A Second Life for Old Clothing

A Second Life for Old Clothing

Recycling clothing after you’ve gotten your use out of it is very important to a sustainable lifestyle. Believe it or not, 84% of unwanted clothing in 2012 ended up in a landfill or incinerator according to the EPA. That is 14 million tons of clothing, which either releases methane gas as it decomposes (if it is a natural fiber) thus contributing to the greenhouse effect and climate change, or fails to decompose and instead sheds toxic plastic fibers for hundreds or thousands of years (if it is a synthetic fiber). The EPA estimates that diverting this waste into recycling programs would be the equivalent of taking 7.3 million cars, along with their carbon dioxide emissions, off the roads.

However, not all clothing “recycling” programs are created equal. While many people believe that donating all of their clothing waste to local thrift stores is a highly sustainable option, only about 20% of donated items end up on the shelves of stores like Goodwill and the Salvation Army. The rest is either sold to a for-profit textile recycling company–which expends a lot of energy to revert these clothing items back to usable fibers for new clothing items–or, worse, sent to a third world country. It may seem kind and generous to send old, but still usable clothing to developing countries; however, once these clothing items make it to a given country, they are sold in marketplaces, and due to the high demand for Western fashion, these items replace locally and artisanally produced textiles and clothing. This ultimately cripples the local clothing production industry, which is important to the health of these developing economies.

While it may seem easiest to toss all of your unwanted clothing in a garbage bag and haul it over to the local thrift store, not being careful about what you donate could have a detrimental effect on the local economy in a developing country that you may not have ever even heard of. This may seem disheartening, but there are so many alternatives to simply donating all of your unwanted stuff to the thrift store.

One such alternative is an organization called Blue Jeans Go Green, which processes your old jeans and denim items into new, effective insulation pads for housing. Much of this insulation is donated to Habitat for Humanity within the United States. It is fairly simple to donate your denim items to this cause, either by mailing them to the processing facility, or bringing them to your local Madewell store and receiving a 20% off coupon for your next denim purchase.

Another great textile reuse organization called Coats for Cubs accepts old fur coats that may have otherwise ended up in a landfill, and uses them in wildlife rehabilitation to mimic a mother’s warm fur for orphaned wildlife.

Additionally, consumers can carefully sort through their unwanted items, and bring the best of their goods to second-hand stores like Buffalo Exchange, Plato’s Closet, and Crossroads Trading Co. These stores accept only the items that they believe will sell, and give you back the remaining items to reuse or recycle as you choose, rather than simply sending them to a third-world country without your knowledge or consent. Additionally, these stores pay you in cash or store credit, creating somewhat of a closed loop system in which consumers buy used goods at these stores with the money they got from their used goods, then use these goods, and ultimately re-sell them so that someone else can use them. If your unique vintage items are unable to sell at any of these stores, consider donating them to your local high school’s theatre department to be used as costumes.

For seamstresses and crafters, there are many ways to donate unwanted fabric scraps to be used in a new and beneficial way. Donating fabric to different quilting organizations that make blankets for a number of disadvantaged populations. One such group is Project Linus, which makes quilts for critically ill children.

It is only slightly more difficult to utilize these different means of clothing recycling and reuse, and if more people made use of these practices, the impact on the health of our planet would be profound.

Recycling and reuse are important means of reducing our landfill waste, but there is a third, often-neglected “R” in the three R’s system: reducing. Many consumers are caught up in the quickly evolving trend cycle of fast fashion, and end up buying much more than they actually need and/or wearing items just once or twice before discarding them. Many niche or out of season “trend” items will fail to sell at second-hand stores like Buffalo Exchange, or even thrift stores. The simplest way to combat this problem is to buy less. Each time you buy an article of clothing, ask yourself, will I wear this at least 30 times (or some other number to your liking), and you will not only be left with less junk, but you will be working towards a brighter future for our planet.

References:

http://www.newsweek.com/2016/09/09/old-clothes-fashion-waste-crisis-494824.html

https://fashionista.com/2016/01/clothing-donation

http://bluejeansgogreen.org/

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