Author Archives: BerryKDPPmmpcp

How to Responsibly Dispose of Old Clothes

by BerryKDPPmmpcp Posted on May 1, 2019

Did you know that the typical?lifetime of a piece of clothing in an American’s closet is just?3 years??The average American throws away 70 pounds of textile waste annually; and just 15 percent of this actually gets recycled. The rest? You guessed it: landfill.

When we think of waste piling up in our landfills and our oceans, we typically envision things like plastic straws, broken electronics and dirty diapers ??not perfectly wearable clothing. But unwanted garments actually make up 5 percent of all landfills in the United States…

It’s shameful, really. And totally unnecessary!

If you’re used to?bagging up all your old clothes and dropping them off on the doorstep of your local thrift store, know that there?are other ways!?Even in the case of decade-old underwear and paint-stained t-shirts, there?are textile recyclers that will take them. Let’s take a?look at the options that are out there.

How to responsibly dispose of
clothing and textiles

What to do with clothing that is?current, but doesn’t fit or doesn’t suit you

Resell it! Recycling clothing doesn’t necessarily mean shipping it off to get broken down and remade into new fibers.?It can also include selling (and purchasing) gently used items from the secondhand market.

If you have items in great condition and want to make a little extra cash, consider one of these three options:

  1. Take clothing to your local consignment shop. They’ll put your items on the rack and, once they sell, pay you a cut of the earnings. It’s easy and a great way to support local business!
  2. Send clothing to an online reseller like thredUP.?Earn cash or store credit for items you’re no longer wearing. They’ll ship back or responsibly recycle anything they don’t think will sell.
  3. Resell clothing in your own online boutique.?Take pictures of your gently used items and post on platforms like Poshmark, eBay, Mercari or?The RealReal. Get cash each time you make a sale, minus a small percentage that goes to the platform host.

What to do with clothing?that is?dated, but still in wearable condition

Donate or upcycle?it! Thrift stores, community centers, homeless shelters and charity shops can use?your unwanted clothing to?support people and fund valuable programs. Just make sure that there is an actual need for the items you’re dropping off! This is really important.

Also, when you donate clothing, make sure it’s actually in usable, wearable condition. Many shops have policies that disallow unacceptable items like old socks or?torn up sweaters, forcing them?to send unwearable clothing to landfill. That just defeats the whole purpose!

Feeling crafty? Repurpose worn out t-shirts into cleaning rags, sew your jeans into a tote, and make drawstring produce bags from whatever’s left.

What to do with clothing that?can’t be used in its current condition

If?the clothing?you are trying to get rid of just aren’t suitable for reselling, donating or upcycling, consider shipping them to textile recycling programs like these:

Terracycle Fabrics
The Bra Recyclers
Soles 4 Souls
Wearable Collections?(NYC)
Green Tree (NYC)
GemText (PNW)
Don’t Let Fashion Go to Waste (H&M)
Reuse-A-Shoe (Nike)
Common Threads (Patagonia)
Clothes the Loop (The North Face)

Not what you were looking for??Check out these resources for more information:

Council for Textile Recycling
Secondary Materials and Recycled Textiles
Donation Town

Well, there you have it! Everything you needed to know about keeping your clothing out of the waste cycle and back into productive use. Have questions about all this? Leave them in the comments!

Link to article – 

How to Responsibly Dispose of Old Clothes

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This Train Plowing Through Snow Is Absolutely Astonishing

by BerryKDPPmmpcp Posted on February 6, 2015

Mother Jones

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There’s a strange corner of YouTube where train-spotters post their conquests in exhaustive detail. It’s one of the weirder YouTube holes I’ve been down in a while. But…oddly comforting. This video—of a Canadian National Railway locomotive making a meal out of snow drifts left by major blizzards in New Brunswick—is like something directly out of Snowpiercer, the 2013 dystopian ice age thriller set in a climate-altered future.

While certainly mesmerizing, there’s an important issue to note that has gone unremarked upon since the video went viral. It’s unclear what precisely the locomotive is carrying, but it’s definitely pulling tankers. Its cargo may very well be oil, given that its destination is St John, New Brunswick, the location of Canada’s biggest oil refinery, the Irving Oil Refinery. That refinery was the destination for the train laden with Bakken oil that derailed and exploded in Lac-Mégantic, Quebec, in July 2013. The Lac-Mégantic accident killed 47 people and prompted calls across Canada and the United States for tougher safety standards for the booming oil-by-rail network.

Mark Hallman, director of communications for Canadian National Railway, refused to give specifics about the types of cargo being pulled by the train in the YouTube clip, calling it a “mixed freight” service. But Jayni Foley Hein, an expert on energy and transportation at the Institute for Policy Integrity, says crude is one likely possibility. “Its carrying the type of tankers that generally carry oil, and given its proximity to this refinery, it’s certainly a reasonable prediction,” she said.

Despite the soaring plumes of snow, Hallman told me that the train in the video was “totally safely operated,” adding, “That’s winter in Canada. That’s what we have to deal with.” The railway’s own “Customer Safety Handbook” says that operators should take special care in wintry, snowy conditions: “Many of the service disruptions center on accumulations of snow and ice,” says the handbook. “On the track, snow mostly constitutes a problem in switches, as well as at crossings—so once the snow is cleared, the problem is solved.” In general, winter hits railway lines hard, contracting the tracks and making fractures more likely, according to Canadian National Railway.

A 10-year US Department of Transportation analysis of weather-related train accidents in America, from 1995 to 2005, found that the accidents related to snow and ice, when they did occur, often resulted in dangerous derailments. “During the winter months of December through March, the highest accident numbers arose from preexisting snow and ice conditions such as buildups that cause malfunctioning switches and derailments,” the report found.

After the Lac-Mégantic disaster, both the United States and Canada agreed to get rid of the older and more dangerous versions of the tanker involved in that tragedy, the “DOT-111.” (We covered the cons of this tanker extensively last May.) In mid-January, Canada announced it would take the tankers off the network years sooner than the United States will, putting the two countries at odds over increased safety measures on the deeply integrated system.

The dangers of carrying oil by rail have fueled a key aspect to the ongoing debate over the Keystone XL pipeline. When the US State Department issued its long-awaited environmental-impact statement on the project last year, one of its most significant findings was that if the controversial pipeline wasn’t built, oil-laden rail cars would pick up the slack. “Rail will likely be able to accommodate new production if new pipelines are delayed or not constructed,” it argued. (More recently, falling oil prices have led the EPA to question that line of reasoning.)

NBC recently reported that in America, trains spilled crude oil more often in 2014 than in any year since the government began collecting data in 1975.

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This Train Plowing Through Snow Is Absolutely Astonishing

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