What are you doing with textiles and clothes that are no longer useful?
Well, they can produce greenhouse gases that trap heat in the atmosphere 25 times more efficiently than carbon dioxide if you give them to waste. Australians are currently throwing 6000 kg of clothes every 10 minutes and rendering us a huge polluter in the world.
But dropping the ruined old clothes with the ‘healthy things’ in a charity donation bin is still not the solution. Australian charities say that they still give up to 30% of the clothes and textiles donated to landfills every year, which cost them millions of dollars to social welfare programmes. If you don’t give your old clothes to a friend, don’t give it.
And what are you going to do? Fortunately, there are many recycling opportunities in Australia for garments and textiles.
What to do with old clothes????
Textile and fashion retailing
Australian fashion retail giants provide a recycling programme to all Australian stores with all recycled clothing, any brand, and any condition. Nice clothes can be reused and distributed by voluntary organisations. In a bad state, garments and textiles are either recycled into rags for washing or sent into a fabric recycler to manufacture new fabrics and items such as car insulation and construction. In their shops, you can find special storage bins for donations. They accept any preloved brand of quilt covers, sheets, and towels as well as clean and discarded socks along with sustainable streetwear for reuseing and recycling, as well as any discarded sockets for preloved retailers Manrags accepts.
Textile Recycling Business
Some companies and organisations export old garments, which can not be sold in Australia to developing countries for use in the wearing, reprocessing, or recycling of organic fuel. Check if your nearest charity shop has a ‘racking bin’ or see stores for your old clothing to enter these businesses and come up with an ethical fashion. Not only that the use of recycled t shirt will also be increased with this process.
Local reuse initiatives
People have access in Sydney to the Reverse Garbage initiative, a great non-profit recycling and reuse initiative. This organisation provides a wide variety of contributions, including rolling fabrics, offsets from corporations, and individuals. Perhaps there is a nearby reuse gem that people haven’t heart. The city council must be informed or check those places to develop a sustainable fashion.
The Reason for recycling Textiles
Almost 100% of textiles are recyclable, while in Australia less than 15% of discarded textiles are recovered – up to 88% of the discarded clothing is transported to landfills. The Australian Statistics Bureau suggested that 501 000 tonnes and the figures only increased with the rapid growth of the fashion industry, of leather and textiles sent to sludge between 2009-2010. Particularly when two-thirds of today’s textiles are synthetic (petroleum-derived) and may never collapse, it is horrible to think that all these useful materials were wasted.
Ending Note
There is a massive trend for ‘slow fashion’ as more people hear about the scary statistics of fast fashion and its global effects. The Trend for Slow Fashion encourages people to be more mindful of what they wear: Is it new? From what is it? From where did she come? Who did it? Who did? Can I wear more than 30 times this clothing? The change is an opportunity to purchase and/or choose to provide help as much as possible for ethical and sustainable apparel brands, and only purchase the apparel you are aware of will enjoy and get a lot out of it.
