When Jack Miller joined the rave community in 2017 he was struck by two things: the profound sense of community in the rave scene, and the pressing need for more sustainable clothing options for ravers. Enter Raveival; a rave ready resale platform founded by Miller where ravers can buy and sell secondhand festival outfits to protect the planet.
Now, nearly two years into Raveival's launch, we caught up with Miller to discuss his inspiration for launching the company and how ravers can integrate sustainability into their everyday lives.
iHeartRaves: What inspired you to start Raveival?
Jack Miller: I'm a raver myself, and had my own struggles of trying to thrift my own festival clothes. [I realized] that I was checking multiple secondhand marketplaces and Facebook groups, and then I learned about how many outfits people were purchasing every year, brand new. A lot of them were only worn once. It made me really motivated and passionate about finding a solution to make it easier to buy and sell for people so we can have a better impact on our environment.
iHR: I love that. Why do you think it's so important to think about sustainability when it comes to this kind of fashion?
JM: The fashion industry is one of the most polluting industries in the world. The way we're manufacturing and disposing our items is accelerating climate change, destroying our world soil and leading to millions of tons of textile waste being dumped into landfills or burned in the atmosphere. Clothing is super resource intensive. Like, for example, one cotton t-shirt requires over 700 gallons of water to create, and that's super crazy when we consider how many people in the world still don't have access to clean drinking water.
I love fashion, and I don't think it's bad for people who want to change their style and wear something different and fun to each event, but I think it's important to remind ourselves of how much needs to go into creating our clothing before we throw them away.
iHR: Yeah, definitely. And I think in festival fashion specifically, you often tell yourself "oh, this is an exciting event. I need a new outfit." So I really like that Raveival reframes people's mindsets about reusing their own things or shopping secondhand. What would you say are the most effective changes that you suggest to people who are concerned about their environmental impact with fashion?
JM: Yeah, so the most effective changes would be reusing, reselling and recycling your clothing. And this is a hierarchy of importance. So first, you would want to focus on reusing the items that are already in existence, whether that be mixing or matching what you already have in your closet to create a new look, or borrowing stuff from friends.
After that, you would want to resell and help give that fashion a new life on the dance floor. Then you can recycle your clothing at the end. Off the top of my mind, I can think of two companies that actually reward you for recycling your textiles. The companies are Trashie and Suay. These companies are finding ways to reuse what you send them or recycle them into new fibers.
Some things that you should not do that a lot of people do, is actually donating to thrift stores. Only about 10 to 15% of clothing donations that are sent to common thrift stores are actually sold here in the US, and the rest are actually shipped overseas where they might get resold. But a lot of times they're actually sent to the landfill or burned if people aren't interested in reselling.
Raveival can accept clothing donations to help support our clothing swaps and second hand marketplaces, and then we always reimburse the shipping costs as people are shipping their clothing donations to us.
iHR: Oh, that's amazing. On the topic of donating, I was cracking up with all of the TikTok's and social media posts I saw of people donating rave clothes to the fire victims in LA.
JM: I know, hopefully it went to the right people.
iHR: If there was one thing you want people to learn specific to these problems, what would it be?
JM: I wouldn't suggest focusing on the problems, but more so the solutions. In our current communities, sustainability efforts will have the biggest impact on protecting our environment. A lot of times, it can feel like you are alone and like you are just one person who will have no meaningful impact one way or the other on the environment. But I always tell people, you're not alone. There are billions of people on this planet who are interested in protecting our environment and making sure we all have a green and healthy place to live.
Engaging your communities can look like starting conversations about the importance of sustainability, throwing clothing swaps with your friends, cooking vegan meals together, watching documentaries about the ocean, planning, evening walks around your neighborhood and picking up litter as you go, we can accomplish so much together. So I always tell people to not overlook the positive influence that you can have on your current communities.
iHR: That's amazing. When it comes to any type of sustainability it's so easy to think to yourself that you're doing the best you can or that you're working with what is available to you. But to touch on what you said, and I don't know if you would agree with this, I personally think that we still have an obligation to limit our consumption as much as we can. Just because fast fashion is what's available to us, for example, doesn't necessarily mean we need to do a whole new haul every season.
