Everybody hates landfills but we also hate most things that would prevent landfills from growing.
Bottle deposits? What a hassle. Pay-as-you-throw? No thanks. Producer responsibility laws? Sounds like socialism. So we nibble around the edges and hope things will somehow improve.
I recently encountered one of those nibbles, although it’s more like a small bite, in the form of a Hookset company called Apparel Impact. Started nine years ago by Manchester native Joe Whitten, Apparel Impact is built around the intriguing industry of used clothing.
I say intriguing because, to my surprise, old textiles are part of a real industry. Markets exist for used clothing that can still be worn, ranging from Main Street shops to other countries, plus there are thriving markets for unwearable garments, towels and other textiles which can be shredded and turned into useful stuff like insulation.
So, you can make a business selling clothing and other textiles but only after you’ve got enough of them to sell. The hard part is collecting, sorting and shipping them. Not even behemoths like Goodwill have cracked that, which is why so many kilotons of used garments get buried in our landfills every day.
“The idea [for Apparel Impact] is that 85% of all clothing in the U.S. is ending up in the trash. We’ve been focused on how to collect and divert as much clothing and textiles as possible,” said Whitten, the company’s co-founder and CEO.
Like a lot of organizations, Apparel Impact sets up bins in public and private places in six Northeast states for people to drop off items. The material is collected and sorted at the company’s Hooksett facility. Last year the company, which has about 40 employees, handled 17.5 million pounds of clothing, and it is on track for “about 21 million pounds of clothing” this year.
Apparel Impact emphasizes the social impact element of the industry, distributing some usable material such as clothing, shoes and diapers to folks in need locally. This makes business sense, since a company or community which has seen Apparel Impact doing good is more likely to host one of their clothing bins, but it’s also part of the company’s ethical goals.
I learned about Apparel Impact from a New Hampshire Association of Conservation Commissions presentation of the firm’s new Municipal Impact Program, which is just being rolled out. Portsmouth will probably be the first community to use it but a number are interested, Whitten said.
The idea is simple: Towns and cities would love to divert clothing and other textiles like towels and sheets from landfills because landfilling costs them money, but “they struggle to figure out how to do it,” Whitten said. “The Municipal Impact Program is designed around the idea that Apparel Impact will be the textile recycle for the municipality.”
They do a townwide survey, study traffic patterns, businesses and people, and they figure out how to build a good collection network.
“We kind of handle everything from start to finish… the town doesn’t manage the actual fulfillment and there’s no cost to the town for what the actual program does,” he said.
Then they add an intriguing extra by appointing a “municipal liaison” who can request wardrobes for local folks.
“We provide them online access with codes so they can request clothing for anyone in town, in the school, or anybody in the the welfare office, town hall… We fulfill, package and ship it to the liaison themselves to be distributed,” said Whitten.
All in all, a great project. And indicative of what we need to do throughout the economy if we’re going to keep improving our physical standard of living without destroying the planet that our standard of living depends upon.
Plus, I finally know what to do with those Geek Love t-shirts that I thought were funny in college but never could bring myself to wear in public.
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