Where to Donate Your One-time Clothes in NYC

Photograph: Mondadori Portfolio/Mondadori via Getty Images

Why is it then difficult for New Yorkers to figure out what to practise with their old clothes? According to the NYC Department of Sanitation, collectively we send 200 million pounds of textile waste every year to the landfill. But an estimated 95 percentage of this landfilled clothing has market place value and could be recycled. What are we doing?

The DSNY suspects that people don't know how easy it is to donate discarded clothing, which is why this spring, it created a handy map list the more than than 1,000 dropoff spots for used textiles and accessories. Throwing out wearable isn't just a waste of resources; information technology's also environmentally problematic because natural fabrics like cotton fiber, wool, and silk release methane — a greenhouse gas 84 times more potent than carbon — in one case they start decomposing in a landfill. And at that place's a financial reason to try to avoid the landfill: New York City volition spend $411 meg in 2019 on landfilling waste, and the cost to ship one ton of garbage to a landfill ($74.75 in the Northeast) is projected to keep ascension.

True, donating old clothes isn't a perfect solution. Americans already donate so much of it that merely 20 to 40 per centum can be resold by U.S. thrift stores. The rest is baled up and sold for pennies per pound to local recycling centers, where it's downcycled into wiping rags or insulation, or shipped abroad for resale in developing countries — which don't necessarily benefit from this system. (Rwanda is actually planning to totally ban secondhand habiliment imports in 2019.) Unfortunately, information technology'southward pretty much impossible to find a store or charity in New York City that doesn't feed into this organisation. If nobody wants your promotional T-shirt, it's either that or the landfill, which is what NYC is trying to avoid.

If yous're trying to do the correct thing, your best bet is to shop more than sustainably. Purchase fewer, better pieces of fashion, so that your future closet clean-outs yield fewer, meliorate donations that people actually want. But in the concurrently, if you're trying to dispose of a garbage bag full of Forever 21 that you simply Kondo'd, here are the all-time ways to practise information technology.

There are two main kinds of habiliment donations. The get-go is called "in-kind," when you get your clothing into the easily of New Yorkers in need, similar the autumn coat drive for the homeless, or spring prom-dress drives. Role-advisable clothing for women can go to Dress for Success and for men to Career Gear. Baby clothing can get to Room to Grow, and your wedding gown tin go to Bridal Garden. Drop your bras at Free the Girls collection points in Journelle and Rigby & Peller stores. This type of vesture donation is pretty heartwarming — the just downside is that you often have to get out of your mode to find the right drop-off bespeak during the appointed days and hours. So plan ahead.

Donation etiquette dominion No. 1: When donating clothing to people in need, skip the cheap, trendy, torn, or stained stuff, and only donate gently used items that respect the nobility of the recipient. It should be classic, versatile, and everyday-appropriate.

A mutual misconception is that women'due south shelters beloved getting used clothing donations, but the truth is that most — if not all — shelters volition only accept new women's wear (though they will take secondhand men's basics).

"We receive more secondhand clothing for women than we're able to distribute," says James Winans, chief development officeholder at the Bowery Mission. "We're trying to communicate dignity and dearest to women who have not received a lot of dignity and love, so we provide them with new habiliment that they can experience proud of so they can get back on their feet and move frontward in life with confidence."

So cheque your local shelter's website for its in-kind donation wish list, or call up and ask what is needed and wanted before showing up with your bag o' stuff.

The second kind of article of clothing donation is for resale. Different Dress for Success, the goal of nonprofit austerity shops like the Salvation Army and Goodwill is not to give your old wearing apparel away to the needy. Instead, they sell your clothing in society to fund their services. Think about it: The $10 earned from selling a sparkly top will be much more valuable to someone in need than the sparkly height itself. For example, Housing Works sells used habiliment and home goods to fund lifesaving services for homeless and depression-income people living with and afflicted by HIV/AIDS, while Cure Thrift Shop sends funds to type ane diabetes research and advancement. If you drop your stuff off at a Greenmarket cloth drove betoken, and then the clemency GrowNYC uses the funds to back up healthy food systems in New York Metropolis. Other austerity stores provide funding to the arts, churches, or religious organizations. And so, where yous bring your article of clothing depends on what kind of nonprofit you want to support.

