CTR launches clothing recycling initiative

“In the United States, the average person discards 70 pounds of their old clothing, shoes and household textiles in their local landfill each year,” says Eric Stubin, chairman of the Council for Textile Recycling (CTR). The CTR, a nonprofit organization promoting post-consumer textile recycling, recently launched a website to educate the public on recycling all clothes and textiles, not just those that are “gently worn.” “Our goal is to have zero post-consumer textile waste going into landfills by 2037,” says Stubin, a far cry from today’s current 15 percent recycling rate for post-consumer textiles. The CTR effort involves consumers, manufacturers, charities, retailers and recyclers in its campaign to eliminate the more than 21 billion pounds of textile waste that the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency estimates are landfilled each year.