Category Archives: Sponsors

Shop Reused & Local for a Sustainable Season

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School’s out for winter break. Weather’s starting to feel wintery, and the community is bustling. This is a great time to do last minute holiday shopping in town. In Bend, we have a bounty of local, sustainable, diverse gift gathering spaces. Check out three great community focused businesses (and Rubbish Renewed supporters) to spend your dollars locally and make sustainable purchasing choices that are lighter on the planet!

RESTORE: 224 NE Thurston Avenue

For the handy person in your life the ReStore has a wide variety of home improvement materials, tools and furnishings almost exclusively donated by our generous community. Shopping at ReStore helps support the construction of Habitat homes that are built for energy efficiency. These affordable homes ensure families have every opportunity to thrive and grow.

GEAR FIX: 550 SW Industrial Way #1

For your outdoor enthusiast needs check out The Gear Fix! They consign high quality outdoor gear and repair your damaged favorites. Gear Fix cultivates a sense of community both inside and outside of the shop helping make our area inclusive for all that choose to venture outdoors.

COSA CURA: 2735 NW Crossing Dr. #101 & 19570 Amber Meadow Dr, #170

For your stylish fashion and home decor needs Cosa Cura is the place! The store currently represents 80+ Independent Artists & Designers and carries fashion from 8000+ local consignors. Cosa Cura creates an atmosphere of sustainable style, creativity, local support and community service. “Killer style and saving the planet one fabulous outfit at a time.”

Thank you Bend & Sponsors!

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Once again, we pulled off this multifaceted, highly engaging, sustainably minded, community connecting event! The 13th Rubbish Renewed Eco Fashion Show was enriched this year by more interactive sustainable thinking – art, activities, free design workshops, and a developed reusables system. These, in combination with the mesmerizing trash fashion show, raised the community impact of this even. Thank you sponsors, thank you Bend! We simply couldn’t have done it without you!

CREATURE OF FASHION – ReStore Business Challenge Designers: Lisa Mcluskie, DeeDee Johnson, Restore Employees Brian & Keegan Model: Lisa Mcluskie Photographer: Joe Kline

Your support for creativity, the magical transformation of innovative materials, passion for our planet, and uplifting more than 700 people to find unique ways to think about waste, made the 2025 Rubbish Renewed the best fundraising and eco-elevating event in Bend!

Your support helped bring student designers from 17 Central Oregon schools 3rd grade to college and adult designers new to fashion and those who have been with us since the beginning. Your support of diversity is what makes the Rubbish Renewed Eco Fashion Show matchless, engaging, and meaningful! And with your support we raised nearly $20,000 for REALMS Schools continuing the vision to foster scholarship, strengthen community, and inspire stewardship through active learning.

We feel so proud of the space and event we collectively created to celebrate and promote sustainability through the magic of trash fashion. It was a beautiful evening filled with hope, love, and community. Together we proved again, that Rubbish Renewed is not just a fashion show and not just a fundraiser, but a creative celebration of re-imagining waste, rethinking our relationship with trash, and inspiring people to live lighter on the planet. It is a testament to the power of people with aligned belief in a mission bigger than ourselves!

With Gratitude, The Rubbish Renewed Team

Business Challenge Sneak Peak – Who will get your Vote?

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For our 13th year and our 12th Business Challenge we have 7 sustainably-minded, local businesses competing for the 2025 Rubbish Renewed’s Coveted Trash Trophy! Each year a group of businesses come together to uplift our collective actions to make a better world, and have some friendly competition with the winner decided by the night’s audiences. Bring your friends and your voting block, to support your pick to win the The Rubbish Renewed Business Challenge this Saturday, May 10th!

Meet Betty. The vintage scrap laminate used to create the 2025 Coveted Trash Trophy! Thank you Rob Walker for another one-of-a-kind keepsake for our Saturday night winner!

Returning as the most consistent Business Challenge competitor and our 2025 Presenting Sponsor, ReStore is competing in its 12th Business Challenge (winner in 2018). Designers DeeDee Johnson and Lisa Mcluskie, are going big this year. This Restore creature sees everything with a different lens. Walk the floor of the store any day of the week and you too can imagine a whole new world.

Both back for their 5th Business Challenge competition Gear Fix and Lonza are stepping up! Gear Fix, the 2024 Coveted Trash Trophy winner, has designer Nico Brilmyer back leading a team of colleagues Kasey Boyd, and Kate Weatherholtz. With this dynamic design group we can expect the cosmic guardian of the wild, the Moss Mess Monster, to fight pollution to the extreme! Lonza is trying something new with material manipulation – crocheted plastic packaging, truly transforming plastic bags! We can’t wait to see what the seasoned Trash Fashion team, Nahi Ortiz, Thyia Scott, and Kari D’Angona, brings to life with this marvelous mermaid inspired piece.

