The textile industry in the modern age has become a global juggernaut, and every year, vast volumes of clothes are designed, manufactured, and purchased, with the United States representing an especially large market for clothes and accessories from shirts and pants to dresses, coats, and gloves, but unfortunately, many of these clothes end up becoming trash in landfills across the country, when a much more charitable alternative is to send them to a donation pick up site so that needy families and military families can make use of them instead, and there is plenty of need for this charity work. Military donations and helping families in need is always welcome, so as a whole, Americans are urged to not discard their old and unwanted clothes, but instead to determine which of their clothes they do not want to keep, and deliver all these garments and accessories to a donation pick up site so that volunteers there can send them where they are needed the most. What are the rates of purchasing and wasting clothes nowadays, and what can the average American household or person do to help reduce this trend of waste and instead send those clothes to veterans donations sites?

Production, Waste, and Charity

Today, a massive volume of clothing is produced, and almost as much is purchased, but a large ratio of used clothes end up being sent to the trash or reused as industrial rags or shredded to make furniture stuffing instead of being dropped off at a donation pick up site. What are some of the trends? Today, the Council for Textile Recycling has determined that the United States produces some 25 billion pounds of new textiles every year, but about 85% of those clothes will eventually be sent to landfills where they are never worn again, while secondhand stores will get the last 15% or so. Many millions of pounds of clothes are thrown away per year, and this figures to about 82 pounds of textile waste for an average American per year. Some clothes are recycled; many millions of pounds of clothes are recycled, although these recycled clothes often just end up being used for industrial purposes, meaning that families in need are not getting them.

The good news is that Americans are already widely involved in charity and dropping off clothes at donation pick up sites, so working to reduce waste simply means boosting already existing rates of donations that Americans do every year, and get even more people involved. Back in the year 2007, for example, an estimated total value of $5.8 billion worth of clothes were sent to charitable organizations across the United States, and boosting that number today can mean cutting down on the waste sent to landfills, and giving more to families in need. For charity in general, about 95.4% of Americans take part in giving, and this can often include clothes; giving more to families in need means simply tapping deeper into this existing charitable spirit across the population.

It is easy and simple for an American individual or household today to get ready to donate clothes to a local donation pick up site, and this does not even cost anything aside from the modest gas money of driving to the charity site. Americans buy more clothes now than ever, and that means that most, if not all, households will have excess clothes in them that are ripe for charity. To begin this work, a household can simply gather all clothes and accessories in the home and assemble them all into a huge pile on the floor, which creates a comprehensive inventory that clearly shows who owns what. Some homeowners may be surprised by the size of the clothes pile created, in fact. With clothes scattered across the home, it can become difficult to keep track of everything.

Families can now start carefully picking through this huge pile to find any article of clothing that is redundant, worn out, gone out of style, or simply the wrong size for anyone to wear, and these unwanted clothes can be packed into bags or boxes to be donated. Kept clothes can then be put back away into dressers and closets, and the clothes do donate can be sent to a local donation pick up site.