Environmental benefits of collecting clothes & shoes

It is estimated that landfills in Michigan will be full in around seventeen years at current rates of usage. We offer an alternative, and a way for people to recycle their unwanted clothes, shoes, toys, and books. In 2011, IICD’s 500 boxes collected 1,883,534 lbs of re-useable clothes, shoes, and books. That is nearly 2 million lbs of clothes, shoes and books that did NOT end up on landfills!

The production of new clothes (and also the recycling of material) is significantly bad for the environment that we live in. The production of one new cotton T-shirt, for example, uses around 700 gallons of water and a significant quantity of pesticides. Not to mention that those producing cotton goods are often underpaid and exploited. Reuse of material is preferable to recycling, as the recycling process uses energy, produces pollution, and the quality of the recycled product is lower than the original.

By encouraging the reuse rather than recycling of material, we assist in the fight against global warming. If you donate one cotton T-shirt and that is reused rather than another being produced, that will save the emission of around 4 lbs of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. In 2011 our collection will have saved the emission of around 15 million lbs of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere (this is approximately 0.0001% of US greenhouse gas emission in 2011.