Unwanted clothing, including footwear and fashion accessories, currently ranks among the top five items sent to local landfills, but the City has a plan that’ll help keep closet cast-offs out of the waste stream.
Every year, enough textiles end up in landfills to fill 1,500 MUNI buses.
By Bill Picture
Published: May, 2014
Unwanted clothing, including footwear and fashion accessories, currently ranks among the top five items sent to local landfills, but the City has a plan that’ll help keep closet cast-offs out of the waste stream.
To help reach its goal of zero waste by 2020, San Francisco has partnered with Switzerland-based I:CO (which is short for "I Collect") to create the Zero Waste Textiles Initiative and offer incentives for donating retired garments instead of tossing them. As part of the plan, shoppers will receive discounts at participating retailers for donating bags of used textiles in any condition.
The idea of new life for old clothing is hardly a new one. The Salvation Army and Goodwill Industries have been accepting donations of unwanted clothes for the last century-plus, reselling the items to the public to fund their respective portfolios of programs and services—from addiction counseling and disaster relief to job training and placement for persons with disabilities. And of course the City’s hipper neighborhoods are dotted with second-hand clothing stores, the swankier ones calling themselves vintage boutiques. So why are 39 million pounds of unwanted wearables still ending up in local landfills each year?
It’s a generational thing
"Not everybody grows up donating to Goodwill," said Residential Zero Waste & Special Projects Assistant Alexa Kielty, who works at the San Francisco Department of the Environment. "It’s certain demographics that grew up doing that."
Kielty encourages San Franciscans to continue making donations to charitable organizations such as Goodwill and the Salvation Army, but acknowledges that more and more people, particularly young people, are opting to sell their unwanted garb to resale boutiques, which pay cash for garments they believe they can mark up and resell. While many unwanted items find new homes this way (at least temporarily), the rejects often end up in the nearest trash bin.
"A lot of it is convenience, or the lack of. And maybe some laziness," said Kielty. "It’s easier to chuck it than it is to take it to Goodwill or the nearest collection box." That’s where I:CO comes in, making donating more attractive by appealing to the avid shopper’s desire for something new and cheap.
The company began in Europe, partnering with mega-retailer H&M to install collection boxes near cash registers and offer shoppers a sizeable discount on new merchandise in exchange for donating a bag of unwanted garments. I:CO brought its model to San Francisco earlier this year, adding to its list of partners American Eagle Outfitters, Levi’s, the North Face, Niketown, and Forever 21, among others. With the addition of collection boxes at participating retail outlets, the number of drop-off locations in San Francisco has increased to 100, with those locations scattered throughout the City.
"It made sense to start here in San Francisco," said Kielty. "We’re already working steadily toward achieving zero waste, and the City tends to be a trendsetter. If they can get through the corporate hierarchy here and make it work, they can make the program work in Iowa," she joked.
There’s no arguing that the program has benefits for both the retailers and I:CO. The program brings new shoppers to participating stores and ups each retailer’s green profile, while I:CO ends up with tons of clothing that it can sell, mostly overseas. And unlike the resale boutiques, I:CO will accept even damaged or worn-out items—as well as items falling under the "fashion crime" category—to repurpose the materials.
"The items that can’t be sold are shredded and used in ‘shoddy cloth,’ which is used for carpet padding, insulation, sound-proofing material and all sorts of other things," Kielty said.
"Everyone in San Francisco plays a role in making this initiative a success," said San Francisco Mayor Ed Lee in a written statement. "Yet again, San Francisco retailers, large and small, are teaming up with our nonprofit partners and schools to get us even closer to zero waste. Not only does this initiative prevent textiles from ending up in the landfill, but it conserves resources and creates jobs, representing the best of the green economy."
Making it easy to be green
Every year, enough textiles end up in landfills to fill 1,500 MUNI buses. By appealing to the American consumer’s urge to shop and save, Kielty believes the Zero Waste Textiles Initiative will make a good-size dent in the amount of waste still heading to landfills.
She believes that dent could be made even larger by capturing textiles discarded at large multi-unit apartment and condominium complexes. To that end, the City awarded a grant to Goodwill Industries to work with the San Francisco Apartment Association on a collection program that includes installing easy-access textile collection boxes in large residential buildings. Similar boxes have already been installed near the dorms at San Francisco State University.
"Again, we want to make it as convenient as possible for people to recycle unwanted clothing instead of throwing it away," Kielty said.
While landfill-bound textiles were a big enough concern to warrant the new initiative, Kielty says other kinds of waste continue to appear in landfills in large enough quantities that they’ve caught the attention of City Hall because they stand in the way of San Francisco’s zero waste goal.
San Francisco currently boasts an impressive 80 percent diversion rate, meaning only 20 percent of the City’s waste goes to landfill. "Asphalt roof tiles are a bad one," Kielty says. "It’s a common construction material and there hasn’t been a good way to deal with it. I hear there are now companies that crush the tiles down and use the material in new asphalt. That’s definitely on our radar."
"And plastic film too," she adds. "We got rid of plastic bags, but we still have the film to deal with. It gets used on so many things, like bread bags. We see a huge volume in the landfills, and we’re trying to figure out how to capture that."
For more information on the Zero Waste Textile Initiative, visit www.sfenvironment.org/textiles.
All photos courtesy of I:Collect (I:CO)
39 million pounds of unwanted wearables still ending up in local landfills each year.
Old items that are collected but can’t be sold are shredded and used in ‘shoddy cloth,’ which is used for carpet padding, insulation, sound-proofing material (like the example on top right corner) and all sorts of other things.
