Recycling Experts: Your Fabric Has Worth

Open your closet, and you may notice your favorite jeans have gone through the washer one too many times. The holes are growing larger and you’ve even got some paint splattered on them.

Coffee stains dot your old T-shirts. A sock is missing. Stuffing inside your child’s stuffed animal is coming out.

What would you do with all this “junk”?

Larry Groipen, president of Secondary Materials and Recycled Textiles Association (SMART), said the typical American throws away 70 pounds of clothing. But there are companies willing to pay for fabric, he said.

Recycling textiles is a $1 billion global industry. If people knew how to take advantage of it, by keeping old clothes, curtains and sneakers from landfills and incinerators, that could save communities big money in tipping fees, Groipen and Brooke Nash of the state Department of Environmental Protection told recycling managers from nearly 30 municipalities yesterday.

Textiles are “low-hanging fruit” in the recycling world, as they’re not as challenging to collect as other material, said Mary Delahanty, recycle coordinator for Billerica.

“It’s easy stuff,” she said. “Why not go for it?”

According to Delahanty, textiles account for as much as 6 percent of household trash collected in Massachusetts. That amounts to 260,000 tons annually.

In Chelmsford, which spends $759,000 a year in tipping fees for trash collected, a 6 percent savings would translate into $45,540, said Jennifer Almeida, the town’s recycling/solid waste coordinator. Billerica could save about $60,000. In Lowell, which spends $2.72 million a year for tipping fees, eliminating textile waste could result in up to $163,200 in savings, according to Gunther Wellenstein, the city’s solid waste/recycling coordinator.

Municipalities are interested in teaming up with organizations like Goodwill to promote textile recycling rather than instituting curbside collections. That’s because fabric must stay dry in order to be recycled.

“Stain is fine. Broken shoes are fine. A single shoe is fine,” said Groipen, owner of ERC Wiping Products Inc., of Lynn, on what can go into recycling bins. But wet and soiled fabric cannot be recycled.

One myth is that clothing should only be mildly used in order to be recycled, Groipen said. In reality, recycling businesses like Groipen’s would take them all, sort them by hand and process or ship them for various uses. For example, ERC Wiping cuts up old T-shirts and sells usable parts to municipal DPWs and companies that need wiping rags.

These companies typically buy old textiles for 5 cents to 30 cents per pound, depending on whether it’s a nearly new cloth or could only be shredded for post-consumer products.

SMART, a 200-member Maryland-based for-profit trade association, sees 48 percent of textile being recycled as secondhand apparel, 30 percent as wiping and polishing clothes and 22 percent being processed into fibers.

Many items, including shoes, are shipped to developing countries. Small-business owners come to ports to buy goods, which then go to rural areas, said Paul Curry, owner of Bay State Textiles, which specializes in recycling.

“Gently worn is no longer something you have to have in your psyche,” Groipen said, adding that manufacturers that use recycled textiles are creating jobs overseas. Locally, the sorting of recyclables that must rely on human hands also creates jobs, he said.

Recycling textile is easy, said Bill LaBelle, director of operations for Morgan Memorial Goodwill. Goodwill doesn’t just accept things it can sell. It takes all sorts of textiles, including a single shoe, torn clothes, belts, sheets, curtains and underwear, among other items. Goodwill sells anything that cannot be sold to recycling companies.

To find Goodwill drop-off locations, visit www.goodwillmass.org .

For more information about textile recycling, visit www.SMARTasn.org .

Source: Waste Management World
By Hiroko Sato