Dubai: A single cotton T-shirt takes about 2,700 litres of water to make.It is a statistic that always works when 17-year-old Arhan Harchandani and Aarush Vij introduce anyone to their sustainability initiative, Rewoven.The two Dubai College students have been running the initiative for two years now, trying to make some fundamental changes in the way their generation makes fashion choices.“Fashion produces 92 million tonnes of textile waste a year, and around 95% of the clothes we throw away could still be worn or reused. But when Aarush and I pitch Rewoven, we never start with the global numbers. We start with the t-shirt, because everyone in the room is wearing one,” Harchandani said.Where it all beganThe idea behind the students’ initiative, though, started in Egypt, when Harchandani was completing an internship at a garment factory in Port Said.“I shadowed the general manager and ran a sustainability audit, following the fabric from sourcing through every stage of production,” he said.But as he walked along the cutting tables and production lines, Harchandani couldn’t help but notice – offcuts, scraps, piles of fabric left behind, a byproduct of the manufacturing process.“Most of it was headed for burning or landfill,” he said.Sitting down with the general manager, going through the factory’s water and energy bills, the teenager could not get that one number out of his head - 2,700 litres.“That is years of drinking water for one person, stitched into something someone might wear twice,” he said.Unable to look away, Harchandani began with what he could control and work on.“I started making bookmarks and bags from those offcuts in partnership with the factory,” he said.Those bookmarks and bags were then sold at his school, as part of a community initiative, with all the proceeds going to charity.That became the starting point for Rewoven.Turning scraps into actionVij and Harchandani initially began with clothes donation drives – making sure that pre-loved clothes found their way to those who could use it.In just two years, the initiative has collected over 1,000 garments from UAE homes, donating it to the Beit Al Kheir foundation, and saving approximately 2.6 million litres of water, according to Harchandani’s estimate.He also delivered a workshop at Fashion Revolution UAE – which is part of the global fashion activism movement promoting ethical practices in the global fashion industry – to teach children aged seven to 12 about textile waste.This year, the Rewoven team held a special basketball camp in the Philippines, where 31% of children live below the poverty line.“We hosted a three-day basketball camp for underprivileged children in Manila, and at the end of it we gifted every child a sustainable jersey sewn from fabric offcuts, the same material the whole project started with,” he said.Putting on shoes courtside at the Manila basketball initiative Basketball Initiative Rewoven hosted in Manila, Philippines The initiative was aimed at helping underprivileged children in Manila. Beyond donation drivesBut as he worked to raise awareness on the environmental costs of fast fashion, Harchandani began realising that collection drives alone would not be enough.This year, after months of development work, he launched the Rewoven app, which addresses the complete behaviour cycle – educating users on the costs of fast fashion, empowering them with information to make more environmentally conscious choices, and seeing the impact better individual choices are making.“The whole app is one loop. You learn something, you act on it, and then you see what your actions added up to. Point your phone at the care label inside any piece of clothing and it reads the fabric, shows the water and carbon behind that material, and tells you what to actually do with the item when you are finished with it, based on its condition. Scan a barcode in a shop and you get the brand's sustainability grade from our database of more than 500 brands,” he said.The app, which currently has over 200 users, also allows them to log the clothes they donate and find out how much water they have saved and even offers a free curriculum that can be used in schools to raise awareness on circular economy, fashion, textile lifecycle and more.Vij presenting the Rewoven concept at a school in India.As a school student, building a fully functional app and running the initiative meant working late nights and through any school breaks he had.“School comes first, especially this year with university applications, so Rewoven happens after homework and studying and at weekends,” he said.“The app got built over about five months of evenings. It helps that I have free periods in school where I have time to work on the project and some overlapping with Aarush where we can discuss ideas,” he added.Their families’ support has been critical in spreading the word, with Harchandani saying they have been more involved than he expected, with every member spreading the word about the initiative itself, and sustainability as a whole.Why guilt does not workThe app’s design and features, and the initiative’s different efforts, always factor in the audience Harchandani and Vij want to reach – Gen Z.“There are quizzes with streaks and daily challenges. My favourite detail is a small planet of your own inside the app. It flourishes when you keep taking action and starts to wilt if you disappear for a few days,” he said.The gamification of the experience is a deliberate strategy, because while Harchandani believes young people care about environmental issues, the way a message is communicated can often make all the difference.“We care, but the problem is usually handed to us as guilt, and nobody my age responds to being lectured,” Harchandani said.“People my age respond when acting feels like something they chose, and when they can see their own numbers move. That is why the app looks more like a game than a lesson,” he said.Fashion is only the beginningThe two teenagers work collaboratively – with Vij handling schools and partnerships for the initiative, while Harchandani focuses on developing and scaling the platform.In the short-term, the duo hopes to spread the app’s sustainability curriculum across schools in the UAE.“The curriculum is free and I want it in as many classrooms as possible, starting with my own school and a few others in Dubai and potentially in Manila, Philippines, where we already send donations. A teacher can host a live quiz for a whole class in about five minutes, and that is the fastest way to reach a lot of people my age or younger,” he said.In the long-term, though, Harchandani said he hopes the initiative can have a ripple effect on the overall choices people make. Fashion, he says, is only the entry point.“Almost everything we buy has a cost behind it that we cannot see, and clothes are just the version of that problem teenagers care about first. If Rewoven becomes the thing that shows you that cost at the moment you are deciding, clothes are only the beginning for the impact Rewoven can have,” he said.“I am 17, so I am not going to pretend I know exactly how it plays out. I would rather build something people actually use than talk about the problem,” he added.It is an approach he believes should extend beyond Rewoven itself: if young people are expected to tackle the problems they will inherit, they need to be given practical ways to act on it.“Young people should not just be told they are responsible for the future,” he said. “They should be given the tools to act now.”
