As the Pandemic Spread, Trash Piled Up. Here’s How One Designer Is Rebuilding Athens Sustainability

Before the pandemic, sustainability meant something different to designer Taylor Ooley. Now, she’s reimagining sustainable shopping in Athens.

Taylor Ooley didn’t expect a pandemic to interrupt her reusable fabric company’s first anniversary.

Totally Taylored was still new at the start of the pandemic, when selling at markets and pop-ups became difficult for small vendors, especially those with an eco-friendly reputation.

“There were so many obstacles to come inside, like you had to ring a doorbell and get your temperature taken,” said Ooley, “And it deters people from wanting to interact with you.”

But Ooley said as the world returns to normal, this interaction with sustainable local business is a vital step for individuals returning to their eco-friendly habits undermined by COVID-19.

Ooley usually sells reusable fashion and cleaning supplies. But like other business owners, she was forced to pivot during the pandemic.

“My phone was ringing faster than I could keep up, I would have 10 to 15 orders a day for masks,” she said.

Masks are a major symbol of COVID-19 and the waste left in its wake. Reusable masks are a symbol of sustainability making the best of a poor situation.

In Athens, a town known for its progress towards zero waste, long-time sustainable consumers have noticed Ooley and others rising to the challenge.

“I’ve been wanting to bring my bags to bag my own groceries,” said Ben Kirk, an Athens-Clarke County Solid Waste employee and farmers market regular. “I’ve been wanting to bring my cup back if I go to Starbucks.”

He said that when the pandemic hit, maintaining his sustainable consumption habits took the backseat.

“I was trying to figure out what I should be doing, how to be doing it,” said Kirk.

But as local markets reopened to nonessential vendors like Ooley, Kirk says buying reusable products like masks became a new way to ease back into old habits.

“So I think at first I was helping donate a lot of masks as best I could, while also sustaining a business,” Ooley said.

Sustaining an eco-friendly business is something with which Denise Plemmons is also familiar.

“Even at your home office you can double-sided print everywhere,” said Plemmons, the Commercial Recycling Specialist at the Athens-Clarke County Solid Waste Department. “So a lot of it was very practical for any range of business.”

Certified through Green Business Certification, Inc. to help local businesses implement sustainability, Plemmons says the pandemic opened many eyes to how much waste accumulates even without a pandemic.

“We had the effort of having to wash them, but think of how much money we were saving by not having to purchase masks,” Plemmons said.

This is what Plemmons is teaching Athens’ small businesses, and it’s a mission Ooley and others have found themselves on: to cater to a once-thriving sustainable community that has lost its drive thanks to COVID-19.

“It was like people’s trash increased, but I don’t think their desire to be sustainable disappeared,” said Ooley.

Consumers like Kirk share the same hope.

“There are certain people, a percentage, who care a lot,” he said. “And almost 100 percent of those people were always wanting to get back to it.”

Ooley said bringing color into people’s worlds when all they see is their home all the time is what pushes her to expand her business.

And if getting back to sustainability includes a vibrant mask or tote bag, maybe more will jump back on board.