The Town of Greenwich has announced a new partnership between the Greenwich Recycling Advisory Board (GRAB) and Helpsy to offer a free and easy home pickup textile recycling service for residents.
The home pick up program saves the town money, conserves natural resources and makes recycling simple and easy for residents, diverting clothing, linens, shoes and other materials to reuse and recycling.
Pickups in Greenwich will take place weekly on Tuesday between 7:00am-5:00pm.
In order to recycle bagged and clean clothing, residents can sign up at www.helpsy.com/greenwichct or call 800-244-6350.
The new program builds on the municipal textile recycling initative started by GRAB in 2020, which provides collection bins in convenient locations throughout town, including Holly Hill, The Nathaniel Witherell, Cos Cob and Arch Street Teen Center.
To date, the collection bin program has diverted over 340,000 lbs of textiles and raised funds for recycling education for the community, including the Waste Wizard online search tool, informational mailings and waste reduction equipment at Greenwich Public Schools.
With the addition of the home pickup program, GRAB will extend its outreach and education programming while further reducing waste in Greenwich. “We are excited to begin this new partnership with Helpsy so that we may expand our efforts to keep unwanted textiles out of
our waste stream,” said Sally Davies, chair of GRAB.
As a clothing collection company and a certified B corporation with an environmental mission to extend the useful life of clothing, Helpsy partners with municipalities and organizations across 10 states to collect unwanted clothing. The company funds numerous charities and thrift stores to give consumers convenient and compelling alternatives to landfilling and burning.
In 2023 alone, Helpsy diverted nearly 30 million pounds of textiles through a combination of clothing drives, home pickups, thrift store partners and clothing bins. Currently they collect an item of clothing every second.
“Helpsy’s mission is to keep clothes out of the trash,” says Dan Green, Co-Founder and CEO of Helpsy in a release. “We are dedicated to changing the way people think about clothing recycling while adhering to the highest level of social and environmental performance.”
According to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, textile waste is the fastest-growing type of trash in the country, taking up nearly 5% of all landfill space.
Americans throw 85% of their clothes in the trash, and in Connecticut, textiles make up about 5.7% of the waste stream, which is why Helpsy is committed to working with towns like Greenwich.
To learn more about Greenwich’s Textile Recycling Program and Helpsy’s municipal partnerships, please visit Greenwich Public Works HERE.