When Katie Lopes set out to create a women’s underwear brand, she wanted her products to be comfortable and hip—and eventually disappear into a pile of coffee grounds, eggshells, and potato peels in her garden.

“I was beginning to become more aware of the damage the fashion industry was doing to the planet, so it would have been irresponsible not to take this information into account,” said Lopes, who founded Stripe & Stare, an intimate apparel brand, in 2017. Lopes said she chose to focus on underwear because so few people feel comfortable buying it secondhand. “Producing it right and avoiding the landfill was very important,” she said.

The fashion industry accounts for up to 8% of global carbon dioxide emissions, according to the United Nations Environment Programme. Most of those clothes—about 84%—end up in landfills or incinerators. It doesn’t have to be that way, said Natalie Patricia, the founder of Harvest & Mill, whose clothes are made entirely from U.S.-sourced organic cotton. “Organic cotton is a plant grown on a farm just like our food is. And so it can and should be composted and returned to the soil,” Patricia said.