Last week, I was speaking with a friend who told me they were doing some “spring cleaning” and took nearly 900 pounds of old clothing to the dump. 900 pounds! Think about that. That’s equal to 2 dumpsters (which are made to hold about 450 pounds each), or a grand piano. Don’t get me wrong, I’ve been a mother with kids. I know about hand-me-downs, outgrown clothing, stains, and tears beyond repair. Some items just can’t be donated or repurposed. You can only use so many tee-shirt rags for cleaning around the house.
However, there is a bigger issue here. Consider “Fast Fashion”. Today, fast fashion brands produce twice as many clothes as they did in 2000 and have become one of the planet’s largest polluters. The U.S. alone generated 17 million tons of textile waste in 2018, with only 15% being recycled. That means approximately 11.3 million tons of textile waste end up in U.S. landfills yearly.
With clients on wardrobe issues, I encouraged investing in natural fibers like wool, linen, cotton, and silk. People used to rely entirely on natural fibers for clothing and other textiles. In recent decades, synthetic fibers have become much more common, due in large part to cheap manufacturing costs. On the other end, natural fiber clothing comes with direct benefits to us, the wearer as they tend to be less toxic and irritating on our skin than synthetic fibers. Plus they are more beneficial to the environment for their production and pollution. In our culture today, many clothing items are worn merely seven to ten times before being discarded. In the United States alone, shoppers returned $816 billion in goods last year, much of which ended up in the landfill. In 2018 according to the EPA, it was estimated that 17 million tons of textile municipal solid waste. Unfortunately, only about 12% of the materials used for clothing are recycled.
One large reason clothing is tough to recycle is mainly due to the use of a blend of materials. Take for example that Tee-Shirt that ends up as cleaning rags. Most likely it is made with a cotton elastane blend. It is hard to recycle because it takes a lot of work, skill, and manual labor. These two materials are hard to separate.
So if this is an issue you care about look first at the fiber content label and look for natural fibers. If you want to learn more check back for Part 2. Want to know more about it, check back soon. Finally, some retailers will take clothing for recycling. Drop me a line if you would like the list.
