![]() How to recycle clothingThe business of recycling clothing is just that: a huge, global business that rakes in millions of dollars a year. Cotton is a natural fiber and will break down over time. If you are working with 100% cotton fabric and have only small pieces left, you can put them in your compost bin. Even the smallest pieces of fabric can be used to make jewelry. Pieces of brocade or other fancy fabrics left over from upholstery projects make lovely handbags or holders for smartphones. Plenty of people use fabric scraps to make miniature quilts or table runners for home décor. If you have small scraps of fabric and nowhere to send them, think creatively about how you can put those tiny pieces to work. See if your community has a chapter of Quilts of Valor, which makes quilts for service members, or Project Linus, which donates quilts to children. There may also be charities that can put your fabric to use making quilts, dolls or other items for people in need. Examples include the East Bay Depot for Creative Reuse in Oakland, CA, and the Pittsburgh Center for Creative Reuse. There are lots of arts organizations that take larger pieces of fabric and get them to people who want to reuse them in various craft projects. They take pieces of fabric 36 square inches and larger and get them to companies that can sew them into clothing, turn them into rags or chop them up and use them for products like insulation. GrowNYC is one example of an organization with a mission to take all kinds of fabric. How to recycle fabricYour local curbside recycling collector is unlikely to take fabric, but various companies in your community might. In addition, if textiles are put in bales for shipment, wet materials can breed bacteria that can cause bales to spontaneously combust (yes, really). Wet textiles can get musty or moldy, and one piece is enough to spoil everything in a storage bin. The most important thing to bear in mind when recycling fabric is that it must be dry (and preferably clean). In most cases, your best bet is to find a reuse store that can take your small bits of fabric, or put those leftovers to work yourself. On the other hand, it is extremely difficult to find anyone who wants to recycle fabric scraps. Clothing is very easy to recycle just about every community has a thrift store or a vendor with a clothing drop box. How easy it is to recycle fabric depends largely on its form. And, even though nearly all textiles are recyclable, only about 15% of the 14.3 million tons of textile waste generated in the U.S. The Council for Textile Recycling estimates that 5% of the waste currently sitting in landfills is textile waste. ![]() Whatever the case may be, there is a lot of unwanted fabric out there. Maybe you possess some worn-out clothing, or some sheets and towels that no longer fit with your décor. Perhaps you are a seamstress with scraps from cutting out clothing, or a quilter with lots of trimmings from quilt blocks.
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