Back to compete again from 2024 are Humm Kombucha and the Bend Anesthesiology Group. Humm Kombucha is in it’s 4th Business Challenge! New to Rubbish Renewed designers, Zhenya Cotita, Kevin Coneys, and Syd Becker, bring a fresh look to the Kombucha trash fashion scene with hairnets creating the softness of this Sugar Humm Fairy. For their 2nd Business Challenge, Bend Anesthesiology Group continues to change the medical waste stream. BAG is highlighting the sustainable work they do by using poly wrap destined for the landfill to create bags for new families in the Family Birthing Center. This garment, fashioned by prolific Rubbish Renewed designer Karen Holm, highlights the simple, clean, beauty our future could hold by lessening our impact on the planet.

Joining Rubbish Renewed for their first Business Challenge are DIYcave and ReCoHere. DIYcave has finally jumped into the Trash Fashion competition. Inspired by their deep appreciation for pollinators, creatives Mak Sales and Quentin Gooding, are manipulating material into something flamboyant. ReCoHere has been keeping us in the dark up until now. Their multi-layered piece will bring out masterful material manipulation while sending a message – These garments have a lot to say about consumerism, power, and how we can all do more even simply by what we choose to dress in each day.

Remember, bring your friends and your voting block, to support your pick to win the The Rubbish Renewed Business Challenge this Saturday, May 10th, at the Pavilion!

More than a Trash Fashion Show

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Rubbish Renewed is more than a Trash Fashion Show, it’s about community connections, sustainable education, design inspiration…. Friday, February 21st was the first free Trash Fashion Design Workshop collaboration with DIYcave. Amazing to bring students and adults together from diverse corners of Central Oregon to share, collaborate, and get inspired! Thank you to our group of talented mentors from ReStore, ReCoHere, and Interconnected Diversity! These sponsors not only support the event, but they also gave their time and expertise to burgeoning designers. We can’t wait for the next workshop on March 7th!

Thank You 2024 Rubbish Renewed Sponsors!

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The Pavilion indoor/outdoor environment was the perfect setting for the 12th Rubbish Renewed Eco Fashion Show! The weather was flawless, the crowd energized, the vibe celebratory, and the runway stunning! Bendites perused the sustainable marketplace, local beverages and food, and most prominently interacted with re-envisioning rubbish both on and off the runway.

Together we celebrated the creativity of students from 14 local schools (our greatest participation ever), Central Oregon adults, and businesses on the runway. Together we created the best fundraising and eco-elevating event in Bend! We couldn’t have done it without our sponsors!

If you’ve been to the Rubbish Renewed Eco Fashion Show, you know it takes a village to produce. So many parts come together to create this spectacular, sustainably-minded event. Cash sponsors support infrastructure (like venue rental) and in-kind sponsors bring items (like beverages) and skills (like hair styling) that we couldn’t create on our own.

THANK YOU to each of our sponsors for supporting the Rubbish Renewed Eco Fashion Show make an impact on creativity and sustainable vision in our forward-thinking community.

Aeternum  Designers: Bend Anesthesiology Group
Model: Holly Graham  Materials: Sterile “blue” polypropylene (#5 plastic) wrap
Photographer: Joe Kline

These sponsors belief in our mission helped bring Central Oregon a creative, inspiring, and sustainable fundraiser once again! Together we raised almost $20,000 for REALMS Schools continuing the vision to foster scholarship, strengthen community, and inspire stewardship through active learning.

Thank you!

Cosa Cura Supporting Community with Sustainable Style

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Since 2006 Cosa Cura has created an atmosphere of sustainable style, creativity, local support, and community service. A perfect companion for the Rubbish Renewed Eco Fashion Show. This unique business has partnered with Rubbish Renewed since our humble beginnings and is back for the second year of Presenting Sponsor!

Cosa Cura showing off Rubbish Renewed Trash Fashion from the past!

I’m not much of a current clothes shopper. Mostly because of *The Dark Side of Fast Fashion, but that’s not Cosa Cura. It’s my go-to spot to support local artists and purchase unique clothing pieces that will last and compliment my style!

Cosa Cura at Brookswood Meadow Plaza

As of this Spring, Cosa Cura now offers 2 locations supporting local artists and fashionistas with a locale to sell their designs alongside stylish reused fashion. This unique shop now bookends Bend, with one location in Northwest Crossing and the newly opened 2nd shop in Brookswood Meadow Plaza in Southwest Bend. The Plaza itself is worth a visit with a neighborhood atmosphere with local shops, services, and restaurants. Check out Cosa Cura’s new airy space and support local sustainably-minded, and community-supportive businesses!

*The Dark Side of Fast Fashion – “It dries up water sources and pollutes rivers and streams, while 85% of all textiles go to dumps each year...”

