Blog

A Year of Unprecedented Growth and Industry Leadership

We’re thrilled to share SwagCycle’s 2025 impact statistics. Since launching in late 2019, SwagCycle has facilitated:

• 3,345,716 items kept out of landfills

• $12,603,077 in charitable donations

In 2025 alone, we added nearly $9 million in charitable impact. This explosive growth reflects not just increased demand for our services, but the evolution of SwagCycle into something far more comprehensive than we initially envisioned.

SwagCycle’s Year-Over-Year Growth

When we published our first impact report in 2020, we had kept 60,418 items out of landfills and facilitated $168,922 in charitable donations. By 2021, we had 10x’d those numbers. In 2022, we crossed the $2.6 million milestone. From 2022 through 2024, we saw steady, consistent growth, adding hundreds of thousands of items and hundreds of thousands of dollars in donations each year.

And then 2025 happened. The numbers tell a story of SwagCycle becoming the branded merchandise industry’s most sophisticated resource for responsible product lifecycle management.

What began as a platform primarily focused on facilitating charitable donations and recycling has evolved into the branded merchandise industry’s definitive landfill diversion solution, offering donation, recycling, upcycling, and secure destruction services tailored to the specific needs of companies across multiple sectors.

This transformation comes at a critical moment for the industry. According to a recent Boston Consulting Group report, global textile waste reached 120 million metric tons in 2024, with less than 1% recycled into new fiber, representing $150 billion in lost raw material value annually. The branded merchandise sector faces the same challenge, and SwagCycle is the solution.

Major Charitable Impact: Wildfire Relief and Industry Partnership

2025 brought one of our most meaningful charitable initiatives: California wildfire relief. In partnership with Delivering Good and several leading distributors and suppliers in our industry, we facilitated nearly $500,000 in donations to support wildfire victims. The response from the promotional products community was extraordinary, demonstrating the power of collective action when industry partners come together for a urgent cause.

In partnership with Delivering Good, SwagCycle coordinated donations from leading industry companies, including Counselor Top 40 distributor Kotis Design, to support California wildfire relief.

We also worked with S&S Activewear on a massive donation project following their acquisition of alphabroder and subsequent distribution center consolidation. Partnering with Provision Ministry, a Worcester, Massachusetts-based organization we’ve worked with for many years, we were able to direct high-quality merchandise to veterans, homeless individuals, and families in need.

Beyond these landmark projects, we continued expanding our charitable network, adding great organizations like Materials for the Arts in New York to our roster of several hundred incredible nonprofit partners. From the YMCA Houston Afghan resettlement work in 2021, to the Meta/Facebook rebrand donations in 2022, to this year’s wildfire relief, our charitable arm remains at the heart of what we do.

The Security Imperative: Brand Protection in Financial Services

One of the most significant trends we observed in 2025 was a dramatic uptick in requests from financial services firms seeking secure disposal and recycling of branded apparel. The driver? Security concerns.

When banks undergo mergers, acquisitions, or rebrands, obsolete branded uniforms, including polos, jackets, and vests, don’t just become outdated. They become potential security risks. Bad actors could use these items to impersonate employees, potentially gaining unauthorized access to secure areas or deceiving customers.

We worked with a number of major banks this year, all of which were navigating significant brand transitions, who came to us with this exact concern. For these clients, we provided secure collection, de-branding, and either recycling or complete destruction to ensure no branded items could re-enter the marketplace. This work represents a critical evolution in how companies think about their branded merchandise, not just as marketing materials, but as security assets that require careful lifecycle management.

Expanding Beyond Traditional Swag: Safety Vests, Uniforms, and Field Gear

The security and brand protection imperative extends well beyond banking. In 2025, we significantly expanded our work recycling hard-to-process items like safety vests for companies that conduct home visits. Think Amazon delivery drivers, utility workers, or home healthcare providers. When these companies rebrand or update their gear, the old vests can’t simply be thrown away as someone could impersonate a worker to gain access to homes or secure areas.

In partnership with a leading promotional products distributor, we launched a vest trade-in and recycling program that allows workers to turn in old vests when receiving new ones. Each vest is de-labeled, mutilated to prevent reuse, and processed through our open-loop recycling network—converting polyester, nylon, and spandex into insulation materials, carpet pad fill, and industrial fibers.

