra, analysis, functions, and modeling. After that, I attended the online course program titled Harvard CS50, which is an introduction to the intellectual enterprises of computer science and the art of programming. I learned how to think algorithmically and solve programming problems efficiently and became familiar with several languages, including C, Python, SQL, and JavaScript, plus CSS and HTML. In the course, we focused on concepts like abstraction, algorithms, data structures, encapsulation, resource management, security, software engineering, and web development. To reinforce this knowledge, I also took Stanford’s Computer Science 101 course, which helped me code in Javascript, and I completed all the assignments successfully. After gaining enough knowledge on how to create a product, I knew I had to learn the market. How to analyze the situation, how to do market research, and how to define the marketplace—therefore, I completed the Fundamentals of Digital Marketing Course by Google successfully. I was lucky enough to receive verified certificates for all of them. As I was introduced to a broad and robust understanding of computer science and programming, I knew I could apply this knowledge to the real world and use it to create solutions for global challenges.
To turn theory into practice, I started my internship at Geo Bilgi to gain knowledge about developing sustainable and quality software projects. As well as learning about topics like reporting, performance monitoring, and platform and technology selection, I also got to see how software development projects are carried out in practice. Along with that, I had the chance to learn more about the operation of the artificial intelligence-based system that determines whether the collected photos satisfy the required criteria. I observed the web-based public transportation data management portal developed to store the public transportation stop, line, route, time, departure time, and driver master data of the municipalities.
I decided to go one step further by doing an internship in Bilisim Vadisi (Technology Development Zone). I had the opportunity to witness how science is transformed into technology, which is then transformed into products and commercialized. I learned about the businesses that offer services in the areas of connectivity, mobility, cyber security, design, smart cities, and gaming technologies, and this knowledge helped me decide on my career path. To see how technological solutions are used, I then completed an internship at UBIT. I gained knowledge about corporate software for different sectors, especially the education sector. I found that this company's software includes measurement and evaluation frameworks that are applied at my school. As a result of my successful completion of the tasks given by all companies, it became clear to me that this was the right career for me to pursue.
Furthermore, the more I learned and did volunteer work in different organizations to help the unfortunate, the more I realized that not everyone has the opportunity to achieve their dreams, especially when a global issue such as gender inequality still exists. I was a "girl" who wanted to pursue her career in STEM. I was deeply bothered by the fact that some others were unable to do this. I gathered my friends and decided to do something about it. As a result, we founded STEM Girls, which is an online platform that aims to reduce gender inequality in STEM fields by introducing STEM professions and collecting educational materials for underprivileged girl students. We have been invited to the Science Festival for Ukrainian Children in the Atasehir Cultural Center, organized by the Ukrainian Consulate. We conducted science workshops with experiment kits that were designed by our team. We collected more than 350 books for the library of the Asik Senlik Secondary School in Istanbul. Thankfully, we reached more than 500 girls all around the world via our Instagram page. STEM girls continue to be active in three schools now.
After tasting the feeling of helping someone and solving a global issue, I decided to design and build something else. I focused on sustainability and combined it with inequality in education. I have been doing voluntary work and donating a lot of school supplies since I was little so that I could fulfill my responsibility. I always felt guilty about others not gaining the same education as me, and sometimes the other way around. Since elementary school, I've been bothered by this education inequality issue, and it all started to take shape in my mind when I attended YGA’s summit, the biggest non-governmental organization in Turkey. The theme of this year's conference of YGA was sustainability. From a pool of 50.000 applicants, I was chosen. Therefore, I got the chance to attend this summit in person, which allowed me to talk with guests individually. A lot of professors and entrepreneurs came from around the world who have done successful projects related to sustainability. I had inspiring conversations with Sila Kiliccote, Prof. Ger Graus OBE, Ersin Han Ersin, and many more. After listening to these people, my mind began to take shape. There I was, planning my whole life. But what if there is no future left? That was the moment I realized that we are the first generation to feel the effects of climate change and the last generation to do something about it. I am aware of my responsibility, and that is why I am ready to take action. It all began to take shape and collaborate in my mind. As a result, I created a platform that is related to these significant global challenges.
