Recycling Clothes

Recycling clothes – an important Gaia activity

The Gaia Movement supports recycling clothes as an important environmental activity.

Much of the funding for The GAIA-Movement’s environmental projects in the developing world comes from donations and royalties from clothes recycling entities. See the links to:

The Gaia Movement Living Earth Green World Action USA Inc.

Green World Recycling Ltd (in UK)

Recycling of clothes results in the following:

• reduces waste and therefore the need for new landfill
• reduces energy used for getting rid of the waste
• reduces chemicals and energy consumption in agricultural production as cotton fields are changed for food crops (cotton uses 11 % of world’s agro-chemicals but only 5% of the land)
• Besides the energy reduction this will also mean less people affected by poisonous chemicals.
• reduces energy used in all the steps of textile production, transport etc
• reduces greenhouse gasses through all the issues mentioned above. By using less energy less carbon is emitted. When clothes are dumped they will rot and release the stored carbon. If reused the carbon is stored instead.
• recycling of clothes uses very little energy and there are no harmful byproducts
• gives people in the third world a chance to buy clothes at cheap prices