by Marissa Hermanson

As you pull your winter clothes out of summer hibernation and prepare for oncoming Boulder blizzards you might realize that the sleeves on your black trench are shorter than you remembered, or that your ski pants are giving your waist a really tight hug. Stop! Don’t take these awkward-fitting garments to the dumpster. Just like you recycle your Boulder Weekly issues and bottles of Vitamin Water, you too can recycle your garments.

You can’t throw textiles in your single-stream recycling bin, but through Eco-Cycle’s Center for Hard-to-Recycle Materials (CHaRM) and U’SA Gain you can recycle your woven goods.

If you’re the average American, you threw away 68 pounds of textiles last year — old rags, stinky socks, unflattering clothing, you name it — according to the Council for Textile Recycling. Two and a half billion pounds of textiles are wasted annually, and thanks to the textile recycling industry, more than two million tons of textiles are prevented from piling up in landfills each year, according to U’SA Gain.

With textiles making up 4 percent of landfill space, according to the Council for Textile Recycling, and almost all — 94 percent — of recovered clothing being recyclable, according to U’SA Gain, more can be done to redirect textiles from landfills. Fifteen percent of textiles are diverted for recycling or exportation to Third World countries, while the remaining 85 percent of discarded clothing piles up in landfills.

Textiles account for 1 percent to 1.5 percent of the total waste stream by weight, according to Eco-Cycle Program Manager Dan Matsch.

“Each of the CHaRM material categories account for only a fraction of 1 percent to 3 percent of the waste stream,” says Matsch. “But the reason a CHaRM facility is necessary is that when you lump together all those categories that account for a tiny slice of the waste stream, you find that they add up to quantities similar to those of traditional recyclables like paper and containers.”

Textile recycling isn’t curbside, making it less likely for people to recycle their clothes.

“Textile reuse/recycling is not as convenient as recovery of other commodities such as bottles and newspaper, which frequently can be set out at the curb on a weekly basis,” says Brenda Platt, co-director at the Institute for Local Self-Reliance. “Successful reuse/recycling should be as convenient as trash collection, and this includes textile recycling. Residents could, for instance, be instructed to place unwanted textiles in clear plastic bags along with their paper.”
Instead residents must drive to Eco-Cycle or find U’SA Gain bins to drop off their unwanted garments.

U’SA Gain has 17 red textile recycling bins throughout Boulder to help divert clothes from a final resting place in landfills (visit www.usagain2.com to find locations). Forty-eight percent of U’SA Gain’s clothes are saved and sold to Third World countries for less than the cost of mailing a letter. About 20 percent of the textiles are turned into wiping and polishing cloths, while about 26 percent is converted into fiber used to create new textile products. The remaining 6 percent is soiled and wet clothing that is disposed of.

Although U’SA Gain and Eco-Cycle are two options for textile recycling, it still would be ideal and more convenient to have curbside recycling here in Boulder County.

“Cities should consider adding textiles to curbside collection and partnering with local charities to ensure that high-quality material is provided to them and remaining material is sent to textile recyclers,” says Platt. “Textile recycling is not new. However, adding textile recycling to modern curbside recycling programs is new and could greatly be expanded.”

As for curbside textile recycling here in Boulder, Matsch doesn’t think it’s realistic.

“There is not enough of it or any other CHaRM material to justify the fuel to put the trucks on the road,” says Matsch. “Co-mingling all CHaRM materials in a truck would solve the transportation end of it, but there is not enough value in any of it to fund separating it all back out again when delivered to the CHaRM.”

Matsch says that thrift stores and charities should be given first consideration when giving away clothes. If it’s reusable, it should go to the thrift store, but if it’s worn, torn, frayed and unusable, then bring it to CHaRM (it should be clean though, Matsch adds).

Once your used textiles are at CHaRM, they are sorted into a rag or reuse pile. Rags get cut up into one-foot squares and sold to manufacturing industries, where the rags can be used for polishing and cleaning. The clothing in the reuse pile is sent to Third World countries. Other textiles can be turned into stuffing for upholstery and cotton insulation.

Textile recycling and business
Patagonia is a rare example of a business that recycles textiles in-store.  Patagonia started making fleeces out of recycled plastics back in 1993, and since then its recycling plan has evolved into the Common Threads program — created in 2005 — that recycles old garments within the store.

“What makes Patagonia’s Common Threads recycling program unique is our program uses a fiber-to-fiber recycling system to make new garments from old,” says Stephen Billings, Patagonia’s Boulder store manager.

Patagonia recycles fleece, base layers and organic cotton tees. The company also accepts other garment brands, like North Face fleeces. And in the future, Patagonia hopes to recycle all polyester garments as well as some nylon-based and natural-fiber garments. Patagonia’s goal is to be 100 percent recycled.

“We know that our business activity — from lighting stores to dyeing shirts — creates pollution as a byproduct,” says Billings. “So we work steadily to reduce those harms. We use recycled polyester in many of our clothes and only organic, rather than pesticide-intensive, cotton.”

The process of recycling textiles creates an energy savings of 76 percent and a carbon dioxide reduction of 71 percent, according to Billings.

“The benefit of using recycled materials is first and foremost the fact that we’re keeping trash out of the landfills.”

Patagonia’s fleeces are recycled in store, sent to a service center in Reno and then sent by container ships to Japan. New polyester fibers are created from the old fleeces and then used to make new Patagonia fleeces.

“Patagonia has a closed-loop recycling program that they are doing through their fabric supplier in Japan called Teijin,” says Matsch.

“Currently, Teijin is the only company that is producing new fabric out of old fabric — hence closed-loop. Closed-loop recycling is always ideal in the recycling industry because you don’t lose the inherent value of the original material and therefore truly save resources. I do think we will see a lot more of this in the coming years, particularly for all the high-tech fabrics we like so much in Boulder.”

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