Why should I donate clothing, shoes and home linens?

Clothing and textiles make up 5.7% of NYC’s municipal waste stream, which amounts to nearly 200,000 tons of textiles in the landfill every year (DSNY, “Waste Characterization Study,” 2017). By donating your textiles, you extend their lifespan and reduce their environmental impact. 96% of our collections find a new purpose through reuse as secondhand clothing or recycling into secondary products.

What can I do with clothing that is not reusable?

We can accept items with holes or stains. Anything that cannot be reused as clothing will be repurposed into rags or shredded. 

If your materials need to be 100% recycled for proprietary reasons, rather than reused as secondhand items, we charge a small fee per pound. This is due to the fact that profit of reuse subsidizes the cost of recycling. Let us know what your particular needs are and we will find the best way to repurpose your materials.

What is the difference between reuse and recycling?

Reuse is the most sustainable way to handle clothing that is no longer useful to you, as it becomes new clothing to someone else without the need for more natural resources, beside the energy of transportation. Reuse as secondhand drives the whole clothing and shoe recycling industry. Recycling allows your unusable, discarded clothing to be broken down into a basic resource for new purposes.

However, the most effective way to reduce the environmental footprint of our clothing consumption is the simplest: consuming less new clothing. We encourage people to buy secondhand clothing and organize clothing swaps with your friends and community. Check out our events calendar for gatherings that support this goal, including clothing swaps and DIY upcycling events.

Is my donation tax deductible?

As a for-profit business, we are not able to hand out tax deductible receipts with our home pickups and drives or greenmarkets

Do I have to pay to implement a clothing recycling program in my building?

No, we provide building bins and weekly pickups as a free service. We only ask that you collaborate with us to make the implementation process as smooth as possible.

Do you have any drop-off locations in NYC?

Yes, we collect at 8 weekly Greenmarkets throughout the city, in partnership with GrowNYC.

What items does Wearable Collections accept?

Wearable Collections accepts all used, freshly laundered clothing as well as shoes, sneakers, accessories, hats, belts and handbags. We also accept household linens such as sheets, curtains and towels. 

We do not accept carpeting, rugs, bath mats, comforters, pillows, large luggage, fabric or scraps of any kind, including pre-recycled insulation materials.

Where do my clothing and shoes go once I’ve donated them?

What we collect travels to a sorting facility where it is evaluated for its secondary uses. About 50% of collections will be reused as clothing and sold in secondhand markets throughout the world, providing access to affordable apparel. The rest are upcycled as rags, or shredded into fiber products, used for purposes like insulation, carpet padding and mattress stuffing. About 4% cannot be repurposed, but we are always seeking new solutions to close that margin. These percentages are consistent with the industry standard for used clothing and textiles.

Is Wearable Collections a nonprofit organization?

Wearable Collections is not a nonprofit organization—we are a for-profit waste management company with environmental sustainability as our priority. Our goal is to serve New Yorkers by diverting the city’s textile waste stream. We do this by providing an economically and ecologically sustainable, efficient, and convenient network of clothing collection. As a social enterprise, Wearable Collections was originally founded to raise money for the Miami Project To Cure Paralysis, an organization and cause of personal importance to our founders. 

As we have evolved to be an environmental business, we support the communities we operate within in several ways. We support GrowNYC through providing collections at their Greenmarkets; in school drives, we give back a portion of the proceeds per pound to the school; through corporate drives, we donate a portion of the proceeds to a charity of the organization’s choice. Finally, the clothing we collect and transport goes on to serve a demand in emerging markets around the world creating opportunities for small business owners. 

Does the Wearable Collections program exist outside of NYC?

We serve NYC and the surrounding metro area (Long Island, Westchester County and Northern NJ). For our corporate apparel solutions, we are able to work with brands across the Northeast if they can meet a minimum load amount. For any other questions, please contact us.

Will Wearable Collections come to my home for a pick up?

Yes, sign up here for a home pickup. You meet strict pick up minimums, which you can read about here, in order to ensure that the pickup is both convenient for you and efficient for us. If your materials don’t meet this volume, we encourage you to join forces with your neighbors or bring your donation to one of our collection sites