🗑️ Trashy fashion to hit Orlando runway, promote sustainability

ORLANDO, Fla. – Spending a couple hours out at Eagle Nest Park in Orlando, I noticed a lot of trash on the ground near the pond. Things like plastic wrap for water bottles, shopping bags, to-go containers and cups.

Oddly, just steps away at a pavilion, there were two empty trash cans.

There’s a group working to bring the awareness of waste and sustainability by turning trash into wearable fashion.

Italia Alicea spent months working on a unique dress using materials like grocery bags, plastic mailers, bubble wrap and packaging straps.

She said she was inspired by a friend to participate as a designer in the Trash 2 Trends fashion show. She wants to encourage others to repurpose items most would consider to be trash.

“I work with children and we make a lot of crafts in occupational therapy. Crafts can be very expensive so you just kind of use what you have like cereal boxes and recycled paper. Nothing ever goes to waste,” Italia said.

She’ll be showing off her completed look at the 10th annual Trash 2 Trends fashion show at the Orlando Science Center on May 7. Keep Orlando Beautiful and Goodwill are teaming up to promote sustainability and raise money for community initiatives geared toward solutions to the growing waste problem.

“When I see all these single-use plastics at a park like this, it just reminds me of our addiction to single-use plastics as a culture... It’s everywhere and engrained in our culture. We need to change that,” Executive Director of Keep Orlando Beautiful, Inc. Madison Szathmary said.

Instead of just talking trash the organization is rolling out a unique way to bring awareness with more than 20 artists like Lindsay Agnew giving trash new life.

“My outfit is called the Grocery Statement,” Agnew said.

Hundreds of shopping bags from different stores was repurposed for this outfit.

“This is just one of the most single-use items that people are using that gets thrown in the trash that can’t be 100 percent recycled,” Agnew said.

The runway opens Wednesday hoping to inspire guests to reduce, reuse and recycle

“It’s just exciting to use things that had a purpose before and to give them new life,” Italia said. “I’m excited to see what others have come up with.”

Trash 2 Trends takes place Wednesday, May 7, from 6 p.m. to 9 p.m. at the Orlando Science Center.

Tickets for the “Trash 2 Trends Fashion Show presented by Goodwill Industries of Central Florida” cost $48, which includes dinner and free parking at the Orlando Science Center garage. Click HERE to purchase tickets. Attendees must be at least 21 years old.