Textile Recycling

Unwanted textiles such as clothes, bedding and curtains can easily be recycled.

When you have unwanted textiles you can reuse or recycle them.

There are textile banks located at all Household Waste Recycling Centres in Lincolnshire as well as at most supermarket Bring Recycling Sites. Some Local Authorities in Lincolnshire even collect them from your home via a kerbside collection scheme.

A number of recognised UK charities also collect textiles via door step collections or at shops across Lincolnshire.

Recycling old textiles into new products:

• Householders can donate unwanted textiles to charity collection, put them in banks or kerbside collections (where provided).
• The textiles are collected by a charity of textile re-processor and taken to a textile reclamation factory to be sorted.
• The textiles are sorted into three grades for different uses:
  - Good quality used clothing and shoes will be re-sorted for sending to charities in the UK and for use in developing countries;
  -Worn or damaged textiles will be processed within the factory for use as wiping cloths
  -Other suitable materials will be graded for fibre reclamation and filling products

Facts about textile recycling:

• If everyone in the UK bought one reclaimed woolen garment each year, it would save an average of 371 million gallons of water (the average UK reservoir holds about 300 million gallons) and 480 tonnes of chemical dyestuffs.
• Over 70% of the world's population use second hand clothes.
• The average lifetime of a garment is about three years.

What you can do:

• Ensure that you recycle your unwanted textiles through a charity scheme or a Local Authority Collection scheme in Lincolnshire.