Perfect Pair Thursday, April 20th, 2023
As we mentioned, Saturday April 22nd is Earth Day. This is a great time for us to stop and think about what we can do. Are we doing enough? Did you know that 17 million tons of textiles go into landfills every year and that 95% of textiles are reusable or recyclable? Clothing and Textile industry is the 2nd largest polluter in the world, right behind oil according to the EPA.
We, as quilters, love to save and use our scraps for other projects, but what about the other textiles in your home? Old socks, pants, and shirts can be donated. Here in Minnesota there is a website www.weareverrecycling.com. You can go to that site and it will list places in your area that you can donate your unwanted textiles.
ForDays.com is a company that offers a Take Back Bag. For $20, you order a bag that can be filled with all your old quilting scraps and unusable clothing and send it back to them. In exchange, you get a $20 credit at their store.
Goodwill will even weed through the unusable textile and divert them from landfills. And just by doing a simple google search on “ways to recycle my leftover fabric” I was able to find places that welcomed fabric donations.
Checkout HealThePlanet.com has some great resources and suggestions we can all use on other ways to help our planet. How many of you love to get junk mail? I have tried to do most all of my mail by ebilling. So when I get a pile of junk mail, it drives me crazy. It is such a waste. According to the EPA over 100 billion pieces of junk mail are delivered every year. And 60% end up in landfills. There are a couple of sites that you can go to to take your name off of junk mail lists. OptoutPrescreen.com you can take your name off of credit card promotions. If you don’t use a phone book anymore you can opt out of next years printing at dexpages.com, and at DMAchoice.org you can remove your name from general junk mail listings. It does cost $2.00 processing fee, but I think it was worth it.
Here at GE Designs we recycle/reuse boxes, we reuse our bags, we conserve on our energy turning down heat, and air when we aren’t here. We turn off lights. We recycle anything that is recyclable including cans, water bottles, batteries, etc.
When it comes to fabric and sewing supplies we do our best to reuse and recycle what we can. We can use scraps to fill dog beds or stuffed animals, make reusable shopping or gift bags, and even use old cutting mats as the bottoms for those bags.
Old rotary blades can be recycled by taking them to your local recycling center or to a scrap metal business. Be sure to call first to make sure your facility will accept these items.
We also like when our customers help us reuse fabric. We offer mystery and remnant bags at a deep discount.
Through the end of the month, we are offering a sale on our Remnant Bags - Buy 1 get 1! They're semi-coordinated and it's such a great deal!