Goodwill is continuing to develop its potential as a hub for not only reusing textiles but also recycling them with a new multi-year pilot program.
In collaboration with waste hauler WM and textile recycler Reju, Goodwill is looking to create a model for regional textile collection, sortation, reuse and recycling that uses existing collection infrastructure and plays on each partner’s strengths, Jen Lake, president and CEO of Goodwill of the Finger Lakes, said in an interview with Resource Recycling. Lake also acts as chair of the Goodwill Circularity Subcommittee.
“Goodwill can be the channel for reuse and repair and WM can be the conduit into the recycling stream, ensuring that the components are able to go to a circular solution and go into being the new towels of tomorrow,” she said.
Building on past projects, Goodwill employees will sort and grade donated textiles. The items eligible for resale will continue along Goodwill’s normal retail path, while a portion of the remaining textiles will go to Reju, which performs textile-to-textile recycling.
While Reju is still building a U.S.-based facility, it just opened its Regeneration Hub Zero in Frankfurt, Germany, in September. The facility will start producing recycled PET in 2025, according to a press release.
Lake called the pilot “a really exciting opportunity that really allowed each partner to leverage their strength.”
Goodwill has been a leader in reuse for decades, she added, and the organization wants to help make sure clothing goes to reuse first, then repair, and then, for textiles that “are so threadbare it is time for them to have a new life and not a second life,” to recycling into new textiles.
Goodwill of the Finger Lakes has formed a collective with nine other Goodwills in the area, Lake said, covering an area that includes about a third of the U.S. population. That’s helpful, she noted, as it demonstrates that even independent not-for-profits “can still work together and provide the same support that a brand or a recycler – in this case Reju – expects.”
In fact, it’s vital that brands and recyclers understand the value and importance of the existing network of not-for-profits that already serve as collectors, Lake said, including not only Goodwill but also the Salvation Army and other reuse stores.
“Don’t just stand up new systems,” she said, adding that it’s better “to use the existing infrastructure and lift up and put the technology in the ecosystem that already exists, instead of rushing to fill the space with a new for-profit partner or have the industry wade into something that they haven’t really done before.”
Organizations like Goodwill have the added benefit of name recognition and community trust and have already done the legwork on donation education, she added.
“While this collaboration is about Goodwill, Reju and WM, there really is a silent fourth collaborative partner,” Lake said: the communities.
“We won’t be able to be successful with these pilots and we won’t be able to learn without the strength of our donors,” she said. “We can only do all this because people do trust us and know that when they give us their gently used items, something good will happen.”
This pilot is still in the early stages, Lake noted, adding that these projects allow the partners to provide a proof of concept and then start scaling up.
“We’re not really ready to talk about specifics yet, as we don’t want to put expectations out there,” she said, adding that each partner “wants to do this the right way because we do know that we are trusted partners in each of the respective spaces.”
Goodwill is very focused on being good stewards of the donations given to them, Lake said, as well as continuing to provide job opportunities to individuals with barriers to employment.
Lake added that the conversation needs to be bigger than the pilot, reaching into design rooms where fabrics are chosen and clothing is created. That means avoiding “Franken-blends” of textiles that are hard to sort and recycle, Lake said, and “not just thinking about how is this going to wash, how is this going to wear, how water resistant will this be, but also how easy will this be at the end of life to make into the next piece of apparel.”
“How do we look to optimize the system in a way that we can actually provide the feedstock that recyclers need to really help the brands make their commitments, that they have already put out there, to use preferred materials?” Lake added.
As digital product IDs become popular, Lake again urged producers to think about the full life of the product. A QR code printed on a tag might work well for product authentication and other start-of-life purposes, but if a product is damaged or soiled at the end of its life, using RFID technology would be much easier and can help sorters handle larger volumes more quickly.
Access to technology is another overarching question that the pilot will help address. Lake said Goodwill’s pilots have typically used infrared scanning technology to sort textiles, and the technology is rapidly advancing. However, not-for-profit organizations often do not have access to capital and even state or federal grants in the same way that other organizations do, Lake said, instead relying on partnerships, collaboration and donors.
“We’re hopeful that these learnings will also allow us to better accelerate our own ability to adopt the technology that will be required, or advocate to the extent that not-for-profits can raise up the fact that this technology would be important, and it would good for government to ensure that the not-for-profit sector can participate,” she said.
For more on Goodwill’s textile recycling efforts, attend the “Textile Recycling: Current Challenges and Future Opportunities” session at the 2024 Resource Recycling Conference, Nov. 13-15 in Louisville, Kentucky.
A version of this story appeared in Resource Recycling on Nov. 5.
