Closet cleanout

Cheap fashion is another aspect of our disposable consumer culture, with deep ramifications for the environment and for labor, among others. I take care to make sure my clothes last, instead of disposing of them season after season. Still, sometimes a closet cleanout is necessary.

Today, I ran through ,y closet but made sure everything found a home. I was able to direct some clothes to a consignment shop, where I’m sure they’ll find a new home. Other clothes I donated to Goodwill. But I was very selective about what I left there. A high percentage of donations to Goodwill end up in a landfill because people treat the shops as a dumping ground or their sentimentality leads the to overestimate the re-use possibilities of their favorite shirt, the one with a hole in the sleeve.

So another lot of clothes I brought to H&M, because of their amazing recycling program. As they say, “As much as 95% of clothes thrown away could have been reborn or recycled.” That’s where H&M fits in where their collection program and their partnerships with recyclers. The result? Since they launched the program in 2013, they’ve processed the equivalent of 150 million t-shirts worth of fabric. Keeping that out of landfills is a good thing.