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The Walk Our Talk Zero Waste Event System

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Thanks to The Environmental Center ReThink Waste and their Community Innovation Grant, Rubbish Renewed is creating the Walk our Talk Zero Waste Event System! It provides a loanable service/sorting/waste reduction system including reusable service-ware, collection tubs, signage, educational materials, and guide to create and promote a successful low-zero waste event!

Last weekend at the Banff Film Festival on Tour at the Tower Theater we were able to try it out on a small scale. They used 3 sizes of cups in the bar and the bus tubs and signage to keep 100’s of disposables out of the landfill!

We will have the full system up and running at The Rubbish Renewed Eco Fashion Show just 11 days away, on Saturday, May 11th. Get your Rubbish Renewed tickets today!

This system will be available to borrow starting Fall through our partnership with Bicycle Rides Northwest. This is a community effort to create access to reusables for more Central Oregonians!

Local, Sustainable, Holiday Shopping

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School’s out for winter break. Weathers mild, and the community is bustling. I typically use these next four days to do most of my holiday shopping. In Bend, we have a bounty of local, sustainable, diverse gift gathering spaces. Check out three great community focused businesses (and Rubbish Renewed supporters) to spend your dollars locally and make sustainable purchasing choices that are lighter on the planet!

COSA CURA: 2735 NW Crossing Dr. #101

For your stylish fashion and home decor needs Cosa Cura is the place! The store currently represents 80+ Independent Artists & Designers and carries fashion from 8000+ local consignors. Cosa Cura creates an atmosphere of sustainable style, creativity, local support and community service.

GEAR FIX: 550 SW Industrial Way #1

For your outdoor enthusiast needs check out The Gear Fix! They consign high quality outdoor gear and repair your damaged favorites. Gear Fix cultivates a sense of community both inside and outside of the shop helping make our area inclusive for all that choose to venture outdoors.

RESTORE: 224 NE Thurston Avenue

For the handy person in your life the ReStore has a wide variety of home improvement materials, tools and furnishings almost exclusively donated by our generous community. Shopping at ReStore helps support the construction of Habitat homes that are built for energy efficiency. These affordable homes ensure families have every opportunity to thrive and grow.

After making these environmentally positive shopping choices, don’t forget to package your gifts sustainably. Reuse wrapping paper, magazines, old posters. Use scraps of fabric, reusable bags, or even make the wrapping part of the gift!

Wrapping paper waste fact: The amount of wrapping paper used for Christmas gifts is enough to wrap the plant nine times. 23 million pounds of wrapping paper ends up in a landfill every year.

Thank You Rubbish Renewed Sponsors!

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Thank you Sponsors. You made it possible to showcase these amazing designs that transform trash, inspire community for a more sustainable earth!

A 2-year pandemic pause, a new season, an untested venue, created uncertainty of success… but these incredible sponsors jumped right in to support the revival of the Rubbish Renewed Eco Fashion Show.

Through their sponsorship and belief in our mission they helped us bring Central Oregon a creative, inspiring, and sustainable fundraiser once again! Together we raised over $20,000 for REALMS Schools continuing the vision to foster scholarship, strengthen community, and inspire stewardship through active learning.

Together we spent an evening immersed in beautiful trash fashion and art, we contemplated our waste, our habits, and dreamed of solutions. Together we created two incredible runways with an audience greater than 700 people. Together we celebrated the creativity of students from 9 local schools, Central Oregon adults, and businesses on the runway.

Thank you!

Birth of Rubbish Renewed – Part 2: the Covert Creation of Show 1

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Click on the image for the 2010 Runway Gallery

In 2010 we blindly stumbled our way into the Bend community. Administrators and colleagues warned us not to take on such a foolish project, but powered by a growth mindset, we covertly gathered together a few creative and talented friends to fill the opening voids of planning and marketing a runway show event. We believed in the mission, and surely the cause, so what was to stop us!

Lucky for us, people and businesses glommed on to the idea! The Century Center provided the perfect venue – huge open space, a modular stage and few rules. Sponsors jumped in: ReStore, the Environmental Center, Camp Nor’wester, RR_Logo_onlyand Sara Bella supported with funds; Boneyard and Plum crafted our bar; and Tambi Lane Photography took marketing portraits and offered to shoot the show. We came up with a name, and friends suggested we create an image and a tag line for people to recognize. We got some media on board with the Source, True North Parenting Magazine, and Abracadabra printed our posters. And we pulled together a unique market place of local like-minded artists to add to the evening event. Then all we had to do was produce a show . . .

As the momentum grew, so did our fear of failure. We scrambled to the last minute and opened with one runway. Link here to the 2010 Gallery showing pieces that made this first event the catalyst to what we are today. Enjoy our humble beginnings.

Here are a few images from our photo shoot at Tambi’s several weeks before the show.

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Click here for Birth of Rubbish Renewed Eco Fashion Show – Part 1