California with its state mandated recycling goals have been in the forefront of the 3R (Reduce-Reuse-Recycle) movement for some time now, with SF Bay Area cities being top achievers in waste diversion most of the time. Paper, plastic, metal, bottles, cans, yard waste and now increasingly most other organics as well are being recycled or composted through curbside pick-up programs. With these largest components of the waste stream covered, municipalities are trying to tackle other materials that the existing programs are not able to handle. Textiles are one of these materials, currently comprising between 3-4% of the landfilled volume in the US, or 10 000 000 tons annually.
Clothing buried in a landfill is a bad thing, we all agree on that. Let’s look at the number one challenge we encounter as we plan to seriously reduce the volume of textiles in the waste stream: textiles need to be in a clean and dry condition in order to be reusable or recyclable. That, as you can imagine is pretty hard to achieve inside an average recycling or garbage cartL. The big machines moving and sorting the recyclables from your blue cart at the local Materials Recovery Facility are not gentle enough for the clothing to be of a much use when it comes out at the end of a sorting line either, not even considering that really tough pieces like jeans often like to wrap themselves around different moving parts and tend to stop the whole sorting line…
The one viable solution so far is to divert textiles from the waste and recyclables streams at the source (or more precisely, by the source – you). There have been for a long time now several different outlets for people to donate unwanted clothing to: thrift stores, churches, donation stations and similar establishments. All of these require you to take a trip somewhere where you would not be going otherwise (except the church, maybe), they have limited opening hours (exactly matching your time of work) and the popular ones tend to be swamped with donations. Most of these places are very much worthy of your support and provide important services to the community with money raised through the sale of donated clothing, however they are not the solution for the larger issue of many millions of tons of textiles generated in the USA every year. Let me repeat: Please support your local charity with clothing donations, they fill an indispensable role in the society and help a lot of people through providing various social services. But do not mistake asking people to drive fairly far and stand in line to donate their unwanted clothing to be the sole environment-friendly answer to the problem of textiles in the waste stream! We need more diversion programs because only about 15% of textiles currently generated in the US are being recycled and this number has not moved in the last 15 years!
What are the other options? Placing the clothing out for curbside pickup is simple and convenient, IF the organization that asked you to do so will actually come by and do the pick-up, AND it’s not raining, AND the scavengers don’t get to the bags first…
Another option is a clothing donation box at your local … grocery store, gas station, supermarket, hair saloon, bank… you name it. Places where people normally go anyway, places where people can go any time, 24/7. Convenience and availability are two key factors in a successful recycling program and Campus California's unattended collection boxes fulfill both of these requirements. There has to be enough boxes in an area so they are easy to find and not far away from where people live or work. A very important factor on the availability side is that the boxes once placed remain on the same location for a long time, often for years. If you don’t have time or forget your bag of clothes at home today, you can bring it tomorrow, or next week.
One of many benefits of having a program capable of diverting large volumes of textiles or other materials from the waste stream is that your garbage collection company will have to pay less money for the disposal of materials they cannot recycle. That in turn translates into lower garbage disposal rates for the average consumer (or at least into not increasing the existing rates).
A little background info: when your local waste management company picks up your garbage, it has a long way to go before it’s laid to rest, so to speak. And there are a number of expenses the operator incurs along the way that will eventually make it into your monthly garbage bill. As strange as that may sound, I don’t believe garbage companies actually like to collect large piles of refuse. Why is that? Because garbage is nothing but expense for them! It costs to collect and truck it to the transfer station and all they can do with it is to ship it to the landfill. And they have to pay the landfill operator to bury it as well! You would think all is well because that is what you are paying them for, to collect your garbage and to get rid of it. Except that your garbage rate alone would not cover the cost of disposal. In fact part of the disposal costs for your refuse is usually covered by the proceeds from the sale of bottles, cans, plastics and other materials in your recycling cart. So the more recyclables and less “garbage”, or “refuse” there is, the better it is for the garbage company, and more importantly for you, the ratepayer as well. (Unfortunately this is not so good for the landfill operator…)
3 comments:
Absolutely, discarded clothes are bad for the environment. The average American consumes an average of 70lbs of clothes; household and shoes a year, of those and average of 60lbs per inhabitant are discarded.
The long-term effects are countless, the decomposition of clothes produce a major contributor to global warming – Methane, contamination of groundwater sources, contamination of drinking water by pesticides used on cotton production… and the list goes on.
An efficient textile collection system is very much needed. Several companies operate successful collections, across the US, using unmanned drop-off boxes, which are accessible to the public 24/7. Much more is needed. Today only 15% of the textiles are diverted from the waste stream, so this is just the beginning.
In the bay area and in the metropolitan area of Phoenix, Campus California offers accessible and nearby locations where people can drop off their unwanted clothes and shoes. Those locations are available 24/7 and can be the near by liquor store, market, gas station, etc.
It is very important we get the textiles/clothing out of the waste stream and out of the blue recycling cart. Textiles are nearly 100 % reusable or recyclable and have no place at the landfill and as the author of this blog demonstrate if they get mixed into the ordinary recycle mix, they will either get dirty, thorn or destroyed in another way. And there is a great need of cheap affordable clothing in the world both in the USA and abroad. Up to 80 % of the discarded clothing can actually be reused as clothing and most of the remaining 20 % can be recycled either as wipes or threads. But again to be able to reuse or recycle the textiles/clothing, they need to be collected separately and again it needs to be a very convenient system to be able to raise the still very low percentage of textiles collected. Here the clothes drop off boxes comes in as a very convenient system. Campus California has drop off boxes for clothes and shoes all over the Bay Area and in the Metro Phoenix area located at your local grocery store, school, auto repair shop etc. Please feel free to drop off your clothes in one of these boxes!
Reuse of material is much better for people and the environment than recycling - recycling involves energy use, pollution, and the quality of the recycled product is generally lower than the original. Campus California, by giving the chance to many people to donate their clothes for reuse, provide an important service to the community, benefit the environment, and support vital international development work.
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