Rubbish Removal: Textile Recycling Reduces Environmental Impact

Rubbish Removal: Textile Recycling Reduces Environmental Impact

By Melanie Lepow 

Clearabee, an on demand rubbish removal business based in England, has rapidly grown to be a global leader in social entrepreneurship. Clearabee has proven in only six years that acting in a socially conscious way is not only good for society and the environment, it is also the key to their economic success. An excellent example of this is textile recycling.

What Is Textile Recycling?

Textile recycling is the process of breaking down old clothing, linens, bedding, curtains, and other fabrics into their basic fiber components and then using these basic components to make brand new textile products. Once the textiles are broken into their basic components, they can also be used to make other useful and long-lasting fibrous products such as home insulation. This process is also sometimes called fiber processing, or fiber reprocessing.

What Are the Benefits of Textile Recycling From Rubbish Removal?

1. Keeps Textiles Out of Landfills

The most obvious benefit of textile recycling is it keeps textile items, like old clothing, out of the landfills! You may not realize this but the textile industry is one of the most wasteful, environmentally denigrating industries in the world. According to an April 6, 2017 article in The Guardian, 235 million pieces of clothing will end up in landfills in England. These decomposing clothes and other rotting landfill textiles produce methane gas which is sent into the atmosphere and contributes to greenhouse effect.

2. Saves Millions of Gallons of Water

To produce one kilogram (about 2.2 pounds) of cotton, it takes about 20,000 liters of water. That's about 5300 gallons! To make a standard pair of jeans for an average sized person, it takes about 1800 gallons of water. An average t-shirt takes about 400 gallons of warer. If you recycle textiles instead of always starting with new fibers, you don't use all this water in the making of garments! You'll also greatly reduce the need for rubbish removal.

3. Uses Far Less Energy

Let's make no bones about it: textiles are energy hogs! Think about the lifetime of a simple cotton shirt. It takes petro to transport the cotton from the cotton farm to the clothing manufacturing plant. It takes even more fossil fuels to run all the factory equipment in the process of making the shirt: washing the cotton, sizing it, bleaching it, rinsing out the bleach, dying the fabric, printing the shirt, and then putting on the labels. Next, more energy has to be used to get this brand new clothing to the retail shops where consumers purchase it and spend more money driving it home. However, here's the good news -- excellent news in fact -- it takes on 2.6 percent of the energy needed to make a new shirt to bring a used shirt to market! Buying used clothes is another form of textile recycling and it's a highly responsible and ethical thing to do!

4. Reduces the Use of Pesticides and other Toxic Chemicals

According to the National Wildlife Federation (NWF), forty-four million pounds of pesticides, most of them known carcinogens, are applied to the United State's cotton crop every year! Two billion pounds of chemical fertilizers are spread on the cotton fields. Defoliants, known neurotoxins that harm people in nearby communities, are used to kill the leaves before cotton pickers, who are also harmed by these nasty chemicals, go in to pick this valuable commodity. Sadly, organic cotton which does not use these chemicals is only 0.1 percent of the world's production of cotton. However, the other way around this problem is textile recycling! If you buy a used cotton shirt, you'll automatically reduce the chemical impact of growing new non-organic cotton to make you a new shirt!

How Does Clearabee Contribute To Textile Recycling?

Clearabee is all in for textile recycling on their rubbish removal jobs. They divert clothing from the landfills by taking the clothes they pick up in rubbish piles to places that will either break the clothing down into basic fibers to create new textiles or take them to be repaired and sold in charity shops and second hand stores.

You may be wondering how a company that gets paid to remove rubbish would stay as profitable if they take the extra time and effort to divert textiles from the landfill. The key is this. By "preaching the gospel" of sustainability, and really believing in these principles and living by them, Clearabee has gained the respect of an entire nation of loyal customers who believe in what they're doing. In fact, their customers cheer them on by always using their rubbish removal services when they need to clear any type of rubbish and by recommending Clearabee's services to family and friends. Frankly too, Clearabee gets a lot of free press because of how they conduct their business in a socially responsible way. They are also solving a Herculean social problem that local councils cannot seem to rectify.