Reuse textiles for Thanksgiving decor

Looking for creative ways to decorate the Thanksgiving table – AND recycle some textiles at the same time.  Here’s some eco-friendly, creative and fun ways to decorate your holiday table!

1. Update old table linens.  Use stencils and fabric paint in hues of          brown, orange and yellow to easily add autumn leaves, cornucopias or other harvest images to a plain tablecloth.
2. Create napkin rings with a strips of autumn patterned fabric glued over a cardboard tube (toilet paper tubes cut into 1-inch segments for example).
3. Create beautiful placement mats that you can use year after year from fall colored fabric scraps (old table linen or sheets) by piecing them together and making quilted mats.
4. Use leftover ribbons and fabric scraps to make streamers that you can hang from the ceiling. Better yet give this project to your child and watch their imagine take hold and go wild.
5. Use old straw hats, buttons, felt and fabrics to decorate the scarecrow door decoration.

 

Recycle Your Unmentionables

There are a lot of things you can do with an old sock…but what about those            unmentionables?  For those of you who are truly committed to recycling, how do you recycle your underwear!?  Here are some tips from USAgain, the clothing recycler and reseller, on how to avoid tossing old underwear and bras in the trash:
1.       Donate: Send your old bras to BreastTalk where they will be used to generate cash for breast cancer research.
2.       Get Crafty: Check out this cut little purse you can make from a used bra on Craft Bits.
3.       Compost: Just slice off the elastic waistband cut the cotton into strips or squares and put it in your compost bin!
4.       Recycle: Toss worn out underwear and bras in a USAgain dropbox.  Find one online at www.usagain.com.
5.       For the kids:  Send used kids undies in good condition to Project Underwear who will distribute them in developing countries and send you a postcard telling you where they ended up.

Green Halloween Tips

In less than a week, ghouls and goblins will be haunting us again. When it comes to Halloween, the real scary part is not the fake blood or the Freddy mask — it’s the environmental damage that costumes once trashed can inflict on the environment. “Last year, Americans spent $2 billion on Halloween costumes and swapping only half of children’s costumes normally discarded would reduce annual landfill waste by 6,250 tons”according to the U.S. Census Bureau and Department of Transportation.

So what can trick or treaters do? USAgain offers these simple tips for responsible Green Halloween:

1.       Buy used. It’s good for the planet and it’s good for your wallet.  You’d be surprised what you can find in a neighborhood thrift shop!

2.       Swap.  Find neighbors and classmates your size and trade costumes from years past.

3.       Use junk! Get creative with stuff lying around your home (Check out this easy DIY costumes link).

4.       Go natural. Stay away from those one time use synthetic costumes from the drug store.  Try using natural fibers for fashioning your witches robes and wizard capes that can be used again.

5.       Recycle. Don’t toss your costume in the trash.  Rather, drop it in one of USAgain’s local clothing collection bins so it can be reused or recycled.

Have a Happy Green Halloween!

Back to school green tips all of us can use

Can you believe it’s almost time to head back to school again?  Approximately 76 million kids, teens and adults will be heading back to the classroom this fall. With back-to-school shopping, August and September are months of major consumption for Americans.  While you’re stocking up on back-to-school supplies, make sure you’re making environmentally responsible choices.  Listed below are 5 tips from USAgain to help you go green while you’re going back to school:

1. Use the Snack Taxi.  All those plastic bags for sandwiches and snacks in school lunches add up.  Keep it green by packing snacks in these cute, reusable and washable sacks.  Check out Snacktaxi.com to find out where to buy them.
2. In with the new – out with the old! When you’re cleaning out the closet to make room for all the new back to school duds make sure you recycle old clothes.  Check out our homepage (USAgain.com) to find locations for drop boxes where you can easily dispose of last year’s styles.
3.  Every page counts.  Make sure that you are buying notebooks made from 100% post-consumer materials.  New Leaf Paper makes stylish and affordable notes books that are (available at Target) and they’ve saved almost 2.5 million trees doing it.
4.  Buy used books.  Better World Books offers a huge selection of used books for reasonable prices…and for every book that you buy, they donate one to someone in need.
5. If you’re buying a new computer this season – make sure you responsibly dispose of the old one.  Earth911.com is a great resource for finding a place to quickly and easily recycle electronics in your community.

