Columbia recycling programme expands in US stores

Columbia Sportswear has announced the roll out of its ReThreads recycling programme in more than 100 Columbia stores across the United States to help people recycle used clothing and footwear. The programme aims to reduce textile waste by asking people to drop off garments, outerwear, and footwear (in clean, dry condition) at each of their store locations.

Once the garments and footwear are dropped in the ReThreads bins in each Columbia store, they are sent to a processing facility through I:CO, a textile recycling solutions company. Items that are still wearable are sold as second-hand goods through I:CO’s network. Non-wearable items are reused for products like cleaning cloths or recycled into fibres for products such as insulation and new fabrics.

“The issue of clothing ending up in landfills is a significant problem, and we want do our part to help conserve our material resources and reduce our collective carbon footprint,” said Columbia Sr. global corporate relations manager, Scott Welch.

According to the US Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) website, Americans discarded over 32 billion pounds of clothing, shoes and other textiles in 2014, accounting for over 6 per cent of the municipal waste stream. According to the EPA’s website, programmes like ReThreads help keep these items out of the landfill and contribute to the over 5 billion pounds of consumer textile waste being reused or recycled today.

In celebration of this ReThreads launch, Columbia will donate $1 for every pound of clothing collected at its stores until September 10, 2017. Also, for the first month of the national programme, Columbia will make a financial contribution to a non-profit organisation for every pound of clothing that is recycled and kept out of landfills. Participants in the programme will be given a token once they drop off their gently used items and can use that token to place their vote for one of the participating non-profits namely American Hiking Society, National Park Foundation and Children and Nature Network.