I went through another cleaning and decluttering phase in January. I’m that person who has a hole in their sleeping t-shirt (which was once a going into public t-shirt) and still proclaims that it’s still good. How many holes are one too many?? Exactly.
But I decided that some were truly past their used by dates, it was time to go. I had kept old ones around for cleaning, to line the carpet before painting, to wrap a hot water bottle in etc. I know other people use them as hair drying wraps. But there was too many of these old pieces around not to mention my old holey cleaning socks.
My next problem was how do you recycle used fabrics? There are ample places to donate clothes that can still have another life but what about the clothes that are on their last legs (to avoid landfill)?
I had something in mind like from this BBC video that I have embedded above but after searching, didn’t really find any place that I could drop these too. Sadly, they went into the bin.
Which then led me to my next question. Should clothing recycling be something that we could include in our biweekly recycling from our local councils? At the moment in Sydney, it isn’t and only limited to paper, tin, cans and glass.The average Australian purchases 27kg of clothing each year. And 23kgs of that ends up in landfill.
Is it time for the world to also think about the other end of the fashion cycle and how we can break it down and reuse to make new products?
Is there somewhere near where you live that recycles the oldest of used clothing?
Related Posts:
– How we can turn waste into other products
– How I started on my sustainability journey
– Ways to reuse clothing
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