This originally appeared on WhatTheyThink. Copyright © 2021 WhatTheyThink. All rights reserved. Reprinted with permission
Among the many sustainability issues the textiles and apparel industry is facing, textile waste in landfills is near the top of the list. In this article, we talk with Ben Grossman about SwagCycle, his attempt to give back with a goal of landfill divergence for textile-based products, contributing to a reduced footprint and increased circularity.
- According to the Council for Textile Recycling, the average US citizen throws away 70 pounds of clothing and other textiles annually.
- The U.S. EPA estimates that textile waste occupies nearly 5% of all landfill space. While the EPA estimates that the textile recycling industry recycles approximately 3.8 billion pounds of post-consumer textile waste (PCTW) each year, this only accounts for approximately 15% of all PCTW, leaving 85% in our landfills.
Ben Grossman of Grossman Marketing Group in Boston is trying to help mitigate this textile disaster with SwagCycle, an initiative that educates people on what to do with unwanted clothing and other textiles while also providing a platform to help companies either facilitate charitable donations of their obsolete, branded merchandise, or work with his team to upcycle or recycle those items. He says, “It’s all about landfill divergence, keeping obsolete items out of landfills. And we’ve seen in our business when companies rebrand or get acquired or change marketing messaging, it often creates a lot of obsolete merchandise resulting in logoed T-shirts, water bottles, bags and more sitting in a warehouse somewhere and often headed to the landfill. We built SwagCycle to become the solution.”
According to Grossman, SwagCycle is a platform designed to help companies post the extra items they have and SwagCycle will pair those items with the appropriate charitable partner around the country, or even around the globe. Grossman adds, “If they come to come to us and say, ‘Hey, we have these shirts, but due to brand guidelines or other compliance reasons, we don’t want those shirts to live on in the marketplace, but we really don’t want to throw them away,’ we work with a network of our recycling partners to have those shirts shredded or logos removed and turned into things like painter’s rags, carpet pad fill, insulation materials, mattress fill, or if they’re polyester garments, they might get ground down and combined with other materials and get turned into products like recycled yarns. If there are not branding issues, we look for opportunities to extend their life in other ways. From a standing start a couple of years ago, at this point we’ve facilitated between $600,000 and $700,000 in charitable donations working with charities like Dress for Success, United Way, Boys and Girls Clubs, Catholic Charities and the YMCA. We’ve also kept between 300,000 and 400,000 items out of landfills, both by facilitating donations to charitable partners as well as recycling initiatives.”
Home healthcare services have also turned to SwagCycle for sustainability reasons but also from a compliance and safety perspective. Grossman explains, “We heard from a large in-home healthcare organization in the Midwest when they rebranded, and they collected all of the old branded apparel from their staff in the different states they operated in. That’s because they provide in-home healthcare services and they never wanted someone to ever pick up one of their uniforms from a charity and then impersonate one of their workers at someone’s home.”
The tie between Grossman Marketing and SwagCycle also helps drive volume to this initiative by looping in manufacturing partners, and even some competitors, in a nice overlay to the promotional products industry.
In another example, SwagCycle worked with a local initiative in Greenfield, Massachusetts, called Greening Greenfield, a 4 H program where they were looking for old t-shirts to cut up and sew together and turn into bags for senior citizens, adding, “We actually facilitated a very large donation of t-shirts from a large international technology company where they didn’t need the shirts anymore and got them over to the program. I believe we actually got them more than enough supply to last them for quite some time.”
Some of the branded clothing has also gone to the YMCA in Houston that is helping settle more than 1,000 Afghan refugees. Grossman says, “They come here with virtually nothing, and the organization was looking for everything from adult and children’s clothing to backpacks, water bottles and mugs. We also provided swag bags for volunteers in the community who are mentoring Afghan refugees. We were able to facilitate the donation of tens of thousands of much-needed, very high-quality items. It’s very gratifying to be able to leverage our infrastructure to make societal impacts as well as environmental impacts.”
There is accountability in the platform as well. Grossman notes that part of the value proposition is that SwagCycle sees the project to completion and provides imagery of shredded goods or separated logos ready for disposal. In addition, the organization is very transparent about where donations go. Dress for Success is another partner that has taken advantage of the SwagCycle platform. The organization is known for outfitting women who want to enter or re-enter the workforce, providing interview clothing and interview training. In addition to being able to facilitate the donation of high-quality clothing, SwagCycle also provided Dress for Success with a donation of high-end bound leather notebooks for clients to take with them on job interviews. Grossman says, “That way, they can go to a job interview with really high-quality items, and feel proud and get the respect they deserve.”
Other donations that have kept items out of the landfill include high-end water bottles from a company that didn’t need them anymore that were donated to kids in need, whose parents might not be able to afford such things.
SwagCycle is a great example of the growing recycle-upcycle-resale trend underway in textiles and apparel as a way to reduce the industry’s environmental footprint. We applaud them for their efforts and encourage others to look for ways to accomplish landfill divergence while filling societal needs.