I made this dress in collaboration with the ISTA Sustainability Group, who partnered with Green Labs Austria to network scientists to collect used nitrile gloves for me to turn into an upcycled wearable art piece. I wore the completed ball gown to the Vienna Ball of Sciences 2024 to raise awareness for the amount of glove waste scientists are generating and the need for a recycling program in Austria.

You can read about the story in this Green Labs blog post. Here are the main points:

The dress was made from 400 gloves and took over 200 hours to sew. All of the gloves were used for non-toxic purposes (no handling of biological or chemical samples). We chose this material for the project because it is actually a recyclable material, but unfortunately, Austria doesn’t have any recycling facilities able to process it, so it is incinerated along with the rest of the trash.

With 6 participating labs going about their daily routine, the gloves needed for this dress were collected in less than a week. ISTA (including the 80 or so labs who didn’t participate in this project) consumes over 450,000 gloves per year, based on their 2022 purchase history, which equates to 1,700 to 1,800 per workday.

Sadly, the dress will not last until the next ball. Nitrile gloves, just like latex ones, degrade when exposed to air and humidity. It will be beautiful while it lasts!

The two photos in the laboratory setting were taken by Jürgen Hofmann. https://www.juergenhofmann.com/