Reconstituted Baby Clothes

Putting clothes on an infant child is a wasteful proposition. Babies grow. No more do they fit into the clothes you just bought them. Then where are you? 

One way of solving this problem is disposable, single-use baby clothes. But putting a baby in some kind of recyclable paper sack is a tough sell for most parents. What we need is a more sophisticated alternative — and one that puts the recycling process front and center. 

You organize the business as a subscription service. Couple of baby outfits delivered per month. Nice stuff, comfy. And the monthly delivery comes with a pre-paid envelope to send the clothes back when baby outgrows them (like Netflix back when they were doing DVDs).

Here’s where some manufacturing innovation will be needed. Back at the baby clothes factory, the envelopes of soiled/outgrown baby clothes are opened, and… 

I guess they go into a big boiling vat, then a shredder, then a pulper, then something else and something else, and then… voila! New baby clothes. Reconstituted. Which then get sent out. The cycle. 

Marketing this idea will rely heavily on the sustainability story. The compelling visuals of how baby clothes get reconstituted, yes, but also the wastefulness of the old order: the heaps of coveralls rotting in landfills, crawled over by centipedes and pecked at by seagulls. The black sludge. Let parents know it doesn’t have to be black sludge and centipedes. There is an alternative. 

The new order of baby clothes (reconstituted!) is clean and bright, almost overwhelmed with sunlight. Baby feet bopping on a mossy forest floor. Running now, excited. The outstretched arms and outstretched fingers, reaching to connect with the trunk of an old oak. This kid’s a walker, but they can kind of run, too in that boppy way, and they’re engaging with their environment, the tree, the forest, what a great kid, but can they talk? Are we going to get a first word out of this youngster or what? What will it be? “Mom?” “Dad?” “Cat?” No, no. None of those. “Tree.”  

Why I can’t do this myself: not sure, seems like a pretty good idea, time constraints maybe.