We’re also thrilled to be partnering with a Fortune 100 consumer packaged goods company with an extensive field operation. Following their rebrand, they needed a comprehensive solution for managing thousands of obsolete uniforms. We’re their partner, and we’re excited to roll out this program in the coming months.

Advanced Recycling Technology: Our Largest Project to Date

2025 saw SwagCycle complete our largest and most technically sophisticated recycling project for a global professional services firm undergoing a rebrand. Multiple truckloads of branded merchandise required processing, and the mandate was clear: maximum landfill diversion.

Working with our network of specialized recycling partners, we deployed advanced technology including:

• NIR (Near-Infrared) Scanning Technology: Our partners individually scanned every unit to determine its precise material composition, then sorted each item into the appropriate recycling stream.
• Fiber-to-Fiber (F2F) Recycling: For eligible items, our partners handled all pre-processing—de-trimming, de-labeling, and removing hardware like zippers and buttons. These materials were then chemically or mechanically separated back into their original fibers and re-spun into new yarns and garments. This is our fully circular model.
• Open-Loop Recycling: Items with complex blends or material compositions were shredded and converted into materials for long-term applications such as wall insulation, automotive or gym padding, and sports equipment.
• Energy Recovery: For non-textile items that couldn’t be processed through other pathways, our partners utilized energy recovery—converting materials into usable energy rather than sending them to landfills. Materials are incinerated at high temperatures (850–1,100°C), generating steam that drives turbines to produce electricity.

This project showcased SwagCycle’s evolution into a sophisticated recycling operation capable of handling complex material streams at scale.

The Circular Economy in Action: Upcycling Projects

One of our most exciting projects demonstrates the potential of true circularity. We’re working with a global consulting firm to upcycle their old “days of service” t-shirts from past years. These shirts were taking up storage space with no practical use. We are transforming them into a bespoke line of tote bags for ongoing use within their organization.

Rather than manufacturing new items, they’re reusing what they already have in a genuinely circular way. It’s product stewardship in action, and exactly the kind of innovative thinking we love to support.

Alcohol, Beverage, and Consumer Goods: Managing Promotional Materials Responsibly

For alcohol and beverage clients, we completed numerous beverage cart recycling projects in 2025. These companies care deeply about sustainability and landfill diversion, but when a promotion ends, branded carts and related materials cannot float around the marketplace in an unmanaged way. We provide secure collection and responsible recycling that protects brand integrity while meeting environmental commitments.

We also expanded our work with consumer goods companies managing discontinued items, including products with complex components like batteries, ensuring responsible disposal of all elements through our recycling network.

Looking Ahead: Global Expansion and Continued Innovation

As we close out 2025, SwagCycle has firmly established itself as the most sophisticated landfill diversion platform for the branded merchandise industry. But we see tremendous opportunity ahead.

We intend to expand our services globally over the coming years, replicating the charitable and recycling networks we’ve built in the United States to serve companies operating across multiple continents. We’ve already completed significant international donation projects, from the Meta/Facebook donation to Giving World in the UK supporting Ukrainian refugees, to ongoing partnerships across North America, and we’re ready to scale this work.

We also plan to carefully expand our recycling and upcycling services, which help underwrite the charitable work we’re so deeply passionate about. Every recycling project creates revenue that allows us to continue facilitating donations and supporting nonprofit partners who are making a real difference in their communities.

Gratitude and Commitment

The growth we experienced in 2025 was made possible by the trust of companies who chose SwagCycle to manage some of their most sensitive brand transitions, and by the incredible network of charitable partners who distribute donated merchandise to those who need it most.

From promotional products distributors and suppliers who’ve embraced SwagCycle as an essential service for their clients, to sustainability professionals championing circular economy principles, to the banks, professional services firms, consumer goods companies, and organizations of all sizes who’ve engaged us—thank you.

When we launched SwagCycle in late 2019, our goal was to transform the branded merchandise industry by helping companies think about product stewardship from brainstorming to rebranding. Six years later, that transformation is meaningfully underway. We’ve proven that obsolete swag doesn’t have to end up in landfills, that charitable impact can scale dramatically, and that security concerns around branded merchandise require sophisticated solutions.

We’re energized by what 2026 holds, and grateful to be doing this work alongside so many committed partners.

If you’d like to learn how SwagCycle can help your company navigate a rebrand, acquisition, or simply manage surplus branded merchandise responsibly, please reach out. We’d love to connect.