What happens to the clothes I put in the textiles recycling bin?

Question

Do they stay as clothes and get worn again, or is the fabric recycled and made into felt and paper pulp, etc?

Answer 1

I have heard that they are ground up and added to dog food as filler. I'm not sure because I never worked at a dog food factory, but I did work at a cracker factory once. Crackers are made mainly of wheat. For more fascinating facts about crackers, do a search on yahoo, and simply type in "crackers".

Answer 2

I know that old denim jeans for example are being shredded and used for insulation in new homes and ones that want to be "green"

Answer 3

The companies who own the bins collect the fabric on behalf of various charities.  the people who empty the bins, go thru it and if anything is any good they keep it for themselves.  Most of the rest is cut into rags and sold to mechanics, workshops etc, and a small percentage of that money goes to the charity whose name appears on the bin.  The collection company keeps most of the profits to pay their staff.

Answer 4

here in the states we donate decent stuff to thrift stores, and i (hope) that they dont throw away the left over unsellables, but have it cut up for industrial rags and such.  I worked on merchant marine ships and it was fun to open up boxes of rags made of old shirts and collect pictures and phrases from them.  It broke up the otherwise monotonous day and week and months.

Answer 5

the wombles collect them and use them for all sorts of things from curtains to bedding or to simply make more wombles.

Answer 6

They are picked over. Then the rest is used as rags by painters and others who need rags which will not be used again.

Answer 7

GOODWILL AND THE SALVATION ARMY COLLECT CLOTHES AND SELL WHAT THEY CAN...

Answer 8

I saw a TV program in the UK about this. Charities license their name for a fee to companies (to put on the recycling collection bins) who collect the contents and do what they like with them.

Those companies sell on the good clothes for profit.

Answer 9

From what I've read on this subject, the clothes that are decent enough for wearing again are sold for distribution to third world countries (if the ebayers haven't sneaked in and taken the best bits first, that is LOL !!). Anything else is sorted for the type of material and reused  for items such as industrial rags. If there is no named charity on the collection bin, all proceeds from all items will go to the council. I imagine there is fairly big money to be made here one way or another. Personally, I would rather take it all down to the charity shop and let them have the profits rather than the fat cats on our local council (even the charity shops will get paid for the rags).

Answer 10

These sites are example of clothes recycling in NYC.