With LA Fashion Week in full swing, Angelinos are out admiring the hottest new styles and trends, then returning home to their own closets and shamefully muttering to themselves:
“These clothes have got to go.”
But where? For most Americans, the answer is “the trash.”
The average American throws away 70 lbs. of clothing every year, sending a total of 11.1 million tons of textiles straight to the landfill! That’s about 191 t-shirts—or 1,146 miles of yarn—per American every year!
Dumping all these clothes has both economic and environmental repercussions…
- Economic: The average charge for landfill dumping is $100 per ton. Keeping 11 million tons of textile waste out of the landfills would save American taxpayers more than $1.1 billion every year.
- Environmental: When your old clothes get buried in a landfill, they can contaminate soil and groundwater, take up valuable land, and emit some horrific odors. Or they go to the landfill’s giant incinerator, which spews out greenhouse gases that contribute to climate change.
And here’s the real kicker: Over 90% of discarded textiles sitting in landfills is perfectly recyclable!
Which begs the question, “Why aren’t Americans recycling more of their old clothes?” Maybe they’re unwilling to make the trek to thrift stores to donate. Or maybe they don’t realize that there are recyclers willing to accept those dirty old clothes!
One possible solution to both of these worries can be found in those yellow boxes popping up all over Los Angeles…
Planet Aid is a nonprofit organization that collects good, bad, and downright ugly used clothing. Planet Aid has partnered with Los Angeles Fire Department to place its yellow donation boxes at firehouses across LA.
By accepting any and all clothing donations, Planet Aid is chipping away at textile waste, one dirty sneaker at a time!