JM: Fast fashion is super available, but also secondhand fashion is becoming more and more accessible. Currently, there is already enough clothing on this planet to clothe the next six generations of people. So we already have more than we need, and there are awesome resources available. There's this company called Beni you can use when online shopping that will show you where you can find an item secondhand. So there's one more example of technology that's being developed to push the fashion industry into a sustainable direction.
iHR: That's so cool. Are you using any specific technology with Raveival?
JM: Yeah. We use this company called Treet, to help build branded resale experiences. They help clothing retailers do branded resales to help find circular solutions to their clothing sales.
iHR: What inspired you to focus on festival fashion specifically?
JM: I'm a raver myself. I first started going to these events in 2017 and I fell in love with the excitement of the nasty beats, meeting new people and expressing myself through really cool fashion. When I first started going, it was really hard for me to thrift festival clothes. I had to look at multiple second hand websites and Facebook groups to try to find something that excited me.
Then several years later, I learned that each festival season, approximately 27 million brand new festival outfits are purchased, and 1/3 of them are worn only one time. So it wasn't just my own personal struggles with finding something to wear that fit my budget, but it was also the huge environmental impact that our community was having through our fashion consumption. I thought we needed a central place for buying and selling festival wear to overcome this waste problem. So I began building Raveival.
iHR: That's amazing. Again, this idea that you need to get a new outfit for every single day of every new event that you attend becomes really expensive. So it's amazing to find ways to do it more affordably with secondhand stuff, or to reuse your your outfits.
JM: Um, yeah, events are getting more expensive with time. We're seeing ticket prices go up and inflation is causing everything to become more expensive. So I think we're gonna see a huge, huge shift towards secondhand.
iHR: I know. What are some examples of other things beyond fashion that you think ravers can do more sustainably?
JM: I think a big one would be leaving no trace. So at the end of the festival, you can grab your friends and pick up trash on your way out. There's this phenomenon called the butterfly effect, which is when small changes in a system's initial conditions can actually lead to huge differences in the outcome. So if you get five friends to pick up some trash, then a couple strangers may join you, and then those strangers may take the leave no trash or leave no trace concept to the next festival. And then over time, this can become more and more common as more people at more festivals are joining in on the cleanup efforts.
Another thing that I think people can do is [be more mindful about trinkets] Personally, I think trinkets have become over-commodified. If you had a really special connection with someone at a festival and they gave you a charm or even a rock from the ground, well that seems to me, deserving of showing your appreciation for someone with a small gift. But to me, getting a plastic duck from someone who is just passing by in the crowd and I'll never see again does not seem like a responsible use of our resources.
I actually stopped personally accepting these like trinkets that people were trying to give to me just because it's a way for me to cut down on my own plastic consumption. I just respectfully tell people that I'm trying to, you know, decrease my plastic consumption, and not accepting these trinkets is a way for me to do that, and it's cool, because everyone is always super excited and appreciative to hear about someone who's being the change that people want to see.
[Instead], if I'm really vibing with someone I show my appreciate appreciation by teaching them a Vogue move. It's a lot more meaningful and special to me to be able to teach someone a dance move that they that they can then take to someone else and teach someone. I think it helps us return more to why we're there in the first place—which is the music, the connection, and the dancing. Not the plastic gifts that we're walking away with in our pockets or sometimes left on the ground, forgotten about. I think it builds community outside of [commodity].
iHR: I definitely agree. American culture around consuming is so deeply ingrained that physical items are often a representation of caring. But I think gifting can mean anything. I go to Burning Man and over the years I have really wrestled with the principle of gifting. It doesn't have to be little trinkets. Gifting can mean your time. It can just mean you being there—that's a gift as well. So I think reframing this idea of how we build community outside of commodity is so important, and I love hearing that.
