Help the schools by recycling old clothes, shoes and textiles (while donating the good stuff for re-use)

Left: Getting rid of old clothes and accessories? Dump them off in one of these bins at Southborough public schools. You’ll support the schools while helping the environment.

A member of SOS (Southborough Organization for Schools) asked me to share information about an ongoing fundraiser.

I shared news when it launched, which I realize now was six years ago. That means a whole lot of readers may have kids in our schools that didn’t at that time.

So here’s a reminder of the NSBORO schools’ textile recycling fundraiser.

A collection bin for textile donations is located in the parking lot of each Northborough and Southborough public school. SOS and APTO (Algonquin Parent Teacher Organization) are paid by the pound for the items collected.

It’s an easy, guilt free way to rid your house of junk and the good stuff, too. (By junk, I don’t mean your old lamps or dishes. That’s what the swap shop’s for!) It’s limited to textiles but that covers a lot of ground. 

As long as they are clean, dry, and bagged, you can drop off items including clothing, used shoes, pocketbooks, accessories, blankets, linens and STUFFED ANIMALS (something I found impossible to donate elsewhere no matter how untouched!) 

It also covers items clearly not good enough for reuse. The FAQs for partnering vendor, Baystate Textiles, explains that even ripped and stained textiles are fine to donate (as long as they are clean and dry):

If it can’t be reused, it gets recycled into wiping rags, or broken down into fibers and made into new materials.

SOS_textiles_donations_flyerFAQs also explain how the donations help the environment:

Why is it important to recycle my textiles?
Every year, the average person disposes of 81 lbs of textiles. Only 15% is being reclaimed or recycled, while the other 85% spends around 40 years decomposing in the landfills. That is 26 billion pounds of textiles releasing harmful CO2 and methane into our atmosphere.

Click here for the full list of accepted (and not accepted) donation items. (Most of items they list that they don’t accept are pretty obvious, since you’d be hard pressed to shove a mattress or lawn chair into the textile bin!)

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Jake W
2 years ago

Thanks for this reminder! I didn’t realize what could go in those bins and this will have me reconsidering what I would have otherwise thrown away, when it could’ve useful here!

Nancy Kolk
2 years ago

I was not even aware of this. My kids were already out of the school system when this launched, and I somehow missed any notices about it. I will now start disposing old clothing that isn’t good enough to be donated, into this textile bin instead of the trash.

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