>Does anyone know of a market for scrap clothing generated in the Los
Angeles area. I am trying to help out a local rag maker. They get
clothing tossed out by the Salvation Army/Goodwill, go through it and
pull out all leather,vinyl, denim and yarn items, since they can't use
these in their process. All together it's about 10 tons per week of
clothing going to the landfill.
>The garments are in decent condition for the most part and seems a shame
to simply toss'm. I'd appreciate any leads!!
>
>Judi Gregory
>Global Waste Recycling
>626-339-9555
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Dear Judy:
In response to your question there are 3 research avenues that I would
recommend for you to explore:
1. The California Integrated Waste Management Board - CALMAX: this is a
materials exchange maintained by the CIWMB that lists wanted and
available materials. Searches can be done by material (textiles) and by
geographic location. Geographic searches can be restricted to the Los
Angeles region, other regional areas or conducted for the entire state.
You can also submit a available listing describing the materials that are
generated. CALMAX's web address is: http://www.ciwmb.ca.gov/CalMAX/
2. Contact the Secondary Materials and Recycled Textile Association: This
is a national trade organization representing textile recyclers. Try
contacting them for names of members active in your area who may be
interested in the materials described in your message. They can be found
on the Web at: http://www.smartasn.org/
3. Do an Internet search: I would try doing a search on some of the
major search engines like HotBot, Alta Vista or Lycos (these can be
accessed from the search function button located on the tool menu of
either Navigator or Explorer) using a phrase search based on "textile
recycling" or something similar. I did something like this on HotBot and
got 93 responses so manually reviewing them is quite feasible. The
reason that I recommend doing a search on a search engine is that chances
are quite good that you will locate textile recyclers who opened web
sites because they are interested in sourcing from a very large
geographic area (including the entire U.S.) and you may be overlooking a
potential market by restricting yourself to CA based companies. However,
there is an Internet tool for every purpose and you can also do an L.A.
specific search using a resource like Search Los Angeles
(http://www.searchlosangeles.com)
Sincerely,
Roger M. Guttentag
215-513-0452
Read <italic>Recycling in Cyberspace</italic> in Resource Recycling
July 1999 topic: Recycling Market Directories on the Net