JM: Something that I want to start promoting is gifting painted rocks. I think it's cool if someone put their time and energy and creativity into this little project and then gave it to you, and then you know that they're not giving away 50 of these rocks, because no one is gonna paint 50 rocks. But if I get that one special stone from someone, then that's something that I would actually keep and cherish as a cool memory with that person. [I want to see] more thoughtful gifts that are less about quantity and more about showing appreciation.
iHR: I actually did get a painted rock from somebody once, and I do still have it. On that note, I get several little trinkets from people every time I go to a festival, and I try not to throw them away, so they just sit in a box somewhere.
JM: Yeah. Thankfully, I've been able to get rid of all of the ones that I collected. For a while I was throwing them in Raveival shipments, but I'm trinket-free now. I'm also
just someone who hates clutter. I feel like my head just feels clearer if I have less stuff.
iHR: Yeah, totally. I noticed your tagline is hashtag, join the movement. What do you mean by that?
JM: Yeah, so PLUR is our values. And if that's really true, then joining our forces as the raving community with the larger sustainability movement would be the natural and right thing to do. So when we say, Join the movement, it's actually about bringing our community back to our core values and demonstrating a responsibility towards our environment.
iHR: I love that. Outside of Ravival, what does the rave community mean to you?
JM: The rave community is the people who share this really deep and special interest in the music. I feel the most free when I'm on the dance floor shaking it to some really fun beats. So the rave community has always been a safe space for me to express myself through my ecstatic dancing and my cool gender-bending styles. It's always been a safe space where I'm free to express myself and be Jack Miller and only feel love and acceptance for it.
iHR: Oh, I love that. It's so sweet and special. What have been some of your favorite raves and festivals to go to throughout the years?
JM: By far my favorite has been Tomorrowland. I went in 2022 with two friends, and it was super cool. It was my first time over in Europe, and the sound production was just amazing. I've been to Coachella a few times—I love Coachella. EDC is one of my favorites.
For smaller festivals, I really enjoy Northern Nights up in Northern California. That's that's been one of my favorite festivals I've gone to and is actually the first festival I threw a festival clothing swap at. It will always hold a special place in my heart, and I'm really excited to go back this year and keep building up that community in that space.
iHR: Oh, that's amazing. Tell us about your personal festival style. How do you go about styling an outfit for a show?
JM: I am really into upcycling my outfits. So I will try to find materials that I have available and then somehow rework them into an outfit. For example, last EDC, I took everything from the box and made it into an outfit—the playing cards I taped together and then made into a skirt. I took all the stickers and made that into a shirt. The little 3D art that opens up when you open the box—I made that into a crown, and then the box itself I made into a clutch purse.
I've done it with beads. I found a big bag of beads on the sidewalk and I sewed them into a secondhand bodysuit that I had. I've done it with disposable vapes, where I made them into a Vape crown, and then I used different wires or electronic pieces to make an outfit to become Miss E-Waste. I really enjoy finding different materials and being able to use my creativity to bring something new into the world that helps me express myself, my passion for the environment, and raise awareness about the waste that we're generating through a creative way that people are excited to look at. It's a way for me to create art.
iHR: That's so cool. It's so funny and I love the message too. It's not just for nothing.
JM: My mom was someone who refused to ever buy as a Halloween costume, she's like, "that takes all the fun and the creativity out of it, like you need to make your costumes." So my whole life, I've been finding things around the house or figuring out how to source different materials to build my own looks and so that's something that I've always carried with me—piecing together different materials or items that I already had, or borrowing stuff from friends to create something new without having to buy anything.
iHR: I love that and that's such a fun way to look at it too. That makes it special. I know you're anti gifting, but I usually ask this question to every person I interview, because it's just a fun question. If you made a piece of kandi right now, what would yours say?
JM: I would have it say "you are not alone," because I know a lot of times the world can feel like a dark and a lonely place, and that you're only one person and it may feel like your impact is small. I think it's really important to look deep within yourselves and remind yourself that you are loved by your community—especially in the rave community which is a place where everyone should feel loved and appreciated—it's a place for everyone.
iHR: I love that, and it's funny you say that because I I know you're not the only person that's answered with that answer, so it just proves the point.
