Savers (Value Village) is educating consumers about the need to rethink and reuse clothing, shoes, and bulk linens in general. In 2015 they installed a larger-than-life family of four, comprised of 324 lbs of clothing; the amount of textiles average American families throw away each year.

Its purpose was to raise awareness of the amount of used clothing, bulk linens (bed sheets, towels, blankets, etc), and used shoes are wasted each year when they are carelessly tossed into the garbage and sent to a landfill. Did you know that 95% of textiles thrown away are actually reusable and/or recyclable, yet only 15% are actually recovered for reuse and/or recycling?

This year Value Village commissioned a local Seattle artist to create another stunning installation to promote the “Rethink Reuse” notion.

In a video less than 30 seconds long, Value Village will help you understand that your clothing purchasing and disposal habits have a huge impact on the environment. The average American throws away (not donates) more than 80 pounds of clothing per year, including clothing, shoes, bed linens, rugs and other bulk linens. Of those 80 pounds, 68 could have been recycled or reused in some way. Multiplied by roughly 300 million Americans who each dispose of a similar amount of clothing, and the resulting amount is staggering: 20,400,000,000 (that’s twenty billion, four hundred million) pounds of clothing is dumped into landfills each year. 15% of that (3, 060,000,000 pounds) will be recovered from the landfill and recycled, but that amount barely makes a dent in what remains behind, compounded year after year.

Now that you know what an impact your buying and disposing habits have, what will you change? Will you buy less clothing in general? When you do buy clothing, will you look for gently used items? Will you shop from brands who practice ethical and/or sustainable sourcing and who pay their manufacturers living wages? Will you donate your gently used items to a thrift store or charity? Will you seek out textile recycling programs for your used clothing items that are too worn or stained for donation?