SPREE - look good. do good.

Most of our merchandise consists of unwanted, gently used clothing that we purchase in bulk from various local and national charities that fundraise through household items/clothing donation programs. We carefully sort and cull through huge volumes of merchandise to find those items our customers are interested in and that meet our quality and condition standards. Through our investment in processing, retailing and merchandising, we can give a second life to many of these items and keep them out of landfills.

What happens to the stuff that doesn't sell in our stores? We do our best to keep the majority of these unusable or unsold goods out of landfills. How? We are always on the look out for other users and new uses for this merchandise. Those Little League jerseys, for example, might be sold, in bulk, to brokers who ship merchandise like this around the world to various developing nations. Or, they might be sold to material wholesalers who make commercial rags and other fiber based products. Uncle Frank's blue suede shoes might be purchased, along with other leather goods, by brokers who have found markets for used leather goods.

SMART, the Secondary Materials and Recycled Textiles Association, offers the following information on it's website at http://www.smartasn.org/consumers/index.cfm

You can reduce the amount of textile products going into landfills. Clothing and household textiles currently make up 4.67% of the waste stream. The used clothing industry provides lower income people around the world with affordable clothing. Clothing that is damaged, is recycled into wiping rags, paper, yarn, insulation and padding for carpets. Here are some more textile recycling facts

• Reduces the need to create more landfill space.
• Reduces pollution created by incinerators.
• Provides low cost clothing to low income households all over the world.
• Polyester, the most commonly used manufactured fiber, is made from petroleum in an energy-intensive process that emits volatile organic compounds and gases into the air. The process so uses a large amount of water for cooling.
• The manufacturing of nylon emits nitrous oxide, a greenhouse gas with a carbon footprint 310 times that o of carbon dioxide.
• Rayon, derived from wood pulp, often relies on clearing old growth forests to make way for water-hungry calyptus trees, from which the fiber is derived.
• Cotton, found in most clothing, is the most pesticide-dependent crop in the world. It takes one-third of a pound of pesticides to make one t-shirt.
• When manufacturing clothes, dyeing requires a hefty amount of water, and its fixatives often flow into rivers and sewers. Also, all "easy care" and "permanent press" cottons are treated with formaldehyde.

Recycling textiles does much more than this. It saves the environment from tons of harsh chemicals, waste products and waste water used in the manufacturing of clothing as well. Visit Earth911.com for more information.

To learn more about textile recycling and repurposing, SMART's website offers the following links:

Read these books

Travels of a T-shirt by Pietra Rivoli, professor at Georgetown University Salaula: The World of Secondhand Clothing and Zambia by Karen Tranberg Hansen, professor Northwestern University

Listen to a discussion between Pietra Rivoli and students
http://fora.tv/2006/08/30/Travels_if_a_T-Shirt_in_the_Global_Economy

See how kids set a recycling "record."

Kids from all over the country participated, sending in one pair of jeans or truck loads of jeans collected in community projects. The clothing will be recycled by COTTON. FROM BLUE TO GREEN.®, and made into home insulation for houses damaged in natural disasters. http://kidsblogs.nationalgeographic.com/greenscene/recycling

Dr. Hawley's article on the Economic Impact of Textile and Clothing Recycling

http://www.magnetmail.net/images/clients/KingString/attach/SMARTJanaHawleyREV.pdf

A sample from the book Sustainable Textiles: Life Cycle and the Environmental Impact

http://www.magnetmail.net/images/clients/KingString/attach/
SMARTSubstainableTextilesLifeCycleandSample.pdf

Dr. Hawley's article: Digging for Diamonds: A Conceptual Framework for Understanding Reclaimed Textile Products

http://www.magnetmail.net/images/clients/KingString/attach/SMARTDiggingforDiamonds
AConceptualFramework.pdf

Dr. Hawley's article: Textile Recycling: A System Perspective

http://www.magnetmail.net/images/clients/KingString/attach/
SMARTEXTILERECYLINGASYSTEMPERSPECTIVE.pdf