Elgin setting up free recycling of clothes, household items
Elgin residents soon will be able to recycle clothes and household items - jewelry, toys, silverware, plates, microwaves and more - with the convenience of free curbside pickup.
The city is expected to finalize a partnership with Ohio-based Simple Recycling next week and launch the new service by late summer. Residents can use orange recycling bags that will be collected by the company's trucks on regular trash pickup days.
Council members gave a unanimous thumbs-up at a meeting last week and are expected to give final approval Wednesday.
Elgin would be the first customer in Illinois for the company, which serves 60 municipalities in Texas, Ohio, Michigan, Minnesota and Massachusetts.
Molly Center, the city's liaison to the sustainability commission, said she contacted several cities served by Simple Recycling in Michigan, Ohio and Texas, and all gave positive feedback about the company's services.
"I'm very excited about this opportunity for Elgin residents," she said.
"It's one more piece of the garbage pile that we can tackle. We've already made significant improvements on recycling, and this is a way for us to piggyback on those efforts."
Textile waste in particular has grown exponentially in recent years, with up to 85 percent of clothes ending up in landfills, Wilkins said, citing data from the Environmental Protection Agency.
Simple Recycling will pay the city 1 cent per pound of materials collected.
The average person throws away 68 pounds of clothing per year, so that would be at least $22,400 in revenue for Elgin, which has about 33,000 households, officials said.
It's OK if clothes have holes and plates are chipped, although pristine items are preferred, said Sonny Wilkins, Simple Recycling's vice president of municipal relations.
The company sells about 60 percent of the materials it collects to international exporters, which in turn sell in markets like Europe and Africa, Wilkins said. Up to 20 percent is sold to thrift store chains, such as Value World, in the U.S., and up to 20 percent is recycled for parts, with a remaining 5 percent or so - such as oily rags, for example - not reusable and ending up in the trash, he said.
Wilkins said the service typically doesn't undercut donation streams to such charities as Goodwill or the Salvation Army, because people who make that effort either want the tax deduction or believe in the charity's mission.
"That particular resident will continue that behavior," he said. "We are targeting the 85 percent of those who choose not to."
Cheryl Lightholder, Goodwill a communications manager, was less optimistic about that.
"From our perspective, who knows if it's going to affect the people that donate to Goodwill," she said. "I hope it would not."