Americans are notorious for buying far too many clothes and holding onto them for many years. Even when clothing is no longer being used it tends to hang around at the back of the closet rather than being donated to better places that could actually use it and give these items a second life. Nearly 20 billion items are bought by consumers every year. This means that 68 items of clothing are added to closets and half of those do not ever make it to a clothing donation center. The next time you look in your closet and see all of the clothing that no longer fits or you no longer love, why not think about bringing it to a red cross donation center and allowing them to find it second chance homes?
With records from the EPA, the United States throws away ten pounds of clothing per person every year. With the amount of homeless we have on the streets (which is roughly 15% of the population) these items need to be considered used clothing donations and should be brought to a Red Cross donation center rather than sent to the landfill where it cannot and will not be repurposed for better use to anyone. These items instead are left to turn to dust over many years.
How easy is it to make American Red Cross clothing donations?
There are two ways that Red Cross donations can be made. One of the ways is to drop using or unwanted clothing off at your local Red Cross donation center. With large bins waiting, all you have to do is drop your unwanted clothing inside and call it a day. The workers at the Red Cross donation center will do the rest of the work for you, going through your clothing and bringing it to locations where it can have a second chance at being used. The second way to donate clothing is to call Red Cross pickup. With a simple phone call your clothing will be picked up by Red Cross workers and cared for until it is repurposed to its new homes. Red Cross clothing pickup is offered all over and in most cases it is just a phone call away.
Considering that in 2015 alone there were 564,708 people who were homeless in the United States, that number has most likely gone up further than one could even expect. Taking care of our own is something that we can do to help out with this problem, to donate clothes is one of the ways in which we can help those who are less fortunate and struggle on a daily basis.
The next time you look in your closet and see too many articles of clothing that go unused every year make a donation bag, drop those pieces of clothing off at your local clothing donation center and start to help the homeless have better lives. You won’t regret the feeling when you do good for others. You also probably won’t mind having more space in your closet to fill with new items of clothing either.
