Goodwill recycles textiles as part of pilot project

Local Goodwill organizations taking part in a two-year textile recycling pilot program shared updates with Goodwill Industries International and its affiliated member organizations during a recent textile circularity event held in Rochester, New York.

The project is aimed at transforming unwearable donations into raw material for textile recycling. Under the program, Goodwill is partnering with New York-based Accelerating Circularity, a developer of circular textile supply chains, to establish regional sortation hubs to collect, sort and prepare textiles for reuse and recycling.

“With more than 3,300 stores and donation centers across North America, Goodwill has been a leader in ‘reuse’ for more than a century," Goodwill of the Finger Lakes CEO Jennifer Lake says. "As emerging recycling technology scales in the U.S., Goodwill is uniquely positioned to ensure unwearable cotton and polyester textiles are recycled into new materials fueling that circular textile economy.”

The textile circularity event was part of the organization’s ongoing effort to advance circularity and extend the life of donated goods. Sixty Goodwill leaders, along with partners from the textile recycling ecosystem, including Accelerating Circularity, TOMRA, Sortile and researchers from the Rochester Institute of Technology, participated in the event, which featured demonstrations of textile sorting and grading, garment deconstruction, circularity landscape modeling and information about recycling machinery and equipment.

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During the event, local Goodwill organizations shared the results of a variety of innovative recycling pilots taking place across the Goodwill network, including updates from the textile recycling pilot program, funded by the Walmart Foundation.

“For more than 120 years, Goodwill has been expanding the market for reuse of textiles and other goods. This recent summit underscores Goodwill’s continued commitment to advancing textile circularity by ensuring that we get the highest value out of every item entrusted to us for our planet, our communities, and our people,” Goodwill Industries International president and CEO Steve President says. “With the support of Walmart Foundation and partners from other sectors of the textile circularity ecosystem, we are developing a number of pathways for goods to minimize waste and maximize value through reuse, remanufacturing and recycling.”

In August, Goodwill Industries International will host its inaugural Sustainability Summit in Washington, which will feature industry speakers and promote further collaboration, learning and action around sustainability.

The Goodwill network operates more than 3,300 stores across the Goodwill enterprise in the United States and Canada, with multiple retail channels to keep products in use and out of landfill. In 2023, Goodwill recovered the value of more than 4.3 billion pounds of donated products, which supported the development of skills training, job placement, career advancement opportunities and other community-based services for more than 1.7 million people.