I am confident that, with the help of this program, I will be able to apply my knowledge to the real world. With these abilities, I am certain that I can carry out my responsibilities and spread this solution to everyone, especially the unfortunate. With the excellent resources given and the help of inspiring mentors, I could benefit society and share my ideas where they would be valued and appreciated. I hope I will be given a chance to stand by what I said.
The first step I took was to learn how to understand and analyze the needs of the population I want to serve. I took a 4-week course that explained the details of how to prepare a business model, do market research, and develop a GTM (go-to-market strategy). After gaining knowledge and applying it to the real world by examining case studies and coming up with different solutions for each one of them, I felt ready to make this more professional.
To level up, I found this idea, which I explained in the previous questions. Because this solution affects every single student from a low-income family, I knew I had to reach out to as many as possible. I started within my circle. I interviewed my friends at school and their families.
While doing these interviews, I found out that there were way more people having these issues than I imagined. So I conducted an online survey on a social media platform and got results. There were more than a thousand people who voted and agreed that getting expensive school uniforms every year was extremely challenging for low and middle-income families. After also watching an interview organized by an official news channel in Turkey, I was more than convinced that this issue was everywhere in Turkey.
When I conducted research, I discovered that more than 5,000 complaints related to uniforms had been lodged with the Turkish Ministry of National Education. Additionally, I have seen interviews and publications regarding purchasing these costly uniforms, particularly for low-income families, on the official news pages. Therefore, I had to come up with a solution.
To understand if the issue is a global concern, I conducted research and easily reached reliable sources that were complaining about the same issue. There were a lot of interviews and research within these official sources; therefore, I decided that after testing it, I could spread this worldwide to help more. I am also going to add some of the resources I found so that it could be more clear.
https://retykle.com/blogs/retykle-blog/secondhand-uniforms-sustainability
https://unpckd.com/blogs/lesseverydaywaste/what-a-waste-the-second-hand-school-uniform-no-brainer
https://www.ecnmy.org/engage/95-parents-think-school-uniforms-cost-much/
After doing this research, I contacted one of the largest non-governmental organizations, the Gradoo and Turkey Entrepreneurship Foundation. Since I made an outstanding achievement in the leadership course I mentioned, I got the chance to talk with the founders of these companies. I shared my ideas and got feedback on how to make my solution better. Afterward, I added the comment and rating sections to gain the trust of the users.
I showed them my design for the user interface and added some features according to their comments.
In conclusion, after my interviews and research, since there are going to be adults using this platform, I realized it should be organized and simple to understand. Therefore, I designed the interface and made it more accessible and easy to use. Finally, I showed the design to the potential users and got a positive response.
- Other: Addressing an unmet social, environmental, or economic need not covered in the four dimensions above.
- Prototype: A venture or organization building and testing its product, service, or business model
I am confident that this solution will be the first to benefit the environment, economy and education at the same time and the most-effective. I have spent months conducting research and doing interviews with potential users. I have come to the realization that because you can not be sure about the seller's motive and act in the business world, it could result in both options.
The good news is both outcomes would benefit the earth and economy. It is a fact that school prices have increased excessively during these periods. Of course, increasing school prices come along with price increases in school uniforms and necessary materials. Schools have now abandoned the purpose of providing quality education, they are acting only for the purpose of making a profit. Especially for students like me who study at private schools on full scholarships, it becomes even more difficult to get these materials since the scholarships do not apply for the materials.
As I said, especially in the city where I live, in Istanbul, the purpose of schools goes out of its original form and everything turns into commerce. The whole market is influenced by each other and trying to raise the price of the materials needed for students as if they are in a race.
Therefore, I hope that the fact that I will sell these products for free or in a cost-effective way will cause a change in this market area and at the same time will leave a positive impact on other sellers.
More importantly, let me explain the damage this waste causes to the environment. The fact that "one" uniform is bought "every year" for "every child" in the family and millions of families do this even in the region where I live, harms the environment greatly. Our resources in the world are limited now, there are important problems in the future that we do not know how to deal with, for example, water scarcity. The most effective and best way to make good use of these resources and use them economically is to use the products we bought for a long time and not to buy new ones.
