Our radar for new, environmentally-conscious products and systems is always on high alert. Recently, one of our most exciting discoveries has been garment recycling programs offered by clothing brands like Marine Layer and For Days. Businesses like these are revolutionizing the fashion industry by not only eliminating their own waste, but even offering free recycling of garments from other brands!
Given our shop is involved in the fashion industry, we felt that we needed to take advantage of these garment recycling programs. For this reason, we’ve taken measures to contact these companies and verify what garments they can and can’t take (spoiler alert: they take almost everything, aside from undergarments). Additionally, we’ve been informed that the entire process is free of charge on our end – the companies offer prepaid mailers (in addition to dropboxes in some states/locations) and will even send over additional postage in case you have too many garments.
Most importantly, we’ve also done our own research to ensure that the recycling companies that are partnered with these clothing brands are doing their due diligence. For both Marine Layer and For Days, the recycling company they partner with is called Recover. The most amazing thing about this company is their rating on the The Higg Materials Sustainability Index (Higg MSI) that provides a rating of the environmental impact for a given material. Recover was rated well-below all other virgin-textile manufacturers that have been rated on this index, i.e. their impact is one of the lowest even when compared to RPET and organic bamboo, hemp, or cotton.