by Adam Baruchowitz | Jun 20, 2013
Today we’d like to spotlight one of Wearable’s all-star collectors. Erika Waldron of Beacon, New York, reached out to us a few months ago looking to host a clothing drive in an effort to help the environment and raise money for her child’s elementary school.
Erika’s clothing drive collected an outstanding 5,250 pounds of textiles and raised $520 for Sargent Elementary School.
We interviewed Erika recently to learn all about her clothing drive and what made it a such a success.
1) How did you hear about Wearable Collections?
I don’t remember exactly. I think I found the link on a NYC recycling site or something similar.
2) What made you want to host a clothing drive?
I do not like to throw things in the garbage which could have another use. I was ecstatic to find Wearable Collections. I am also a parent and PTO member so this seemed like a great opportunity to recycle and raise money for school programs.
3) What people or organizations/institutions assisted you in the clothing drive?
The Sargent Elementary School PTO volunteers helped with our drive.
4) Was the clothing drive for the benefit of any particular individual or foundation, etc.?
Yes. The funds raised benefited the Sargent Elementary PTO which sponsors field trips, classroom supplies, school assemblies, etc.
5) Was it difficult to organize the clothing drive?
No. There were very few steps to organizing our clothing drive. It was much less work than some of the other PTO events.
6) What was your favorite part of the clothing drive?
The positive community reaction is the best part. People expressed their gratitude for the chance to recycle textiles.
7) If you had any advice for other individuals interested in hosting a clothing drive, what would it be?
Try hosting a drive at least twice. The second year could be better than the first. People will tell their friends. Someone will have missed it but want to donate the next year. People who remembered last year’s drive started contacting me in January and February to see if we were doing it again.
8) What do you think was the key to hosting such a successful clothing drive?
Advertising was the key. We had announcements in the local paper, a radio station, flyers in businesses and parks. Flyers went home with students. We put up flyers in Beacon and neighboring towns.
by Adam Baruchowitz | May 30, 2013
Exciting times here in Wearable land. We are launching Walkable Collections, a division of Wearable that is dedicated solely to your soles. We have always accepted your shoes and sneakers at Wearable and you can continue to recycle them as you always have. However, by creating a division dedicated just to shoes and sneakers, we are capable of keeping more footwear out of the landfills and on people’s feet. Of course, this also enables us to dedicate more funds to our amazing partners who have helped make Wearable Collections such a success.
A Walkable Collections Shoe Bin
Our plan is to make Walkable Collections a national program so that anyone can participate. Whether you are a hipster in Williamsburg just looking to recycle a pair of old sneakers or a middle school in Arizona that would like to host a shoe drive, we will find a way to meet your shoe recycling needs. For starters, NYC residents can leave their shoes in any number of our signature drop boxes and we will work with individuals and organizations outside of New York to make sure we get those shoes off your hands (and feet) with no hassle.
Please visit WalkableCollections.com to find out more info about this incredible new program. We promise that Walkable will follow in the footsteps of Wearable, with the same service and the same mission. We are also adding some twists this time around, such as the ability of donors to choose where the funds from their recycled shoes and sneakers will be donated. Stay tuned!
by Adam Baruchowitz | May 30, 2013
Hot off the success of our 2012 greenmarket expansion, Wearable Collections and our fabulous partner GrowNYC are adding even more greenmarkets to our roster. In 2012, the textiles collected at greenmarkets surpassed the 2 million lbs mark. That’s a whole lotta clothes! We are very proud to announce that we will be expanding our service to reach 26 markets this year. To think this all started with a pilot program back at the end of 2008. 5 years later we have millions of pounds under our belt and tens of thousands of people who have recycled their clothes with us. Its hard to believe.
To find a list of markets, hours and dates of operation please check HERE. You can also find them at GrowNYC’s website HERE.
by Adam Baruchowitz | May 30, 2013
We continue to be amazed by the amount of clothes we are able to collect with our school partners. From pre-schools and elementary schools to universities and grad-schools, our collections run the gamut. It is clear to us that schools are one of the cornerstones of any community and we are so proud to be engaged with so many wonderful folks through the school clothing recycling program. Not only have we been able to keep nearly 100,000 lbs of clothing out of landfills in 2013 through the program but also have raised thousands of dollars for our school partners. A clothing drive is a great way to educate students on the need to recycle, and also a great way to raise funds for your school.
Its not too early to put a drive on our calendar. Please email us info@wearablecollections.com Our goal is to host a drive with every school in the NYC metro area. So sign your childs school up! Their schoolmates’ families will thank you.
by Adam Baruchowitz | Dec 18, 2012
Wearable Collections doesn’t really like to toot our own horn but as we were going through the books to begin closing out 2012, we saw a number that struck us. Over the past two years Wearable Collections has been able to generate over $100,000 for our partners!
Our partners cover the spectrum from national leaders such as The Miami Project to Cure Paralysis and Habitat for Humanity, to local stars GrowNYC and City Harvest, and some of our great friends at community groups such as Pratt Towers and the dozens of schools we work with. The list is too long to name everybody but please know this it is our honor to service and support all of you. It is because of you that we have been able to divert 6 million lbs of textiles from landfills since our inception. We are really proud to be a cog in such a productive engine. Thanks for participating in it with us.
by Adam Baruchowitz | Dec 12, 2012
We want to congratulate our friends over at Hopewell Valley Regional School District in New Jersey for once again leading the way in clothing collections.
