Around the world, the textile industry stands as one of the biggest and most popular industry of all, since everyone needs clothing and shoes to wear for work, for everyday life, and for formal events. A lot of clothing is produced and purchased around the world every year, with the United States standing as one of the biggest consumers and produces of clothing today. The bad news is that not all old clothes end up being donated or given to proper charities, and a lot of clothes in fact end up being discarded and sent straight to landfill where they will never be used again, or are used as industrial rags or shredded to make furniture stuffing. However, any person can help reverse this trend and contribute to charitable clothing donations so that helping military families and other needy families can be done. In fact, finding donation pickup sites and visiting them is easy and free, aside from gas money, and giving items away at clothes drop off locations can give to a good cause as well as lighten the donor’s clothing load anyway. How can helping military families be done?

Clothes and Waste

Not all clothing that is produced or owned will be given to charity, unfortunately, and a lot of clothes end up being wasted. It has been estimated that around 10.5 million tons of clothes are sent to landfills every year instead of given to clothing drop off locations, and this translates to about 72 pounds of clothing being thrown away by every American every single year. It has also been determined that only about 15% of all Americans’ old clothes are donated or recycled, with the remaining 85% simply going to landfills. Some other recycled clothes end up as industrial rags or shredded as furniture stuffing, so while not clogging landfills, they are still not being used for helping military families or others in need.

Fortunately, plenty of Americans are charitable, and many clothes and other items do end up in the right hands, so people today are urged to simply increase the rates of donations and make sure that fewer and fewer clothes end up in landfills where they don’t do anyone any good. Each year, for example, about 4.7 billion pounds of clothes are sent to donation sites by Americans every year, and if this number can be increased steadily year after year, this can go a long way toward helping military families who are in need, as well as reducing the clutter in the nations’ already huge landfills. In fact, donating enough clothes by an individual qualifies him or her for a small tax write-off, yet another incentive to take part in donations for veterans and others in need. Finding a donations site is as easy as searching for “clothing drop off sites near me” on an Internet search.

Make the Donation

Any household or individual can get started on contributing more to clothes donations, and more is certainly better; charities will always welcome additional donations any time of the year. To get started, a person or a household can assemble all of their clothes from across the home and create a massive pile of them, an inventory, on a wide patch of floor. All items: shirts, pants, jeans, skits, hats, gloves, boots, and more can be added to this pile, and some homeowners may actually be surprised by the size of this collection, and they may quickly realize how much they can afford to give away. Now that a complete and convenient inventory is set up, everyone in the household can carefully pick through this pile and determine what clothing items they need and enjoy wearing, and which items they do not. Clothes that are somewhat worn out, redundant, too small, or out of fashion can easily be set aside for donations, and the items being kept can be returned to the closets and dressers.

Unwanted clothes can now be packed into bags or boxes, and once the person finds local charity drives for helping military families and more, they can drive all these clothes to those charities and drop them off, and follow any additional instructions that they receive.