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Tahany Huerta repairs a jacket recently at Snow Mountain River repair shop in Flagstaff.

Americans have an outdoor recreation obsession. In 2017, the U.S. spent over $184 billion on it.

A big piece of that economy is clothing and gear. But there’s a problem.

“Everything that's in circulation right now is inevitably ending up in the landfill,” said Tahany Huerta, former product designer and developer for Patagonia and Black Diamond. “Nothing on the market is currently made to be part of a closed-loop cycle.”

Outdoor gear and clothing simply is not designed with recycling in mind, Huerta said, and that reality means that normal wear and tear is often a one-way ticket to waste.

The Environmental Protection Agency reported that in 2014, Americans threw away 16.22 million tons of clothing alone.

Recognition of the linear, cradle-to-grave lifespan of outdoor clothing and gear is what inspired Huerta to leave her position in product development and adopt a career in product repair.

Repairing clothing and gear doesn’t solve the problem, but it is the most effective way to extend the lifecycle of a piece of gear or clothing, Huerta said.

She now heads the repair shop within Snow Mountain River (SMR) in Flagstaff. Since 2019, the repair shop at SMR has been steadily gaining traction, and Huerta estimates that she works on up to 400 items a month, fixing everything from puffy jackets and pants to tents and sleeping bags.

“The most common repair is to fix a broken zipper,” Huerta reported.

While that might seem a simple fix, a busted zipper is enough to get many people to part with gear or clothing.

Manager Shannon Bollard explained that her team at Flagstaff Goodwill often receives clothing with broken zippers or similar damage.

Unfortunately, such damage keeps an item off the sales floor, and destines it for lower levels of donation, such as “weigh-and-pay” outlets. Bollard estimates that the Flagstaff Goodwill receives four to five gaylords, or large bins, of unsellable clothing each day. By weight, that’s between 2 and 3 tons of clothing per week. Simple repairs could make a “huge” impact on the amount of clothing that she processes each week. In her opinion, many people do not choose the repair option because it seems “expensive,” and “seamstresses are pretty much nonexistent at this point.”

For one Flagstaff seamstress, Karen Schwartz, the repair shop at SMR is preferable to a home repair.

“They have very specialized materials here,” Schwartz said.

She brought in an old jacket that needed — surprise — a zipper repair.

“And it's a big, fat zipper,” she said. “You're not going to buy one at Joanne's Fabrics.”

Even with materials specialized for outdoor gear and clothing, Huerta’s repairs are not nearly as expensive as the alternative. Most of her small repairs cost around $40 for parts and labor and can put another 10 to 15 years of life on products that cost hundreds on retail.

Ultimately, there’s only one way out of the wastefulness inherent in the outdoor gear industry, Huerta said, and that is for production companies to take accountability and produce biodegradable products.

The conundrum is that outdoor gear and clothing is specifically designed to maintain its integrity in outdoor environments, and thus leans heavily upon the use of synthetics and plastics. It’s a catch-22; how does one create environmentally friendly gear that is invulnerable to environmental wear?

“We’re just not there yet,” Huerta said. But that doesn’t justify the current pump of producing “more and more and more for the sake of a bottom line,” she added.

In the meantime, repairs are a way to address a growing trend of wastefulness.

“Your money is your vote,” Huerta said. “If you're repairing your item, your money is going towards that versus creating a demand for more new products.”

Sean Golightly can be reached at sgolightly@azdailysun.com

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Sean Golightly reports on the environment and the city of Flagstaff. Reach him at sgolightly@azdailysun.com, on Twitter at @sean_golightly, or on Instagram at @golightly_writes.

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Tahany Huerta repairs a jacket recently at Snow Mountain River repair shop in Flagstaff.

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