The team at Hopewell Valley has proven that they are green machine by collecting 13,745 lbs of textiles over the course of several days in early November.
Despite all the destruction and damage that Superstorm Sandy wreaked on our area just a week earlier, Hopewell Valley was able to engage their community in a highly successful way. Wearable Collections salutes you and all your accomplishments and are thankful to have partners like you. We hope to bring the model of collection that Hopewell Valley has established and bring it to many other school districts in the future.
by Adam Baruchowitz | Dec 8, 2012
We love to give props were props is due. While we love each and every one of our partners, we feel it is important to give credit to those buildings that produce week in and week out. We do this list every year so you may see some familiar names, but there are some new buildings on the list and a new champ so take a bow residents of The Verdesian in Battery Park City, you have diverted the most textile waste from landfills out of all of our 200-plus buildings for 2012.
Here are our top 12 producers:
1) The Verdesian, 211 North End Ave. – 10425 lbs
2) 45 Fairview Avenue – 9900 lbs
3) The Solaire, 20 River Terrace – 9825 lbs
4) Hillman Housing, 530 Grand Ave, bldg F – 9725 lbs
5) The Epic, 125 W 31 st. – 8950 lbs
6) The Vanguard, 77 W 24th st. – 8625 lbs
7) 50 Murray st – 8275 lbs
8) 180 Riverside Dr -8100 lbs
9) 160 Riverside Dr. – 8075 lbs
10) The Bromley, 225 W 83rd st. – 8000 lbs
11) The Helena, 601 W 57th st. – 7900 lbs
12) The Langston, 68 Bradhurst – 7525 lbs
To all the residents of these buildings, we tip our caps to you. Thanks for your efforts. If you are reading this list with envy, and wondering how your building can get a bin, please fill out a request on our website and we will do our best to bring our convenient service to you and your neighbors. Thanks to all of our partners who have helped us once again to have a record breaking year.
by Adam Baruchowitz | Nov 29, 2012
Here is a link to an article written by Wearable Collections founder posted in Good.is
November 11, 2012 at 9:45 AM
As summer eases into autumn, many people will be cleaning out their closets, swapping out warm-weather duds for cold-weather gear. In the midst of the swapping process, they will likely be confronted with clothing that has been laying around, unworn for several years. This is when the purge begins. The wonderful feeling of getting rid of items you no longer can use that are taking up valuable space.
Luckily, there are bountiful options for disposing of your unwanted clothing. Unfortunately, what often comes alongside options is confusion about making the right decision. Some of those options are: bring them to a local thrift store, find a local charity that accepts clothing, or dispose of them in the nearest drop box. Many people would like to believe that their donations go directly to someone in need, and sometimes they do, especially when you donate directly to a shelter. The vast majority of donations will be re-sold in markets all along the way.
Though clothing isn’t often mentioned in recycling periodicals with other materials such as glass, metals, or paper, it is a commodity just like each of them and is thus governed by the same economic tenets.
The price of used clothing varies as supply and demand increase and decrease.
I cannot say why textiles lie outside the purview of the recycling industry but it likely has something to do with the fact that the roots of the industry are firmly based around charitable giving. As municipalities become more aware though of the amount of textiles in their waste stream—about 5.3 percent according to the EPA—they are becoming more involved in the diversion of textiles from landfills, and likely a more transparent market will arise.
When you bring your clothing to a local thrift store, they will sort the items into different grades of how they believe the items can sell. They will try to sell what they can in their store, as this is where they can receive the greatest value for the donated clothing. However, these thrift stores often receive much more clothing than they can actually sell at their storefronts. This overage of clothes will then head to exporters, who will pay a wholesale rate and have distribution all around the world.
If you decide to bring it to a local charity—such as a church or community group—they will certainly do their best to distribute it to those in need locally. But these groups have limited space and capacity to handle the volumes of textiles that threaten to enter our wastestream. As they reach their capacity they may rely on large scale collectors to haul their oversupply away, and once again these goods will be destined for exporters who have distribution all around the world.
Another option would be to bring the clothes to a local drop box. These boxes are run by both for-profits and nonprofits and sometimes even for-profits that benefit nonprofits by donating a portion of the proceeds. If you choose this option and are concerned about who benefits, read the fine print on the boxes or websites displayed on the bins, as we all are familiar with some exposé on local news of used clothing collectors misrepresenting themselves.
Once collected, the clothing in these boxes is brought to a sorting facility, either run by the collector or purchased by a third party who will handle the sorting and exporting of the clothing. Each organization handles the proceeds from this sale differently, but the exporters mostly have similar goals, to get the best prices they can for the various goods, first here in the United States, then by entering the international supply chain.
Though there are various intermediate steps, it is clear that the majority of donated items will eventually enter the international used-clothing supply chain.
