Textile recycling

Any unwanted clothing, can be put in clear or white plastic bags and placed on top of or beside your blue wheelie bin for recycling on your recycling collection day. Please tie any pairs of shoes together. Items accepted include clothes, bags, belts, curtains, blankets, towels, odd socks and lingerie. 

TRAID provides free home collections of unwanted textiles, clothes and shoes, as well as small electrical waste to residents. Make sure you have at least one bag of textiles for collection, and any electrical waste can be collected at the same time. 

Alternatively you could be creative and ‘upcycle' the items which you have in your wardrobe, look out for local ‘swishing events’ or you could donate them to a charity shop. For more information see www.loveyourclothes.org.uk

You can also take these materials to the reuse and recycling centre at Greenford.

What happens to my unwanted textiles?

The textiles collected in the banks and from your blue wheelie bin are taken away and sorted, according to their condition, into different grades. They are either then sent to be reused or recycled into different products.

It is calculated that recovering and recycling just 10% of the waste currently sent to landfill in the UK could generate savings of around £23.8million a year, which would not only help our economy but the environment too.