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This study investigated the importance of used clothing and household textiles to consumers, ways in which secondhand markets for these items could be improved, and alternatives to sending unwanted items to the landfill. Interviews with customers at thrift shops and yard sales showed the majority of customers shopped for textiles and clothing in such venues regularly. Promoting secondhand items for new uses is suggested as one alternative to sending discards to the landfill.
INTRODUCTION
The Council for Textile Recycling (1997) describes post-consumer textile waste as garments or household textiles that the original owner decides to discard. They contend that post-consumer textile product waste in this country amounts to 8.75 billion pounds annually or 35 pounds per person. It is their observation that unwanted clothing and household textiles are sometimes given to charities, but more commonly, they are put in the trash and end up in landfills. Furthermore, according to Trebay (2000), few charities keep all the donations they receive. As Kilborn (1999) observed at a Salvation Army warehouse in New York, only one garment in five is sufficiently clean and undamaged to be passed on to a second owner. In other words, charities also have to deal with issues of keeping post-consumer textiles out of the landfill.
As noted by Riggle (1992), charities may turn their unwanted items over to textile recycling companies. Council for Textile Recycling statistics indicate that this industry removes 2.5 billion pounds of post-consumer textile product waste from the waste stream every year. However, this is only a little over 25% of the total post-consumer annual textile waste. The good news is that 93% of the waste acquired by the recycling industry can be recycled, leaving only 7% for the landfill (Brill, 1997).
Material recovery facilities can help keep textile products out of the landfill. However, while material recovery facilities are equipped to handle cans, jars, and papers, textiles are difficult to sort with the standard screens. Clothing and textiles can vary greatly in size of item and composition. Despite the difficulties, some communities have developed collection and processing programs for textiles. Domina and Koch (2001) and Hawley (2000) point out that more municipalities should work on finding ways to include textiles in their recycling programs.
Another approach to reducing...