The Current Facts
U.S. consumers generate approximately 35.4 billion pounds of textiles (which includes bedding, clothing, etc) each year. Of those textiles, according to the Council for Textile Recycling, approximately 83 percent enters landfills. The other 17 percent is recycled or upcycled.
The Power of One Shirt
Often, the landfill matter, including discarded clothing, is burned to create more space, which produces methane gas. Methane gas is a greenhouse gas that when burned is highly flammable and is a contributing factor to global warming. High exposure to methane gas can lead to suffocation, dizziness, headaches or even loss of conscientiousness.
If consumers in the United States were to donate or repurpose just one shirt each year, there would be a decrease of nearly 109 million pounds of textiles in landfills all across the nation. In addition, that would increase the recycling and upcycling rate 0.3 percent.
That’s just one shirt.
The Reborn Solution
Reborn is one piece in the global solution. Through long-term, continuous efforts by way of partnerships and consumer upcycling, we are helping to lead a global movement in the way people think about their “unusable” clothing and how textile and fashion brands dispose of surplus goods or deadstock material.
We provide people, colleges and businesses the opportunity to not only turn their remnant material into new, usable products, but we also play a small role in reducing methane gas emissions into the atmosphere. Through our creative designs and commonsense solutions, with your help and buy-in, one shirt becomes one thousand shirts which becomes one million shirts, and our efforts have that much more impact.