Goodwill of the Finger Lakes is encouraging people to expand their thinking of how clothing and other textiles can be recycled.
WXXI's Beth Adams recently talked to Jennifer Lake, the nonprofit’s president and CEO, about a new partnership which aims to reduce the amount of clothing and other textiles that are either incinerated or sent to landfills.
Here is a transcript of that interview, edited for clarity.
Beth Adams: A French textile regeneration company is planning to establish its first North American hub at Eastman business park in Rochester. The company, Reju, uses discarded clothing that would otherwise be headed to a landfill to create its own polyester brand with a lower carbon footprint, and Goodwill of the Finger Lakes will be playing a key role in this process. Here to tell us more, is the organization's president and CEO, Jennifer Lake. Jennifer, good morning. Thanks for joining us.
Jennifer Lake: Good morning. Thank you so much. We're so excited about this collaboration.
BA: You said textile waste one of the fastest growing yet least understood waste streams in the United States. Can you tell me, what don't we understand about it?
JL: Textiles are a really challenging waste stream, partially because so much of it right now is going to either landfill or incineration, because it's a complicated blend of fabrics. There's different treatments on the textiles themselves that make it very difficult to really recycle. Work that we've been doing over the last three years or so has really started to shed some light on the fiber composition. There's really some great research locally happening out of the University of Buffalo that's looked at some of the treatments on the textiles, and really, some amazing scientists have done great work to figure out how we can turn those textiles that really are at end of use today into the textiles of tomorrow.
BA: I think most people know that Goodwill is a place where they can donate their unwanted clothing. It might end up in one of your retail shops where people can buy secondhand clothing. What percentage of those donated clothes don't find a new home?
JL: Typically, about 60% of items do really make it to that sales floor for people to buy. We've been working on a better way to get some items identified for repair programs with some great partnerships with other local organizations, but really the rest of the items we've been working on really trying to get those connected into the avenues for giving them a new life, whether that's downcycling or true recycling. Because at the end of the day right now, we and other nonprofits, or for-profit streams, like Savers Thrift Store, are only getting 15% of the textiles available.
That's from a 2018 EPA report. The last report they issued shows that all the channels, that includes Facebook Marketplace, all the informal trading, is only getting 15% of what's out there, the rest of it is going to landfill.
BA: Can you explain how this new collaboration with Reju, the textile regeneration company, is going to work?
JL: Absolutely. They are an advanced recycler, and they use a process. It takes the particles of polyester-rich materials, and, using a solvent, breaks them back down, the polymers into monomers. It goes through a cleaning process and then is able to actually regenerate it back into polyester in a process that's cleaner, that sheds fewer microplastics, and then they spin it back into what they call their Reju polyester. And what's great about it is that according to their life cycle assessments, which is something that every fashion brand does to determine how much water is used, how much energy carbon emission that comes from making a pair of jeans or a shirt. Reju has found that their process actually is about 50% less than virgin polyester. And what's great about it is you can do it again and again so that when that garment has reached its end of use, you know, when it's stained or soiled or if the seams are undone and you can't stitch it back together, you can put it through this process again.
BA: Is Reju counting on Goodwill for a certain amount of textiles?
JL :Great question. Goodwill of the Finger Lakes actually leads the Northeast circularity hub. We work with 10 other Goodwills from northern New England, all the way down to Pennsylvania. We all work together to aggregate materials, to work with different recyclers, and Reju is one of the ones that we've agreed to provide these polyester rich materials. We will work with them to design a system that will go to looking at how to remove buttons so the material can go through recycling. Today in our facility locally, we do that by hand. So we've identified what is polyester, what is cotton rich, and we've already started working with mechanical recyclers to recycle some of those materials that are not blended and get those back into production with some other fiber types right now as well. And then some of those other lower value items do get made into what's called shoddy, which is used for insulation padding in a lot of chair cushions or car seats that we sit on.
BA: So if I'm cleaning my closet, and I have some clothing that is torn or otherwise I would think not fit to be worn by someone else, I can still donate it to Goodwill, and it could go through one of these recycling programs and find a new life somewhere?
JL: Absolutely, we want all of those materials. We are also in the process of rolling out a different way to donate. You’ll start to notice as you walk in the front of some of our stores, we're going to have our ‘worn or torn or tattered’ donation bins, so people can separate out that stuff that they know isn't stuff to be resold.
Sheets, towels, clothing, bedding, even a hanging cloth that you have on your wall that maybe your cat shredded, for example, we want those. We get asked a lot, "Hey, what about my underwear that I've washed?” Because emphasis on washed. “But has holes?” You know, we've all been there. Cotton does get holes in it. We do still want you to donate it. You know, some people have asked, “Hey, does it help if I cut the elastic off and separate that?” Yes, that would totally help.
BA: Do you think this comes with trying to encourage people to have a new mindset about their old clothing, thinking of it as something that is able to be recycled, like they're going to put cans and paper out in the recycling bin on trash day?
JL: Absolutely. That same EPA study says that the average American throws away 80 pounds of clothing per year. And that is throws away, like discards it in the trash. We want to make sure that, unless it is infested with some type of bug — I know that's gross, sorry, Beth — unless it’s soiled with some type of hazardous material, you can donate it and allow it to live a second life.
And then the last thing you can do is, when you're buying things in the first place, you can really start to look and it, just like the food you eat. If those clothing labels have four or five or six different things blended in them, one of them should be the majority fiber type. So really try to make sure that something is at least 60% or more of the bulk of that garment. Otherwise, it's going to be very difficult to deal with when it's no longer wearable.