Thailand Focused On Green Textile Market

Thailand is to launch green textile industry. The Thailand Textile Institute is responsible for the task of developing this project to realize the objective of sustainability. The aim is to develop 13 projects in the current year to attain the goal of ‘green products’. Presently, Thailand ships more than US$ 7.2 billion worth of textile and clothing products each year, around 10 percent of which are green textile items. The country mainly exports these green products to Japan and EU markets, as consumers there are ready to spend 20-30 percent more for these green products, above the cost of usual textile items. Currently, Thailand leads the member countries of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) for green products, while countries like Japan, Taiwan, European Union countries, South Korea and China are making strides in green textiles as well.

Earth Hour

At 8:30 PM Saturday March 26, 2011 the world’s largest light switch will turn off. All around the globe hundreds of millions of people will turn off their lights for one hour in participation of Earth Hour. Earth Hour began in Sydney, Australia in 2007 when 2.2 million individuals and more than 2,000 businesses turned their lights off for one hour to take a stand against climate change. Since the inception of the first Earth Hour, the global sustainability movement has grown substantially over its four years from 35 countries and territories to 128 countries and territories. Earth Hour is organized by the WWF with the mission of stopping the degradation of the Earth’s natural environment and creating awareness for the cause. The campaign is based on hope not fear, it is about working together as people to create a better future for our planet. After the lights come back on think of what else you can do to make a difference, try to go beyond the hour and think of what you can do to reduce your carbon footprint.

IKEA and USAgain Community Recycling Event- April 9th

On April 9^th USAgain and IKEA Schaumburg will be partnering in a Community Recycling Event. The idea of this event is not only to facilitate recycling in Schaumburg, but to rally an entire community around that same idea.

We hope the event can bring together people from all over Chicagoland and show them what we can do as a group. Since individual accomplishments add up so greatly in the big picture, by bringing individuals together we hope to have a large impact on recycling come April 9^th.

Details on the event are available here. We hope that you show up with all your recyclables from spring-cleaning and save some CO2 and landfill space.

Earth Month Is Coming

Once a year in the spring we celebrate the planet we live on by turning off the lights for an hour in hopes of conserving energy (the sun is shining in Chicago today, time to let the natural light in). During Earth Hour, hundreds of millions of people in their homes and offices turn off the lights. The feat is amazing, everyone does his or her tiny part, and in the process we all accomplish something meaningful.

In April, USAgain is asking the same thing. After cleaning your closet and puzzling about what to do about the clothes now piled on your floor, get to a drop box. Instead of letting those threads rot in a landfill, we’ll put those clothes to use by reselling or reusing them.

If we all take the extra step on our way to work, the kids’ school, or the grocery store, we hope to accomplish a goal that speaks volumes about a small amount of effort. Six million pounds is the goal this April. We can prevent 42 million pounds of CO2 gas from entering the atmosphere, and  save over 30,000 cubic yards of landfill space, if we reach our goal.

The impact could be enormous if all the pieces come together. Spread the word, and let’s recycle.

Cotton Prices Hit All-Time High.

Cotton prices hit an all time high of $2.00 a pound. The sharp rise in cotton is mainly due to weather; heavy rains in China, floods in Pakistan. India, the second largest cotton producer after China has put a ban on cotton exports (fitchestore.org).

According to The Guardian, retailers are planning on passing some of the increases on to consumers, “The question is how much? We’re comfortable that we can pass some of these increases on to the customer. We’re not comfortable with how much”, said Mike Jeffries executive at Abercrombie and Fitch. Since shoppers at the high-end retailers care less about price, the hardest hit will be the stores marketing in the lower-middle price range, as these shoppers are usually on a budget.

Fortunately, there are plenty of second hand clothing stores ready to carry the load. It would be no surprise if we see more action at thrift stores around the country, even more so around the world. If you happen to be one of those shoppers not on a budget, please do you best to pass along any unwanted clothes to those less fortunate in this tough economic environment.

Help your neighbors, and those around the world. Textile recycling companies like USAgain provide conveniently located drop boxes to get rid of your used clothes and supply them to thrift stores and graders. For more information visit www.usagain.com.

USAgain Collected 56M lbs of Clothes in 2010!

Our 2010 collection figures are in, clearly indicating the support for our cause and business has never been stronger.  Thanks to you all, USAgain collected 56 million pounds of clothing for reuse in 2010, offsetting emissions equivalent to those caused by 32,500 cars!  It’s like a city decided to not drive cars for a year.  In case you get your kick out of CO2 and landfill figures – in 2010, this saved our planet from the burden of 392 million pounds of CO2 and 320,000 cubic feet of toxic landfill space (same as three and half Olympic-size swimming pools.)

2011 is showing great promise, but we need even stronger support from you because Mother Earth and our future generations deserve it.  Get your recycle on!