It is estimated that we throw away as much as one million tonnes of textiles every year. When old clothes and textiles are thrown away, they are most likely to end up in a landfill site. Most of this comes from household sources, but it also comes from fabric and garment factories.

Landfill

Most of the waste produced in the UK ends up in landfill sites. Landfill sites are large areas where land is replaced by rubbish or waste. Landfill sites pose a threat to local ground water supplies. Every time it rains, water drains through all the rubbish, and picks up chemicals and hazardous materials from whatever is in the landfill site. This includes chemicals used in clothing and textiles such as dyes and bleaches.

Here are a few tips that you can implement to help reduce your impact to the environment.

1. Take old clothes to clothes banks & charity shops

Instead of throwing away your old clothes in the rubbish, you can take them to ‘clothes banks’ or charity shops.
The Salvation Army, Scope, and Oxfam use a clothing bank scheme. Scope also runs a national door-to-door textile collection service. There are about 3,000 textile banks nationwide, and only about a quarter of the space in clothes banks is currently used so there is lots of room for more clothes.