Recycling about 3,500 tons of clothing can prevent the release of 12,600 tons of CO2 into the air — the equivalent of taking 2,200 cars off the road for a year, according to the EPA’s Green House Gas Equivalencies Calculator and a recent press release announcing Campus California’s end-of-the-year clothing donation box program’s results.
Campus California, an organization that operates the largest clothing donation box program in the San Francisco Bay Area, prevented the release of 12,600 tons of CO2 by collecting over 8,000,000 pounds (3,500 tons) of clothing in 2011 for recycling and reuse.
According to the press release, Jan Sako, Campus California’s public relations manager, said: “Campus California will continue the efforts to prevent textiles from going to landfills. Our donation boxes provide a convenient way for the public to dispose of items they no longer want or need in an environmentally responsible way. The clothing we collect will be worn again or recycled into various industrial inputs, creating sustainable jobs in the process. In general, reuse and recycling creates eight times more jobs per ton of material than landfilling.”
“Looking forward to 2012, textile reuse and recycling will be an important part of the efforts to make California more sustainable. After a two year decline, the amount of waste deposited in landfills in the USA increased last year – that’s not great news. It’s crucial that we grow our economy without growing the landfills as well,” Sako added.
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Author: Roberta Seldon
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