Textile Recycling Information
(MEDFORD)—The City of Medford has partnered with Helpsy, a textile recycling company, to offer a free and easy home pickup clothing recycling service for the community, Mayor Breanna Lungo-Koehn announced.
As the largest clothing collector in the Northeast, Helpsy partners with municipalities and organizations across 11 states to collect unwanted clothing and other textiles in order to keep clothes out of landfills. In 2021, the company diverted nearly 30 million pounds of textiles from landfills through a combination of clothing drives, home pickups, thrift store partners and clothing receptacles.
“Unwanted or unused clothing should not be ending up in the trash when it instead could be either repurposed or reused,” Mayor Lungo-Koehn said. “With this partnership we’ll not only reduce our waste in the City, but we’ll be able give new life to discarded clothing and textiles.”
According to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, textile waste is the fastest growing waste stream in the United States, occupying nearly 5% of all landfill space, which is why Helpsy works with cities like Medford to give clothing the longest life possible.
“Helpsy’s mission is to keep clothes out of the trash,” says Dan Green, Co-Founder and CEO of Helpsy. “We are dedicated to changing the way people think about clothing recycling while adhering to the highest level of social and environmental performance.”
Currently, Medford residents can drop-off textile recycling at select public school locations through a program with Bay State Textiles. For more information on textile drop-off locations visit https://medfordenergy.org/gogreen/recycling-in-medford/ .
Beginning September 3rd, pickups in the City will take place weekly on Saturdays between 7am-5pm. In order to recycle bagged and clean clothing, the community can sign up at www.helpsy.co/medfordma or call 1-800-244-6350.
For more information about Medford’s Recycling Programs and Helpsy’s municipal partnerships, contact the City’s Department of Public Works at 781-393-2417 or visit www.helpsy.co.
ABOUT HELPSY: Helpsy is a Certified B Corp on a mission to radically change the way we think about, dispose of, recycle and buy secondhand clothing. Helpsy is shifting perceptions around used clothing by helping reduce the impact that clothing production has on our planet and change the statistic that 85% of clothes currently end up in the trash.