As origin stories go, Vermont accessories brand BirdieBlue has a pretty good one. Unlike many such stories, the setting is not a garage or a kitchen table but a ski lift in 2020, during the early days of the pandemic. “I was getting on a chairlift with my son when we both heard a very loud rip from the ski pants I had been wearing for 20 years,” said founder Kate Harvey, 44, who lives in Stowe. “Literally, my rear end was hanging out. He was very embarrassed.” Harvey, then living in Connecticut, couldn’t bring herself to throw out the pants that had taken her from her ski bum days in college to the mountains of the Northeast. Instead, she and her son, who was 5 at the time, took the pants apart and salvaged the materials for a sewing project. “We made little pouches,” Harvey said. They were the size of a small zip wallet, big enough for her son’s rocks, coins and tiny keepsakes. “He was very proud of his and took it to school. What started as a fun hobby during COVID then started to snowball, no pun intended.” Friends and family saw the pouches and wanted their own, and word spread. By 2022, there was enough demand to launch a retail website with a line of colorful, boldly patterned carry-all bags ($110), fanny packs ($58) and travel bags ($58), all made from upcycled ski and snowboard fabrics. Harvey named the business BirdieBlue — for the perfect blue-sky ski day. Since its start, BirdieBlue has saved more than 15,000 pieces of gear — roughly 40,000 pounds — from landfills, according to Harvey. To her, that number is as important as sales figures. Harvey’s “big goal,” she said, is “to prove you can make something new from something old and not always have to produce more and more.” BirdieBlue bags Credit: Courtesy While the business’ guiding goal may be sustainability, that ethos also seems to be paying off financially. Harvey declined to share annual revenue, but she said she saw more than 80 percent growth from 2023 to 2024 and more than 90 percent growth the following year. BirdieBlue products are stocked in more than 20 retailers across the country, Harvey said, including REI. And the company receives garments from some of the industry’s leading outdoor gear retailers — locally, that includes Burton and Turtle Fur. The cast-off garments all help “generate new revenue streams from gear that would otherwise end up in the garbage,” Harvey said. BirdieBlue is in the process of increasing production from about 200 bags per month to 500, with a goal of 1,000 per month as demand grows. Most of the bags are sold through the company’s website and at events where Harvey meets customers in person. Partnerships with outdoor brands, ski mountains and other organizations are BirdieBlue’s second-largest sales channel. Burton was Harvey’s first partner — and “incredibly supportive,” she said. Before starting BirdieBlue, Harvey spent 15 years as a corporate headhunter, recruiting and coaching executives. The exposure to the corporate world served her well: When her family moved to Vermont, she immediately reached out to Burton, and the global snowboarding behemoth became a reliable supplier for the raw materials she needed to grow her business. Burton gives BirdieBlue, free of charge, all the unrepairable gear that’s returned under warranty. Harvey drops by monthly to pick up anywhere from five to 20 garments, according to Kyle Smith, who does research and development for soft goods at Burton. Twice a year, Smith gives her all the development scraps. The relationship with BirdieBlue helps her “sleep easy at night,” Smith said. “They’re beautiful technical fabrics that can have a new life.” BirdieBlue begins by taking the gear apart to create a “sewing kit for our home sewers,” which includes precut fabric pieces the sewers turn into finished bags, Harvey explained. “We have about 20 women working with us, all in Vermont.” One of those women is Romela Occaso, who lives in Kirby, near Lyndonville. Occaso started sewing during the pandemic. “I learned to sew on YouTube,” Occaso, 45, said. “I needed a hobby.” Occaso began working at H.O.P.E. (Helping Other People Everyday) in Lyndonville, a nonprofit that runs a food shelf and a thrift store for clothing. Occaso would repair donated clothing to get it into salable shape. The work brought her a lot of satisfaction, but she also wanted to start a business of her own. She was dabbling in repurposing old clothing into something new — using clothes the thrift store was unable to sell — when she came across BirdieBlue and its like-minded mission. “My husband was browsing the internet and said, ‘You know, there’s somebody looking for someone to sew at home,’” Occaso recalled. Occaso applied for a position, sewed a sample piece and landed the job. At first, she followed Harvey’s pattern. “After a while I got used to it,” Occaso said. “I don’t need to look at the pattern. Everything is prewashed. I just sew.” Occaso started out making five carry-all bags each month, then increased the volume. “This past month I did 30 bags,” Occaso said. Harvey pays Occaso $35 per bag, which takes her about two hours to complete, or about $17.50 per hour. Occaso said Harvey also gave her a nice Christmas bonus. “I’m happy to work for BirdieBlue,” Occaso said. “It’s in Vermont, it’s not mass produced, and even if it’s just a small amount [of clothing] to keep away from filling up the landfill and creating ocean waste, it goes a long ways. That’s what I’m proud about.” While BirdieBlue has saved thousands of clothing items from the waste stream, the problem is bigger than one small business in Vermont can solve. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency reported that in 2018, the latest year for which statistics are available, 11.3 million tons of textiles ended up in landfills in America. The recycling rate for all textiles in 2018 was 14.7 percent, with 2.5 million tons recycled. Still, every effort matters. Ski clothing in particular is a problem in landfills because it can be coated with harmful chemicals, according to Jennifer Sun, a postdoctoral fellow in the Department of Environmental Science Engineering at Harvard University. Especially concerning to Sun are PFAS, or per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, synthetic chemicals used since the 1940s to make products resistant to water, stains, grease and heat. “Ski gear and outdoor clothing has been known to be a particular source of PFAS,” Sun said. Kate Harvey working in her studio Credit: Kevin Goddard PFAS can regularly come out in the wash and get into the environment, according to Sun, but it’s even worse once the clothing gets into a landfill: The chemicals can make their way into the surface water that people and wildlife drink. “They’re the ‘forever chemicals’ and are extremely persistent in the environment,” Sun said. “Some of them never break down.” PFAS have also been linked to different cancers as well as metabolic and immune system dysfunction. Regulation is beginning to take effect at both the state and federal levels, according to Sun, but the best way to keep them out of the environment is to keep them out of products in the first place. Burton has been working on that for more than a decade. According to the company’s website, in 2014 it started investigating the connection between its “performance treatments” containing PFAS and their impact on people and the planet. As of this winter, the company reported, its products are PFAS-free. That’s good news for BirdieBlue as it continues its relationship with Burton. Harvey said her next target for a partnership is Patagonia, another American outdoor gear company that has committed to eliminating PFAS from its clothing. Harvey believes her business has a scalable model that will allow for recycling a much higher volume of gear. She envisions not only adding more gear companies to her portfolio of clients but also forming partnerships with more ski resorts to take their worn clothing and gear. (She already works with Stratton Mountain Resort.) “We believe this can be a seven- and eight-figure business,” Harvey said. “We’re a collaborator, not a competitor.” Meghan Duff, who lives in Morristown, is doing her part to help Harvey get there. Duff describes BirdieBlue bags as indestructible and “fun,” with bright colors and patterns that appeal to her and her three children. She has purchased the bags and packs for herself, her daughters, her sister, her mother and all of her female cousins. “It’s made in Vermont; I was born and raised in Vermont,” Duff said. She feels good about helping a small, woman-owned business grow, she added. And from ski lift mishap to retail dynamo, BirdieBlue’s rise has been inspiring to watch. “I love the story,” Duff said. ➆ The original print version of this article was headlined “Blue-Sky Thinking | Vermont accessories brand BirdieBlue saves ski and snowboard clothing from the landfill” The post BirdieBlue Saves Ski and Snowboard Clothing From the Landfill appeared first on Seven Days. ...read more read less