Textile Recycling Facts

Textile Recycling Facts That Will Get You Involved Today!

It's no secret that recycling is important for the environment. Millions of people dutifully separate their plastics, aluminum, and paper waste so that those items can be reused and help decrease the amount of garbage in landfills. But many people aren't aware that the denim, cotton, corduroy, wool, and linen that they outgrow and toss into the trash should also be reused. Here are a few textile recycling facts to help you get started reducing your carbon footprint.

According to the Environmental Protection Agency some 12.4 million tons of textiles were generated in 2008. That figure represents five percent of the total municipal solid waste generated. Working to staunch the flow of waste is the textile recycling industry, which actively prevents two and a half billion tons of post-consumer waste from clogging depots.

Years after that jacket you had to have has gone out of style, you may decide it's time to get rid of it. Don't throw it in the trash! You have a few options. You could donate your used clothing to a charity or nonprofit organization, which benefits both the environment and the global community. More than sixty percent of second-hand clothes are exported to foreign countries to help those in need.

It is important when donating clothes to be sure that they are clean and moisture free. Clothes that are wet, stained, or mildewed cannot be reused, so be sure to box them properly.

If you choose not to donate your clothes to charity, you can take them to a textile recovery facility. There the garments are separated to fill a variety of post-consumer needs.

Cotton is generally turned into rags for wiping and polishing, or used as an element of high-grade paper. Car insulation and stuffing can be made from knits and woolen materials. And other materials find their use in a variety of other ways, such as building materials, reprocessed upholstery fibers, and home insulation.

Any embellishments such as buttons and zipper pulls are stripped and salvaged. A lot of vintage style designers find some of their funky clothing ornamentation in this way. And whatever natural materials that can still be garnered form recovered clothing is often used as a base for composting. By the end of the process very little remains.

The industry is also good for creating jobs in a pretty lucrative sector that is also making great strides in diminishing the amount of waste in city dumps. In the United States alone there are more than five hundred recycling companies that cater to the textile market. Most of these are small, family-owned and operated business that employ somewhere between thirty-five and fifty employees. Overall that translates into nearly ten thousand jobs at the first processing stage and an additional seven thousand at the final processing level. Combined that equals around seven hundred million dollars in annual gross sales.

Looking at these textile recycling facts as a whole, the recovery of used clothing is not only good for the environment, it is an action that has an impact on a financial and charitable level in your local community and around the world. The item recovered today can be the paper good utilized tomorrow, and it is one less item filling up overflowing landfills, but and what impact does it have on the environment.

why should we recycle textiles