There are more than 1.5 million charitable organizations in the United States today, all of them doing fantastic work in their individual fields and causes. Of the multitudes of charitable organizations out there, clothing charities provide warm and comfort to the thousands of Americans out there that are down on their luck and have nowhere to turn to. The Department of Housing and Urban Development found in a recent study that there are about 600,000 homeless people in the U.S. today. Perhaps more startling is the fact that nearly 25% of them are children and an exorbitant amount of them are military veterans or people with mental illnesses (sometimes both, tragically). For these men, women, and children, charitable organizations provide a lifeline they need in order to bear the streets.
In addition to providing the needy with clothing, charitable clothing organizations provide another service for society: recycling fabrics. Common household fabrics such as cotton, polyester, nylon, and rayon make up about 5% of the total waste found in American landfills. Sadly, more than 90% of those materials are reusable. They can easily go to people in need of clothing, or better yet can go to clothing companies who can use the materials to make more clothes. Either way, the fact that there is so much textile waste in the U.S. is disheartening.
For these reasons, charitable clothing donations are important now more than ever. Donating clothes not only helps the poor and needy, it also helps the environment. Lightly used clothing provides so much help and comfort to people in need as well as those of us who live in the environment (i.e. all of us).
Charitable donations come in all shapes and sizes. When donating lightly used clothing, you can take comfort in the fact that it achieves more than one objective, and reaches far more people that you might think.