The nicer your clothes are, the more than money the charity tin can earn, simply austerity shop donations don't demand to exist perfect. "We e'er look for artistic means to sell damaged trade," says Katherine Oakes, associate director of marketing and communications at Housing Works. And like we said before, every NYC thrift shop passes along unsalable items to wearable recyclers.

Some more than donation etiquette tips: Definitely brand sure everything is dry, so mold doesn't ruin the whole batch. It'southward also polite to launder or dry out clean your donation if it needs it. Employees don't love sorting things reeking of B.O., and most stores and charities can't and don't launder every donation that comes in. And don't leave it exterior a store later on hours — information technology volition get rained on or picked over and strewn across the street … and become trash.

If you've done a huge closet purge or vesture drive and take several trash bags of style, some charities volition come go it from y'all. Bank check the "Just show vendors that may pick upwards" box on the DSNY donation partner page.

If you're feeling a petty needy yourself, you lot tin bring everything that might have value to Buffalo Exchange, Crossroads Trading Co. Buoy's Closet, or one of the other yellow pins on the map that signal a for-profit secondhand store. They'll sort information technology in front end of you lot and requite you either cash on the spot or shop credit. Anything they don't want to buy (which volition likely be most of it; they are picky), they'll donate for you lot to clemency.

Would it be more generous to donate everything, including the valuable stuff, straight to a charity so they can go the benefit? Admittedly. Exercise nosotros sympathise the hurting of handing over a designer pocketbook in pristine condition when your checking account is at $50? Yup. Practice what you lot demand to practice for your financial situation.

If your stuff is looking a flake ratty or came from the sale rack at Forever 21 in 2014 (eastward.g., it has zero value), bring it all to one of the many brand stores that take a take-dorsum programme (the nighttime-blueish pins on the map). Most of these stores will accept textiles (and some will have shoes) from whatsoever brand and in any condition — ripped or stained is just fine — and ship it directly to textile recycling facilities. Some brands, including H&Thousand, Kenneth Cole, and North Face, will even give you a discount on your side by side purchase as a reward.

J. Crew, Madewell, Levi'southward, and rag & os will accept any old denim and recycle information technology into insulation, which is then passed forth to community organizations for construction projects. Eileen Fisher and Patagonia take back but their own clothing so they can repair, upcycle, or recycle information technology before reselling it in their own stores. And Uniqlo works with NGOs to distribute its former wearable items to refugees and disaster victims worldwide and recycle the rest into fuel pellets.

Drop-off bins are definitely the laziest, er, easiest mode to become rid of clothing, short of putting it in the trash. They're the dark-green pins that blanket the map in the iv boroughs. Keep in mind that these are not all charities. Back in 2014, in that location was a spate of news stories nearly how many clothing donation bins are a scam and how the clothing recycling business organization is rife with bad actors. If that bothers yous, you can find a bin associated with Helpsy, which, yes, is a for-profit recycler but is the only ane that is a certified B Corp. Last winter, information technology helped out the New York Cares coat drive by buying dorsum 44,000 winter jackets from textile recyclers and delivering them, pro-bono, to over 300 charities.

Helpsy volition accept whatsoever wear, accessories, and textiles, but does prefer that the clothes are make clean and dropped off in a sealed plastic bag. "If clothes are loose, they get dirty and wet in the bins and become trash," Helpsy founder Rachel Kibbe says.

And, yous know, you would never have to shlep again if y'all had a reFashionNYC bin right in your building. The city will drop a bin off — for costless! — at flat buildings with more than than ten units, office buildings, schools, gyms, fashion companies, laundromats, or hotels. Put in a request here.

Then, remember this next time you lot suspension in front end of a store having a basement-bargain clearance sale. There'south probably a thrift store right down the street stuffed with style from other New Yorkers for a similar or cheaper cost — peculiarly if the DSNY'south donation entrada has any success.

Where to Donate Your Sometime Clothes in NYC