The donation pick up site has become more important than ever here in the United States, especially considering the fact that as much as 95% of all of the people here in the United States will make at least one charitable donation over the course of a year. Some, of course, will end up making even more than just the one. Even if you aren’t able to donate a monetary amount, there are still ways that you can give back, such as dropping off old clothing donations to a donation pick up site near you.
Why donate your old clothes to a donation pick up site? For one thing, it’s important for many a charitable organization, as many of them thrive and even survive off of the donations that they receive over the course of the year. In some cases, the clothes that have been donated will be directly redistributed to needy people while many other places will sell them at a reduced price – and will use the profits for charitable purposes. But no matter what, there will always likely be the need for the donation pick up site – and always the need for donated clothing as well.
In addition to this, donated clothing given to any given donation pick up site is likely to have a tremendously positive environmental impact as well. After all, clothing waste is only something that has become more pronounced and problematic over the years, with the average person throwing away as many as ten full pounds of clothing each and every year here in the United States alone. This amounts to a collective 12 million tons of clothing and textile waste on the whole, which is truly concerning from an environmental standpoint.
But steps are being made to change this, even though it is also true that only about 15% of all discarded clothing is being donated, such as to a donation pick up site, instead of simply being thrown away. Already, more and more people are choosing to buy used clothing instead of consuming newly made clothing (which can be particularly detrimental from an environmental standpoint when looking at industries like that of fast fashion). For many people, used clothing is even ideal from a cost perspective as well and nowadays the average person living in the United States is actually likely to buy as much as ten pounds of used clothing over the course of 12 or so months.
Charitable donations can also extend to things like textiles as well. An average donation pick up site, for instance, is likely to be very welcoming to donations such as blankets and other textile goods, especially when they are textiles that can improve the comfort and even the safety of those who are in need. After all, far too many textile are thrown away as well, something that is particularly sad when you consider the fact that you can recycle very nearly 100% of all textile products.
This fact stands true even if the textiles and clothing in question are not in particularly good condition. These textiles can be repurposed for many other uses and all of these uses are by and large much better than simply throwing them away and sending them to a landfill. For instance, textiles can be used for the stuffing of various types of furniture, from sofas to armchairs, and this is one way that the furniture industry itself can strive to be much more environmentally friendly by cutting down significantly on the usage of new materials and instead repurpose older ones. In addition to this, old clothing and textiles that are not fit for resale can be then cut down into factory rags, where their overall quality doesn’t really matter all that much. There is no doubting the fact that this will be immensely ideal for reducing the overall amount of waste that is produced as well as for reducing the overall amount of items that are unfortunately and permanently sent to our landfills, where they will sit for centuries before being able to decompose.