Charity pick up services, especially those who pick up donations for the benefit of military families, provide a noble service. In addition to helping Americans declutter their homes, they facilitate the donation and distribution of thousands of pounds of clothing and other household items to Americans who put themselves in harm’s way to serve our country.
Not only does donating clothing to charity help clean out our closets, but it also helps avoid unnecessary wast in our country’s landfills. Did you know, for example, that the typical American household discards approximately 68 pounds of clothing a year. Of that discarded clothing, an estimated 99% can be recycled or reused. Unfortunately, cotton, polyester, nylon and rayon fabrics make up nearly 5% of all trash found in our already crowded landfills. In addition to recycled unused or unneeded clothing reducing landfill waste, it also limits pollution to the environment. The benefits of donating clothing, however, do not end at avoiding waste and limiting pollution. The textile recycling industry accounts for almost 17,000 jobs throughout the country. Get it? Not only does donating clothing make good sense environmentally, but some of the very people who benefit from the donated items, may be some of the same people who are employed by the textile recycling industry.
Here’s how it works. If you take the time to deliver your unwanted or unused clothing items to a donation pick-up site, the people at that location then sort through the clothing do determine each item’s purpose. A gently worn dress for a size two toddler, for example, can be placed with items that will later be distributed to an in-need military family. The two or three size two toddler dresses that you donated that are too worn or stained to be given to a family are placed in another pile. Those clothes get sent to a textile recycling center. Simply by calling a charity pick up service you can avoid contributing to the trash in landfills, help a deserving child, and help employ workers in the textile recycling industry. sound like a pretty good deal. Charity pick up services make this especially easy.
Donating simply could not be any easier. Likely, you can even find charities that pick up clothing donations right from your house. It might mean that you need to get a little organized and hold on to the clothing for a few weeks, but if you can provide clothing donations for veterans, for example, it seems worth your time.
Seventy percent of Americans donate to charity in some form every year in the United States–make sure you are one of them!
