MIDDLEBURY — For some summer is a season of fashion. Is there a better time to make a statement with new and trendy outfits than in bright sun and warm weather?

However, what happens to the old clothes? Any second thoughts about where they’ll end up before throwing them away or packing them up for donation? And when we donate them do we deserve a pat on the shoulder? 

The 2023 Vermont Waste Composition Study conducted by the Vermont Department of Environmental Conservation concluded that textiles grew as a portion of Vermont’s aggregated municipal solid waste (MSW), from 4.2% in 2018 to 6.5% in 2023. At 24,413 tons, there were more textiles in the solid waste stream than electronics and furniture/bulky items combined.

Data provided by the Environmental Protection Agency show that the recycling rate for all textiles was 14.7 percent in 2018, while 11.3 million tons, making up to 66%, went to landfills.

In a state like Vermont, and more specifically a small town like Middlebury, where sustainability exists at large as one of the many prideful values, the scene of fabric reuse and recycling may be a little more complicated than imagined.

Middlebury College’s recycling center always attracts attention when it opens in mid-summer for college-affiliated members of the community to dig for treasures. The center usually invites various nonprofits to pick through the goods before the designated day for public sale. The organizations they work with vary from year to year. 

Kimberly Bickham, supervisor for waste management and custodial services, gave a list of those agencies to the Independent despite noting it is hard to keep track of how many items precisely go to them. The list included Middlebury senior home The Commons, Migrant Justice, the college’s winter clothing closet for international students, and a veterans’ home called The Dodge House in Rutland. 

“They typically take starters’ stuff, like mini-fridges, pots and pans, microwaves, some take linens, some people are helping the homeless, so they’re trying to get clothes,” Bickham said. 

The recycling center takes about three to four weeks to sort through their acquisitions since commencement day, which is usually the busiest day, after many students desert mountains of possessions, and the lack of staffing limits the center’s hours. 

“We had a pretty good help on commencement day. After that it’s just my staff, which is six people, two part-time, four full-time working at the center,” Bickham said. “While we’re doing this, we’re still running our day-to-day operations. We still collect compost, we still collect trash and recycling around campus and Bread Loaf, we still do everything we do on a daily basis.”

Staffing shortage proved to be a shared issue among reuse and recycling endeavors. It was one of the main factors that Helping Overcome Poverty’s Effect, or HOPE, stopped its textile recycling in 2022. Now, the organization runs Marion’s Place, a resale store.

“We used to take in any and all textiles, a few years ago we realized that’s not a good idea.” Jeanne Montross, the executive director of HOPE, told the Independent. Around eight people now keep the store running. 

“We accept things that are clean and are in reusable condition that we can resell. Some of it gets given away to people who are homeless or otherwise that can’t afford (the goods).”

Montross said they have stopped tracking the volume of items, but those that arrive can easily fill several standard Gaylord shipping boxes each week. 

Small nonprofits like Junebug, a children’s wear resale that used to rely on HOPE to dispose of their secondary clothing items, had faced a backlog during COVID when HOPE receded from offering recycling services. They now receive around 300 pounds of clothes donations daily. 

Maria Graham, the director of Junebug, mentioned Addison County Solid Waste Management District (ACSWMD) being a great help during the pandemic. They now deliver all their non-resalable items to the External Learning Program (ELP) that runs in the MAUSD school district.

Amy Chesley, the director of ELP affirmed that only around 5-10% of items they receive go to ACSWMD.

Other resale stores like Buy Again Alley and Round Robin are also familiar with the reuse and recycling process.

Buy Again Alley employee Suzy Hunt told the Independent that they try everything they can to keep clothes out of landfill. She pointed out that secondary quality clothing can go to a free rack or be upcycled through the creative mind of each employee. Some learned to sew over trademarks and brand names, others tie-dye to repurpose various wash marks. 

“We don’t have a protocol or procedure to take things off the floor,” she said. “On average, we dispose of less than a trash bag per month.”

It’s all well and good when clothes do get resold or reused within the community, but many items inevitably cannot meet the standard to stay on display. Most of them get funneled to ACSWMD, and it’s not even the end of it. 

