Don’t bin clothes – take them to Oxfam

Oxfam has joined forces with the Recycle Now campaign in an attempt to highlight the environmental damage caused by binning unwanted clothes.


Every year over a million tones of clothes end up in landfill where they decompose to emit methane, a powerful greenhouse gas.

While recycling many materials is now second nature to most people, according to Recycle Now only a third of us consider the environmental impact of the clothes we throw away.

While studies show that two thirds of us consider ourselves ‘committed recyclers’ and are fairly good at recycling packaging waste like cardboard, bottles and empty cans, only 16% of textile waste is currently being recycled.

The campaign and Oxfam are choosing to flag up this issue for this year’s Recycle Week, June 22-28.

David McCullough, trading director at Oxfam, said: “Recycling clothes is just as important as reusing or recycling any other material.

“A huge amount of natural resources go into the production of clothing, so while it’s easy to get wrapped up in fast fashion, spare a thought for the environment, as well as your purse!

“Why not make the most of your existing wardrobe and pledge to donate what you don’t want and recycle what you can’t use this Recycle Week.”

Sam Bond

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