Some people are disheartened by this news as they would like to think that their donations are used locally by someone in need. One way or another they are, though. It may not be the actual clothing donation that benefits those in needs but often it is the proceeds from the sale of the clothing that supports the charitable missions.
The textile recycling industry creates jobs both in America and abroad. By keeping the clothing out of the waste stream, the industry saves municipalities the cost of hauling and disposing some 3.8 billion pounds of textile waste annually, according to SMART the Secondary Materials and Recycled Textile Association, while creating a $1 billion industry.
These numbers are only the tip of the iceberg. We are all becoming more aware of the value of items in our waste stream and clothing may be the clearest example.
Photo via Flickr (cc) user net_efekt.
Adam Baruchowitz is founder and CEO of Wearable Collections, an NYC-based clothing recycling company that makes it as easy to recycle clothing as it is to recycle cans, paper, and glass. A former day trader and economics graduate of Brandeis, he began Wearable Collections as a fundraising tool for charities when one of my best friends and founding partners was hit by a car that left him paralyzed below the chest. We divert clothing from landfills and dedicate a portion of the proceeds to our partnering charities.
by Adam Baruchowitz | Nov 6, 2012
In a show of our commitment to our community and to those affected by Hurricane Sandy, Wearable Collections has decided to raise the amount we pay our partner charities from 5 cents per pound collected to 10 cents per pound until December 31, 2012. We know many of you are struggling in the aftermath of the storm and we would like to do our part. Whether you are a school, community group, church, temple or other relief organizations, please fill out the form on our Host A Drive page and we will help coordinate from there.
We are getting tons of calls and emails from groups about how they can work with Wearable Collections to help those in need. YES, we can help you with the over-abundance of clothes that you have collected. We are, however, 
best suited to take these items and turn them into monetary donations for the organization of your choice. We will collect the items, weigh them and donate 10 cents per pound.
If you are a community group or school and are looking for a way to support relief efforts, we suggest you host a clothing drive and we will direct funds to the organization of your choice. The added benefit to all of this is that we will also be keeping these items out of landfills.
If you know of a group in need of specific clothing items, such as jackets or blankets, we can speak with our sorting facility and find a way to facilitate the distribution to those in need.
Following, is an overview of how we operate and our mission. Wearable Collections sets up clothing collection bins and hosts clothing drives throughout the NYC metro area and northeast, to make it convenient for our partners to recycle their clothing and textiles. Our focus has always been to keep clothing and textiles out of landfills, and facilitate other uses for them, such as: being re-used as second hand clothes (45%), recovered as wiping rags (30%) , reprocessed into fiber products such as stuffing, insulation and sound proofing (20%). Out of all the textiles discarded in America, it is estimated that only 15% gets recovered from organizations like ours, while 85% are headed towards landfills. Wearable Collections’ goal is to educate people on the need to recycle clothes and to provide convenient drop off locations to actually recycle them.
Once the items are collected in an efficient manner, they are brought to a sorting facility that pays Wearables a market rate for credential (untouched) clothing. We then dedicate 5 cents per pound to our partner charities. Wearable Collections is a for-profit business that has a social mission of supporting our charitable partners. The sorting facility plays an important role in the recycling process. They break down all the bags collected and organize them into separate grades. They have customers on the other end who have various demands for each of the graded materials. Through the Wearable Collections network, most of the materials re-used as second hand clothes are sent to emerging markets in Central and South America, where they are sold to a final consumer.
We hope by describing how our business operates it is clear how important sorting the goods is to the distribution process. We receive bags of clothing that have not been touched or sorted. We have no idea what are in these bags until they have been sorted. This takes a lot of time and labor and therefore has costs involved.
All of our trucks were submerged in water due to the storm and we are trying to get up to speed with our service. We are working as fast as we can do get up to speed with our usual collections. Also, our sorting facility was knocked out of power for a week and they too are slowly getting back to normal production. We are trying our best to accommodate all requests and appreciate your patience.
The Robin Hood Foundation has put together a growing list of organizations looking for other kinds of donations, if you know of others please add to comments or email us at info@wearablecollections.com
Thanks for all your support and best wishes on a speedy recovery.
by Adam Baruchowitz | Nov 5, 2012
The Wearable team would like to send out our deepest sympathies to all of those affected by the storm. We stand in solidarity with all of you and pledge that when we get back up and running we will do what we can to support our community as a whole.
Wearable Collections incurred some serious damage to our fleet of trucks, all of which were submerged under 4 ft of water. Salt water is not very kind to the internals of vehicles. As it stands now, all of our trucks are out of commission. These trucks are the lifeline of our company, so it will take us a little while to get back up and running. We have already received great support from our friends, including Movers Not Shakers, who will lend a hand and even a truck to our business. We expect this to be a difficult week in regards to getting vehicles and gas but know that we are making our best efforts to service all buildings and organizations that we have commitments to.
Thanks for your patience and best wishes on a speedy recovery to you all.
Page 6 of 8« First«...45678»
Today we’d like to spotlight one of Wearable’s all-star collectors. Erika Waldron of Beacon, New York, reached out to us a few months ago looking to host a clothing drive in an effort to help the environment and raise money for her child’s elementary school.
RECENT COMMENTS