Back to School Shopping with Retex Northwest
by Kara DiCamillo, Newport, Rhode Island 
on 08. 5.05
Check out these facts: This season, parents are expected to spend an average of $443.77 on back-to-school shopping with more than $200 devoted to new clothes for their kids. Only 53.3% of parents will have their kids wear old clothes from last year. Most of the rest of the old clothes will wind up in the trash contributing to the more than 9 million tons of textiles thrown away in the U.S. each year. Currently, only 14% of textiles are recycled. Doesn’t that all seem crazy? Well you lucky folks out in Washington State have Retex Northwest, a textile recycling company headquartered in Mill Creek. They are urging parents to teach their children an important environmental lesson: recycling their old clothes instead of throwing them away.
Retex Northwest works to end the stream of clothes going to landfills by partnering with local businesses to provide places where people can recycle old clothes and shoes. Unlike groups that collect clothes solely for re-sale in second-hand stores, Retex Northwest recycles nearly 100 percent of all clothes and shoes placed in its bins. Wearable shoes and clothes are sent overseas to people in impoverished countries that need affordable clothing. Non-wearable items are turned into industrial rags for cleaning and other uses or recycled into new fiber for use in everything from stuffing for automobile seats to fabric in new consumer goods. It’s good to see a company realizing the need for textile recycling. The United States is far behind when it comes to textile recycling. Countries in Europe have been actively promoting textile recycling for decades. Switzerland, for instance, has a textile recycling rate of 50 percent. ::Retex Northwest
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Thanks for the heads-up on this one. I am an Oregon resident and am looking into where the nearest donations box is. I hope Retex continues to expand and/or other companies like them start popping up. More recycling is always a plus.
From my European perspective I really cannot understand this habit of throwing out complete wardrobes every year. Of course, if it is done at all, it would be better to recycle them than just throwing them away. But why is it done? Are the clothes so badly made that they fall to pieces after a year?
Encourage school districts to adopt low impact school uniforms for public and private schools. Those who wear uniforms could participate in textile recycling at the schools or point of purchase. There are dumpsters for community paper recycling at all of the public schools in my community. The schools are paid a percentage of profits from the paper recycling. The same could be done for textiles and shoes.