Recycle for Cornwall
The Recycle for Cornwall campaign has been developed to raise public awareness of recycling and to provide consumers with a compelling reason to recycle.

Clothes and Textiles

Both adults and children change shape and their taste in clothes! Clothes can be reused as garments in the UK and abroad - 70% of the world’s population wear second-hand clothes. Textile fibres are also used to make "shoddy" (mixed fibres used for filling mattresses, jiffy bags etc) or re-spun into yarn for making new garments. Sending your old garments to charity shops or putting them in clothes banks will ensure they get maximum use.

Here are 10 interesting facts about textiles:

1. Textile recycling originated in the Yorkshire Dales 200 years ago with rag and bone men.

2. If every Briton purchased one item made from recycled wool per year it would save 371 million gallons of water, 480 tonnes of chemical dyes and 4,571 million days of an average families electricity needs.

3. More than 70% of the worlds population use second hand clothes

4. At least 50% of the textiles we throw away are recyclable. But the proportion of textile waste reused or recycled annually is only around 25%

5. The textile industry was one of the first to be mechanised in the 18th Century

6. If you take your old clothes to charity shops, they are sold here and abroad. Those clothes that cannot be sold are made into flocking or cloths, or reclaimed to make yarn or fabric.

7. There are only about 3000 textile banks nationwide compared to 23,000 for glass bottles.

8. Oxfam is the only major charity that has its own processing facility, which can maximise the value of unsold textiles

9. The average lifetime of a garment is around three years

10. Total textile waste is estimated to be between 550,000 and 900,000 tonnes per year, with most of this coming from household sources.

Source: Material Recycling Week, September 7 2007

How can you help?

Give clothes to friends or relatives if they are still wearable, find out where your local textile bank is or give items to your local charity shop.

select this link to find a list of charity shops