In honor of America Recycles Day, celebrated annually on November 15th, SalemRecycles is partnering with Goodwill Massachusetts and SMART (Secondary Materials and Recycled Textiles Association) to host the City of Salem’s 6th Clothing and Household Textiles Recycling Drive. It will be held:
This Saturday, November 19
Riley Plaza (across from the Post Office)
8:00 AM - 3:00 PM
It is your opportunity to donate all usable and questionable items in one central location.
What began as a program to educate the citizens of Salem that used household textiles and clothing can be reused or repurposed, has become over the course of 5 years a sort of pilgrimage. Fittingly it is celebrated the Saturday before Thanksgiving and it has grown with each passing year. Contributors come by car, truck, bicycle, and even by foot. They come because they know those questionable items they don’t think have value can make a difference to someone else.
Do we save the t-shirt with the small stain? Do we hang up the sweater that needs new buttons - the one we keep re-hanging with the belief that this year will be the year we fix it? The items we have in our closets that we feel are not worthy of giving to charity, the old handbag, the belt with the broken buckle, what do we do with these?
This year, as you sort through your “not so wonderful” items, keep in mind that the City of Salem has come up with a solution to help ease your mind and keep those items from heading for the trash. Every week we recycle our papers, glass and metal, but we tend to overlook the textiles we have in our homes.
While most of us are familiar with Goodwill, a charitable industry that provides job training to benefit hundreds of thousands of people each year, many of us are unfamiliar with SMART. Since 1932 SMART has been working with organizations such as Goodwill to recycle, re-use and repurpose all clothing and household textiles that might otherwise end up in the trash.
SMART members, in concert with the charitable industry, divert 2.5 billion lbs. of waste that would otherwise fill our landfills each year. These charitable industries rely on the revenue produced when SMART members buy the unusable textiles to help fund their ongoing community based programs such as the Goodwill job training center right here in Salem. Items such as clothing, dish cloths, curtains, and even shoes can be repurposed into other items such as rags, insulation and carpet underlayment. As long as these are clean and dry (a must) they can find a second purpose.
To find a complete list of all acceptable pieces that you can donate please visit
www.salem.com/recycling. And to learn more about other environmentally friendly programs and resources in Salem, please visit our website at
www.greensalem.com.
Please call 978-619-5679 for any specific questions, or e-mail
jrose@salem.com
Read more:
http://www.salem.com/node/97253