This is where my solution comes into play. Let's consider the simplest way of producing one of the uniform parts, a t-shirt. Let's say a t-shirt we are going to buy is cotton, there are many environmentally harmful substances such as
-The cost of workers picking this cotton
-Scarcity of cotton material and the cost of finding it
-The fuel used while transporting this material
-The harm caused by this fuel to the environment and the gasses it emits
-Chemicals in dyes used to color T-shirts
-The cost and water wastage of washing each T-shirt every 2-3 days.
For the production of a t-shirt, 2700 liters of water is consumed, which is 900 days' worth of water. For clothes, not produced from organic cotton, the use of pesticides and fertilizers is quite high. During the production of 450 grams of cotton, 150 grams of chemical fertilizers are used.
In a year, 35% of pesticides used all over the world are used in cotton fields. This means that 90 grams of fertilizer and 4 grams of pesticides are used for one t-shirt.
Along with this, during the transformation of raw materials into t-shirts, 550 grams of fossil fuel is used for only one t-shirt. These fossil fuels release 6 grams of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere for each t-shirt. Not to mention the energy consumed by the washing machine during the lifetime of each t-shirt. Therefore, look at the damage we cause to nature just to buy a new t-shirt.
Surprisingly, this huge problem can be solved by taking little steps. For instance, my solution enables people to buy fewer uniforms and eliminates all the costs I listed.
At the same time, it will greatly help families who are barely able to raise the education costs of their children and will undoubtedly enable them to send their children to school comfortably and confidently.
Therefore, I believe the fact that this solution brings a new and unexpected way to solve the water scarcity problem and many more challenges about protecting the environment, and also supports the economy, enables families to finance their children's education in a cost-effective way and allows students to receive their education more comfortably by making them feel in a community, makes this highly innovative.
sources:
https://www.smithsonianmag.com...
https://easyecotips.com/the-en...
https://blogs.furman.edu/nwill...
https://theconversation.com/fo...
I want to make this website available to everyone and provide this opportunity to millions of people who will benefit from it. Besides, I believe I can spread this to more people by collaborating with an organization I have worked with before in Turkey.
In this way, I hope that I will be able to greatly reduce the damage caused to the environment by the production of even just one t-shirt. I believe that this brings a new solution to water scarcity and similar problems, so I would like to see the results of this.
I would like to implement and spread this in my own community and then take it globally. The world is ours, every single one of us. So the more people we can get it to, the better.
In order to build the website and open it for use: Software Technology
Tracking and Shipping the products: AI- Digital Cargo
- Artificial Intelligence / Machine Learning
- Manufacturing Technology
- Software and Mobile Applications
- Turkiye
I have not professionally launched it yet.
There are normally 12 million students in Turkey, and 4 million of them are in Istanbul, where I live. In the first stage, I plan to serve the students in Istanbul. I believe I can reach and announce this solution to 10.000 students next year because of my connections and network through the programs I participated in.
Then hopefully, to millions.
To launch my website, I need to have a financial source to
-purchase the website's name, domain, and address.
-shipping the products
I need to make sure I reach everyone, so I could use mentoring on this issue and how to announce it via which sources.
I could mention MIT's and SOLV[ED]'s names, because they are trusted and reliable, to reach more people and gain their trust.
Not partnering with anyone officially, but at the moment planning the process with Gradoo and the Turkish Entrepreneurship Foundation.
Here is my Canva Business Model.
Key Customers:
Students in Istanbul who have access to the Internet.
Benefits:
I created an online platform where these purchases can be made for school uniforms. Since the uniforms are rarely or never worn, families who made the purchases can donate or sell the uniforms on this platform.
This will ensure that the uniforms are never wasted and that low-income families can afford to buy the uniforms for their children in a very economical method. Each Turkish school will have a representative on this platform. The uniforms on this platform will be all-new, clean, and wearable. This will result in a huge reduction in the amount of clothing waste and its production costs since people will not be buying brand-new uniforms each and every year. We would assist financially strapped households while preserving the environment.
Basically a combination of all.
Through
-sustained donations and grants,
-selling products or services,
-service contracts to organizations and schools.
Plus, hopefully, raising investment capital.