Goodwill Green

Recycling Tips

Clutter Busting

Spring has arrived, windows are opening, spring cleaning is underway, and acknowledging that our homes are filled to the brim with clutter motivates us to rid ourselves of unwanted items that weigh us down.

Tip #1

Donate your gently used clothing, books, furniture and household items. If you are in Santa Clara County, Goodwill has a convenient location nearby for you to drop off those donations. See our donations page for your drop off address.

Tip #2

Create a compost pile with your tree trimmings and yard clippings. Summer gardens will thrive on your creation.

Tip #3

Drop off your e-waste at Goodwill. We are a state certified e-waste collector. All of the e-waste we collect goes to a state certified e-waste recycler that is required to meet the highest of standards in the disassembly and recycling of e-waste materials.

Keep the Green going…

As long as your thinking green, try these easy tips that will contribute to a healthier planet.

Tip #1

Fill your bottle with filtered tap water. Learn about the harmful effects of bottled water on our environment by clicking on filterforgood.com. Filtering your own water and using reusable beverage containers will make a health impact on the environment and your wallet.

Tip #2

Give your water heater a blanket. Wrapping a water heater with insulation can keep as many as 1,000 pounds of global-warming CO2 a year out of the upper atmospher

Recycling Facts - Reduce, Reuse, Repurpose

Americans generate trash at an astonishing rate of four pounds per day per person, which translate to 600,000 tons per day or 210 million tons per year!

The first real recycling program was introduced in New York City in the 1890s. The city's first recycling plant was built in 1898.

By 1924, 83% of American cities were separating some trash items to be reused. Twenty years ago, only one curbside recycling program existed in the United States, which collected several materials at the curb. By 2005, almost 9,000 curbside programs had sprouted up across the nation.

On average it costs $30 per ton to recycle trash, $50 to send it to landfills and $65–$75 to incinerate it.

While the most important way to save valuable resources is to use as few as possible in the first place, recycling and using recycled products is the next step. Goodwill is proud to do our part to conserve our resources and save the earth. You may ask how does donating a pair of jeans or buying a set of dishes do that? Let us show you how by highlighting the life cycle of a pair of jeans.

Gathering Raw Material

The life cycle begins by gathering raw materials. First, cotton is picked from the fields and is tightly packed into bales. These bales are sent to manufacturers.

Manufacturing Process

The cycle continues with various manufacturers who inspect these cotton bales with special machinery. These machine convert the bales to cotton fibers, and other machines are then used to make the cotton fibers stronger to form yarn.

Next, the yarn is dyed blue and coated with starchy substances to make the threads stronger and stiffer. The dyed yarn is woven on large mechanical looms with both blue and white threads to create the denim cloth.

The denim cloth is cut according to the design patterns created by the manufacturers and then the pieces are sewn together on an assembly line. Each sewer is assigned a specific function such as back pockets, leg seams or belt loops, etc.*

Next, all the pieces are sewn together to create a pair of jeans. They are then pressed, folded, stacked and placed in boxes according to size and style. Finally, they are shipped to retail stores on freight trains or trucks.

*(As with any manufacturing process there is some waste and byproducts produced, some of which are biodegradable and some that is not.)

Arriving at Retail Stores

The retail stores receive the jeans from manufacturers. Now, they sell the latest fashionable jeans to you. You purchase them and wear them for a few weeks, a few months or even a few years. Over time, maybe they don't fit you as well as they once did, or you decide want the "latest" fashions. At this point in the life cycle you have a choice—you can throw your jeans away or you can donate your gently-used items to Goodwill.

A Choice

If you throw your jeans away, you increase the amount of garbage that ends up in the landfills. However, if you decide to donate them you are REDUCING the amount of garbage that ends up in our landfills. And, shoppers at Goodwill can extend the life cycle of the jeans by purchasing them, thus REUSING the items. Even if the jeans aren't purchased at our store we have a RECYCLING program where those jeans can be recycled into new items or sent to other countries for process. Think about it—not only are you helping the environment you are helping people in your community by donating to Goodwill.