Have Any Unwanted Textiles? Drop Them Off at Your Neighborhood School

You can now recycle your used textiles at your neighborhood school, and by doing so, help the school PTO earn some cash. It's also environmentally friendly and helps save the city some money on trash disposal.

Mayor Ted Bettencourt says the formal partnership recently reached with Bay State Textiles is already a success. In the first month of the program, with little promotion, residents dropped off more than 2,000 pounds of unwanted textiles at city schools.

“Each school PTO receives a rebate of $100 per ton for the unwanted textiles and can apply those funds to the benefit of every student,” said Bettencourt.

Bay State Textiles provides the bins and empties them each week at no cost to the schools and then submits a report to the district. Rebate checks are distributed monthly.

A company representative and an administrator from the Beverly Public Schools (which already partners with Bay State) met with the School Committee earlier this fall to explain how the system works and the benefits to the district.

Drop boxes are now at each of the city's schools, including the Kiley School, which houses administrative offices.

Unwanted clothes, towels, sheets, shoes, stuffed animals, curtains -- it's all fair game for residents to discard in the bin. That's also recyclable material that now won't end up in a landfill.
 
Bay State says about 520 million pounds of solid waste go into landfills each year, 6 percent of which is clothing and other textiles. The company takes that material and reuses 45 percent to export to Third World countries where secondhand clothing is greatly needed and the remaining material is recycled into wiping and polishing cloths, upholstery, insulation, building materials, etc.

Bay State says only 5 percent of the material is unusable.

You can find a full list of textiles that can be dropped off here.