A Landfill Dilemma and Looking for Creative Solutions!
Even though we ask for good-quality, clean children’s clothing only, we often end up with much more — adult clothes, well-worn pieces, and items that are a little too marked or tattered to go into our clothing boxes.
We do our best to keep things moving where we can. For children’s clothes (sizes 0–6) that are fine for messy play, we make up “kindy boxes” for local childcare centres. For adult items or clothing not suitable for our boxes, we try to pass them on to our wonderful local op shops.
But the truth is, everyone’s overflowing. Our local op shops are overwhelmed, and even amazing community initiatives like Heart Space Whakatāne — where Jade is doing incredible mahi providing free clothing to those in need — are struggling to keep up.
Dealing with large volumes of unsuitable clothing also takes up a lot of our volunteers’ time — time that could be better spent sorting through the children’s clothes and packing parcels for our tamariki. It’s becoming a real challenge, and it pulls our focus away from our core mission: to provide good-quality clothing to the children who need it most.
At the same time, we really don’t want to add to the growing problem of textile waste. So we’re looking for a solution that:
Doesn’t require too much of our volunteer time or storage space, and
Keeps clothing out of landfill.
We already have a couple of great examples in action: woolen items that are torn or generally “knackered” are sent to a wonderful local knitter, who carefully unravels or “frogs” them so the yarn can be reused in new projects, and cotton items get cut up and sold to local tradesmen as rags.
Maybe we could find a way to somehow provide these items to people who may be in need of free clothing that perhaps isn’t in the best condition but still has some life left. A central location where they can access them…
Or perhaps there’s a wider creative opportunity here! Maybe someone — a sewer, crafter, or upcycler — could take some of these well-loved fabrics and turn them into something brand new. Imagine quilts, bags, kids’ play items, or something entirely unique that can go back out into the community and be loved all over again.
If that sounds like you, or if you know someone who might be interested, we’d love to hear from you. Together, we can give these clothes another life and keep them out of landfill. 💚
