Recycling and Re-possession (of clothing)
TLDR: to recycle clothing checkout: Take back bag programs or search google for “my_local _area textile recycling”
Some companies are trying to recycle textiles, and there seem to be many options (many of which seem half baked), but overall our systems and infrastructure have a long way to go before this is easy or ubiquitous.
If you’ve seen other post you probably know the recurring themes in most of my articles are going to involve repair, reuse and sustainability.
In my opinion if you make more than a million or so bucks a year profit from your business you should be responsible for having easy methods of dealing with products end life, or at the very least have documentation of reasonable steps you could take for it’s retirement; You can read more about these ideals in my other article __placeholder___.
I begin my discussion with problem statement then I’ll give some examples of companies who are trying to make a change and then provide specific examples of steps you can take to become part of the solution instead of the problem.
Let’s start by talking about scale/magnitude of the problem here.
North Americans send 10 million tonnes of clothing to the landfill every year.
There is a elegant (tho long winded) discussion by Julia Eleanor Corwin on the topic of waste and recycling “the informal economy” taking place with electronics renovation in Delhi in this article. One of my favorite lines from it was:
Gille (2007) argues that “materials are not ‘born’ to be waste: they are transformed into waste by identifiable material and social processes” (18); following Thompson, the corollary is that waste can also be transformed into non-waste again, either as commodities with value or just the stuff of the dealer and collector, an in-between phase of potential.
One of my personal mottos has always been “one mans junk is another man’s treasure” ;) Gille might be waxing loquacious but we certainly need to draw the attention to the topic by having discussion to how we shape our world and reshape these “social processes”.
We’ll start by reshaping our actions, and sharing about them so that the world will benefit from the advancing consciousness on recycling/reprocessing.
Story of a regular person: My wife was asking me to clean up and get rid of some of our old shoes and clothes… Even jeans can eventually become threadbare or develop holes in the butts and thighs, and I wouldn’t want to be donating such clothes to anyone but the idea of throwing these things into the land fills horrified me as I recognize all of the useful and usable materials in the shoes which would be taking hundreds of years to deteriorate ore more likely eventually end up in micro-particles in the environment…. Gahh…. hebie jebies. So what can we do?
It’s important to know where to recycle specific types of goods. Everyone havs a recycling bin for plastics and metals, but at present no general way to recycle used clothes (excepting upcycling dotation centers such as GoodWill) the problem is overly complicated but it could be simplified if we could just take the clothes right back where we bought them and they just dealt with it. Maybe they don’t need their own collection centers, but they should at least refer you to something reasonable. Lot of specific recycling is impractical for normal people because there are specialized locations that are few and far between. Thankfully we live in the 21st century where awareness of global issues are spreading and there is a company which is doing exactly that!
fordays gives you the ability to return old clothes when you get new ones. https://fordays.com/products/take-back-bag
This is great if you don’t have a large backlog. But what if you have
I:Co ( I collect) is a company which seems to have the right idea. They partner with Shops like Levis…. … . . .. . . in order to reuse and recycle many of the raw materials in our clothing instead of putting them into land fills. Check out the many options for sustainable recycling near you! They partner with Adidas, H&M Levis and many more: https://www.ico-spirit.com/en/referenzen/partner/
Credit where it’s due I stumbled upon this company from this article which shares many locations you can take used clothes for a discount, but personally I’m more concerned with what happens to the products which I bring in (that they are recycled instead of trashed and giving me a discount); The article adds to the discussion valid points on on lightly used items which can be directly reused and re-worn. But my favorite point of theirs was Point 12: the Give Back Box which is same idea as take-back-bag with a different set of retailers.
The program I discovered last year, Give Back Box, continues. Here’s how it works:
The Retailers: Amazon, Overstock, LOFT, Ann Taylor, Nordstrom
browse to the article: https://themomedit.com/retail-brands-who-donate-reuse-recycle-clothes/ to read more
I’ll be pursuing this path for myself, and trying to save But there is a certain amount of following up which is required, to understand exactly how much of the material is appropriately recycled, what the savings are in terms of raw materials, such as water and mined materials as well as the carbon footprint associated with the differences so this requires a bit of an essay and some research. Which may be added to this post.
In my experience I was unable to get my clothes back into the system thru these sources. More work needed for this to be a reality, However there may be more options for you depending on your local.
For my local area there are other programs and drop boxes to deposit such things: https://textilerecyclingquotes.com/sacramento-textile-recycling/
But even these are not fully come to the point of satisfaction yet even on their page they say “Clothing collection bins are usually placed around the city in public places. However, unless you know where they are, they can be hard to find,” but then they give no tips on how to locate the collection bins!
The website: http://clothingtakeback.com/ does have a “search for dropoff location“ But the feature was broken when I tried to use it.
other good articles on the topic:
https://www.cnn.com/cnn-underscored/home/clothes-recycling-guide
https://www.closettcandyy.ca/post/how-to-recycle-clothes-that-can-t-be-repaired-donated-or-resold
You can even recycle your own hair depending on where you live!
I was having some shower thoughts about using hair to create clothing. Not only is it possible, it's sustainable. With every problem there is a solution waiting for someone to make money, this is a nice example of how capitalism can be useful and close waste loop cycles. This article answered all of my questions:
https://www.euronews.com/green/2021/12/06/this-designer-is-making-clothes-out-of-human-hair