Thanks to your support in 2020, we were able to donate $125,000 to Canadian registered charities.

What Happens to Your Clothing Donations?

by Textile Waste Diversion Inc.

When you donate used clothing and textiles to charity bins in your community, there are several ways it can be used to assist communities, besides the local job creating, government savings and environmental benefits.

The majority of the clothes are sold, and proceeds redirected to various charities that use funds to continue offering services. Used clothing collection offers a stable, secure source of continuous operating funds.

The charity TWD primarily services, the Canadian Community Support Foundation, redistributes 100% of the proceeds they receive to fund food banks, soup kitchens, shelters, hospices, senior services, youth services and more.

The best of your clothing donations most often end up in community closets. Community closets are great, because unlike thrift stores that sell used clothing to struggling Canadians, a community closet provides clothing for free to vulnerable residents.

Community Closets offer free services to local shelters, child protection agencies and other social service agencies and work on an emergency referral basis. Community Closets do more than just provide warm clothing. Clients served by community closets are often in crisis. For example, when children are removed from their home by Children’s Aid, or victims of domestic abuse or survivors of house fires and floods leave their homes with nothing but what they are wearing. When a client is referred to a community closet, they are usually starting from scratch, and literally need everything.

Most community closets are not open to the public and work by appointment so that there is complete privacy. Clients are the only ones in the store and get undivided service and attention. The experience is cozy, nurturing and peaceful. Clients are outfitted with an entire wardrobe, for free, so that they can ‘start over’ with clothing they can feel confident in. If finding work is a consideration, appropriate interview clothes are provided as well. Community Closets serve the most vulnerable in our community.

Community closets accept used clothing donations from the general public and sometimes partner with recyclers who collect in their community. They normally have very little space to store inventory, meaning they have to be very discerning about what they put on their shelf or racks.

Less than 50% of the donations they receive are actually suitable for their clientele. The rest is traded to thrift stores in exchange for vouchers, or traded back to their recycling partner. They may also choose to sell what they cannot use to companies like TWD, to supplement their budget.

Some community closets use the funds they receive from ‘outbag sales’ to buy diapers and hygiene products for their clients, and others that use the funds to supplement their utility bills.

Even if the clothes you donate don’t end up on the shelf of your local community closet, the proceeds your donations generate help keep keep community closets open. Your donations help, and you can feel good about that!

This is Sandwich Teen Action Centre’s Community Closet in Windsor Ontario. Managed by Kelly Quinlan, this room is not just filled with lots of clothes, but also filled with plenty of healing love.

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In the bin!

Used aluminum beverage cans are the most recycled item in the U.S., but other types of aluminum, such as siding, gutters, car components, storm window frames, and lawn furniture can also be recycled.

 

Kiss this!

An estimated 80,000,000 Hershey's Kisses are wrapped each day, using enough aluminum foil to cover over 50 acres of space -- that's almost 40 football fields. All that foil is recyclable, but not many people realize it.

Packaging at the dump

About one-third of an average garbage dump is made up of packaging material!

Glass skyscrapers?

Every month, we throw out enough glass bottles and jars to fill up a giant skyscraper. All of these jars are recyclable!

Plastic bottles by the hour

Americans use 2,500,000 plastic bottles every hour! Most of them are thrown away!

The Sunday paper

To produce each week's Sunday newspapers, 500,000 trees must be cut down.

The aluminum recycling loop

A used aluminum can is recycled and back on the grocery shelf as a new can in as little as 60 days. That's closed loop recycling at its finest!

 

What gets recycled in Canada?

By weight, organics comprise the largest portion, accounting for 22% of recycled materials from all sources, followed by newsprint (17%) and cardboard and boxboard (17%).

Recycling by the Province

While on the rise overall, recycling varies quite widely from province to province. Ontario and Quebec recycle the largest quantities of materials, but the amounts of material recycled per person and the recycling rate are higher in Nova Scotia and British Columbia.

Canadian vs. American residential waste

Canadians produced 366 kg per person of residential waste in 2020; by 2020, this figure had increased to 418 kg per person. By way of comparison, residential waste production by our neighbours in the United States was 440 kg per person in 2020.

   

Canadian waste

In 2020, Canadian households produced 13.4 million tonnes of waste. Nearly three-quarters (73%) of this waste was sent for disposal, according to Statistics Canada’s 2020 Waste Management Survey, while the rest was recycled.

A great reason to recycle!

Landfills produce approximately 25% of Canada’s methane emissions (methane is a powerful greenhouse gas). Recycling, including textile recycling, can help reduce the amount of waste entering landfills and help conserve natural resources.

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The amount of water locked up in ice and snow is only about 1.7 percent of all water on Earth, but the majority of total freshwater on Earth, about 68.7%, is held in ice caps and glaciers.

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Paper is the number one recyclable material that we throw away. For every 100 pounds of trash we throw away, 35 pounds is paper. Americans throw away 25 billion Styrofoam coffee cups every year, 40 billion soft drink cans and bottles every year, and 38 billion plastic bags. Placed end to end, they would reach to the moon and back hundreds of times.

 

How much household waste can be recycled?

Over 80% of typical household waste - including food scraps, yard waste, paper, cardboard, cans, and bottles - can be recycled, reused, or composted.

How much carbon dioxide can a car emit?

On average, a car produces about 170g CO2 per kilometer. If your car travels 2020 kilometers per month, it produces about 340 kilograms CO2 - that's a lot of carbon dioxide!

How much harm can one styrofoam cup do?

A styrofoam cup contains one billion billion CFC molecules - a class of chemical compounds that deplete ozone. Once a CFC molecule reaches the ozone layer, it can take over 100 years before it breaks up and becomes harmless!

How many trees are cut down each year?

In 2020 statistics, primary forest area was reduced globally by 60,000 square km per year (about the size of Ireland). While it's impossible to get an exact count, at a rate of 50K to 100K trees per square km, this equates to 3 to 6 billion trees per year.

Worldwide Metals Production

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