We’ve all done it: Tossed used clothing into the trash, thinking, “I can’t donate this. No one will wear it!” It may have been a pair of jeans with split seams or paint splatters, used shoes with holes and a smell that won’t wash out, a threadbare t-shirt, socks with no mates, or an old rug or blanket. Such items are discarded every day by Americans across the country. The Environmental Protection Agency estimates that each of us throws away between 70 and 80 lbs of used clothing each year–not donates, but throws away.

To better understand what that weight means, we’ve assembled a few comparison items. The amount of clothing you toss out each year weigh about the same as 3 gold bars (international standard), or a full-grown Doberman Pinscher, or a 10-year old girl, or a bag of quick-mix concrete…it doesn’t seem like much and, in truth, 80 lbs really isn’t that big of a deal.

Even multiplied by 72, 80 lbs still isn’t that big of a deal.

Let’s say you live to the ripe old age of 90. If you continue to throw away about 80 lbs of used clothing each year, over the course of your adult life you’ll throw away 5760 lbs of clothing; enough to equal the weight of a giraffe…or two VW buses…or 3 Clydesdale horses. Heavy? Sure. But not that heavy. After all, you’re just one person, right?

Wrong. It’s not just one person, it’s all of us. 80 lbs a year multiplied by 314,100,000 US citizens equals a whopping 25,128,000,000 lbs (that’s 25 billion, 128 million pounds) of used clothing, used shoes, and other textiles (such as towels, rugs, curtains, bed sheets and blankets, etc) that are dumped with the rest of our garbage in landfills across the country. That is problematic.

Do you know what else weighs 25 billion pounds?

The iconic Empire State Building stands 1454 feet tall (that’s more than a quarter of a mile). It sits on approximately two acres and has 2.7 million square feet of office space. It is estimated that the Empire State Building weighs 730 million pounds (365,000 tons). It is, by all accounts, a massive structure.

And yet it would take 35 Empire State Buildings to equal the 25 billion pounds of textiles that are dumped in landfills each year.

Textiles are not trash. Nearly 100% of all textiles (clothing, shoes, rugs, towels, curtains, etc) are recyclable or reusable in some way. Even torn, stained, old, worn out, and/or out of style clothing and shoes can be recycled. There are many local and national textile recycling programs for these less-than-perfect clothing items. As for gently used clothing and shoes, they can be donated to thrift stores and charitable institutions.

Working together, we can reduce the number of clothing items clogging our nation’s landfills!

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EcoGoodz is a mixed rags and credential clothing supplier in the USA. Working closely with thrift stores and charitable institutions, we’ve helped keep millions of pounds of used clothing, used shoes, and other household goods out of landfills. Please contact us for more information.