According to ACSWMD Program Manager Don Maglienti, the textile recycling program processed up to 45,560 pounds last year, and 18,680 pounds by late June this year. 

“Typically, we’re sending out 700 to 1,000 pounds a week. Somewhere in that range.” he said. 

Maglienti has suggested some possible markets or companies that would take secondary textiles to repurpose them into other products.

“Textiles that aren’t usable for clothing anymore can be shredded and go into other markets, like Auto Fluff or carbon paddings.” He said.

The program does not directly process those fabrics. It now works with Apparel Impact, a multi-state recycling business whose headquarters is in New Hampshire. In fact, the college’s recycling center works directly with Apparel Impact as well and usually disposes of around 10% of the program’s textile remnant. Round Robin also gives around 10 to 30 kitchen bags per week of items unwanted to Apparel Impact. 

“Our primary focus is reuse,” said Joe Whitten, the co-founder of Apparel Impact. “85% of all textiles, shoes, and accessories in the country end up in the landfill, so our primary goal is to prevent them ending up there.”

According to Whitten, 80% of what they receive gets reused, and the rest gets either downcycled or upcycled. Reusing the clothes can mean many things. For Apparel Impact, it means either their community outreaches that clothe about 4-5,000 people and families per year, or their sales to other clothing grader companies that would purchase any textiles at a supposedly low cost, which the co-founder was reluctant to disclose due to the company’s status as a private business. Regardless, clothes that some people find unwearable get worn again, hopefully. 

“Not everything we collect from thrift stores or consignment stores is in bad shape. They can be worn again, so up to 80% of them, believe it or not, can still be used for their intended purpose. The rest goes to upcycle or downcycle.”

The idea picture of a hoodie miraculously turned into a brand-new chic bandanna as portrayed in a popular ad by H&M three years ago is not as realistic.

“A true circular form of recycling is at the very beginning stage of this industry,” Whitten said. “There are companies now trying to take, let’s say an old shirt, and put it through a process, either chemicals or machinery, and bring it back to its original fabric to then be made into a new item. That specific process is in its infancy stage. You can’t do it to scale. There’s a European company called Renewcell that developed this process, but they just went bankrupt.”

So, what is up or downcycling? 

“An example would be Toyota downcycles textile for their car underlayment in the trunk,” Whitten said. “Another example is Converse just came out with a new recycled denim sneaker. They use some of our denim.” He also mentioned BirdieBlue, a company in Vermont that repurposes ski wear into various other products.

According to Apparel Impact’s annual report that Whitten shared, they’ve diverted 963 tons, which is 1.9 million pounds of textile, and around 20% of those textiles, or 385,000 pounds, get up or downcycled. Apparently, none goes to landfills.

After loops and loops of repurposing and reusing, however, it is unclear how fabrics channeled into new markets and become new products end up as trash. After all, it becomes another industry issue to worry about.

It’s also important to note that in all the above stages of textile recycling (whatever the word means at this point), clothes and fabric still must meet a certain standard to be reused or repurposed. 

“Regardless of what type of item it is, it can’t be recycled if it’s wet or moldy, or extremely smelly, or soiled,” Maglienti said. “It basically has to be clean and dry.”

Graham at Junebug joked about this idea of “aspirational recycling.”

“We can get a bit too optimistic about recycling when we know there’s that stain on the clothes or the peanut butter jar is not wiped clean, but still throw them in the recycling bin to be eventually picked out again as trash,” she said.

ACSWMD also wants people to pack their fabric in tied-close plastic bags to prevent cross-contamination when they all are placed in bins. One cannot give too much thought to the amount of plastic involved in the process. 

Perhaps much remains to be said about our consumption habits while we exist in a world where “consumption” is literally one of the measurements of national GDP. 

“I’d say buy more durable, better-quality clothes, but I don’t know if it’s still possible.” Graham lamented.

The matter at hand, well, is the sheer amount of matter. Matter gets produced for people to consume, and consumption in turn creates needs that might not have existed before or might not have been necessary.  

“We just see it so much,” Lynn Kiel, a worker at Junebug added. “It might come to a point where we have to charge people for bringing in clothes.”