A seamstress at the Eileen Fisher warehouse in New York repairs damaged clothes. In 2019, Americans will throw away more than 35 billion pounds of textiles, according to the Council for Textile Recycling. That's nearly double the number from 1999. It's more important than ever, environmental advocates say, to keep that clothing out of landfills.

It’s back-to-school time, which means the advertisements are everywhere: Buy! Buy! Buy! Pencils and gadgets. Backpacks and sneakers. And, yes, heaps and piles of brand new clothes.

But this year, those ads are running up against another powerful message, resounding from such big brands as Eileen Fisher and Patagonia, along with a growing cadre of smaller thrift and resale shops: Let’s make do, reuse, recycle.

Fast-fashion trends, driven by consumer taste and innovations in textile manufacturing, have overstuffed American closets. Clothes shopping has emerged as a weekly habit, and people are constantly clearing out and buying new.

It’s a big problem. In 2019, Americans will throw away more than 35 billion pounds of textiles, according to the Council for Textile Recycling. That’s nearly double the number from 1999.

It’s more important than ever, environmental advocates say, to keep that clothing out of landfills.

“We’re trying to take responsibility,” said Eileen Fisher, whose eponymous fashion brand buys back its garments from customers at $5 each and reworks the material into new merchandise, under its Renew brand, at factories in Irvington, New York, and Seattle. It bought back its millionth garment in May. Fisher lives near the former printing warehouse in Irvington that the company converted into its Renew sewing factory. She walked through its clothing-intake center, wearing a gray and white kimono coat made from patches of Eileen Fisher clothing scraps that were turned into felt.

At an early stage in her 34-year-old company, Fisher said she and her co-workers grew alarmed at the environmental toll of clothing manufacturing — from depleted farm fields to dye pollution in rivers. Her company’s reuse efforts have expanded into its Circular by Design mission, in which today’s clothes become tomorrow’s raw materials.

“We need to move from a use-and-discard economy to a reuse economy,” she said. Its remade clothes are specially tagged and sold in Eileen Fisher stores, in pop-up shops and in several Nordstrom locations. A $250 jacket gets a second life at $90. “As manufacturers, we want to treasure the resources we’re using, to make clothing that lasts and can be repurposed. We want customers to value our clothes.”

Patagonia, the Ventura, California-based outdoor clothier, has for decades been a worldwide leader in this closed-loop system of manufacturing and reuse.

“As individuals, the best thing we can do for the planet is to buy less and keep our stuff in use longer,” said Rose Marcario, Patagonia’s president and CEO. “The simple act of extending the life of our garments through proper care and repair reduces the need to buy more over time.”

It’s estimated that the global textile industry uses 98 million tons of resources a year, chiefly water and energy. Fabric dyes have polluted major rivers in India, Bangladesh, China and other countries. The plight of underpaid workers producing fast fashion in unsafe factories has sparked outrage expressed in documentaries and books.

The large and ambitious buyback, repair and repurpose operations signal a fundamental shift in consumers’ relationship with clothing.

One vision of the future works like this: Brands manage the products they make after consumers use them. Consumers buy garments with the idea of keeping them as long as possible, and then the brand repairs and resells them. If garments are too damaged to be donated or resold, they will be “upcycled” into new clothing or recycled into fibers. So, for instance, a favorite shirt may one day provide the fiber that insulates a home. Or the fabric of a sofa. A garment might have six or seven life cycles.

Repurposing “can be made into a business that’s profitable,” Fisher said, noting that her company’s Renew operation brings in $3 million of the company’s $450 million in annual sales.

To amplify the philosophy that resource stewardship can be profitable, the Eileen Fisher company is an active member of Business for Innovative Climate and Energy Policy and the American Sustainable Business Council, joining like-minded ventures such as Nike, Seventh Generation and Starbucks. “We don’t want sustainability to be our edge,” Fisher said. “We want it to be universal.”

At its huge service center in Reno, Nevada, Patagonia houses a repair facility where 70 fulltime employees replace zippers, patch rips and renew and return items that customers may have bought decades before. The company’s Worn Wear program, begun in 2005, includes cute clapboarded rigs that make regular tours to U.S. college campuses and ski resorts and to international locations, teaching customers how to repair items. Shoppers can sell used Patagonia items in good condition back to the company and buy “certified, pre-owned” Patagonia gear at discounted prices online.

To further the cause, Cynthia Power, facilities manager for Eileen Fisher’s Renew, is kept busy showing other clothing manufacturers how its 40 employees mend, overdye, resew or felt (a way of processing fabric) buyback silk, wool, cashmere and cotton.

“This is where our industry is going,” Powers said, watching as head designer Carmen Gama pinned a jumpsuit for Renew’s fall 2019 line using fabric from five pairs of used black jeans. The recycled textiles also are turned into wall hangings, pillows, coats, vests and kimono jackets.

“Waste can be art,” Eileen Fisher designing artist Sigi Ahl said. The pillows are sold at ABC Home stores, and a Paris gallery sells the wall art. Both types of product were displayed in June at the American Institute of Architects’ sustainable exhibit at the Javits Center in New York.