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Lisle Park District collects used textiles to recycle

What can you do with the clothes your children outgrew, your worn handbags and the drapes that don't fit in your new decor?

To help reduce the 85 percent of textiles being trashed each year, the Lisle Park District has teamed up with USAgain to host a dropbox for recycling textiles in the Community Center parking lot, 1825 Short St., Lisle.

USAgain is a for-profit company that collects unwanted textiles and resells them in the United States and abroad, diverting millions of items of clothing from landfills, generating new revenue streams for U.S. businesses and nonprofit agencies, and fueling local economies in emerging countries.

Items that may be left in the dropboxes are adult and children's clothing; accessories such as hats, handbags, gloves, belts, scarves and backpacks; and linens, including bedding, blankets, towels and drapes.

Lisle Park District is dedicated to discovering new opportunities for environmental protection and advocacy with short- and long-term goals for recycling. Residents of the United States dispose of nearly 243 million tons of solid waste each year, 55 percent to 65 percent of which comes from single-family residences.

With a national recycling rate of just 33.8 percent, such disposal unnecessarily burdens the state's landfills and contributes to pollution and climate change by emitting greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide and methane.

The district is excited to add this new partnership with USAgain to its green initiatives in an effort to become an eco-friendly leader within the Lisle community.

As of July, the Lisle Park District has donated more than 500 used athletic shoes, which will be recycled into athletic running tracks and playground surfaces. In addition, the park district has worked with residents to collect crayons that are recycled into new crayons and also collects newspapers, magazines, shopping catalogs, office/school papers and mail.

Each winter between November and January, the park district encourages residents to recycle their old holiday lights. Every spring, the district offers free, secure, on-site paper shredding at the Paper Shred Event, which will be from 9 a.m. to noon Saturday, April 18.

For information about the Lisle Park District, call (630) 964-3410 or visit lisleparkdistrict.org.

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