Donate Your Clothes to Make a Difference this Back-to-School Season


Levi Strauss & Co.
August 11, 2014

We know you’re holding on to these last days of summer with all your strength, but it’s time to face the facts: the back-to-school season is in full swing once again.  We’ll venture a guess that’s not news to you. Your children are no doubt already caught up in the madness around back-to-school shopping – frantically checking items off the school supply list, hopelessly obsessed with finding the perfect first-day pair of Levi’s®. You’re not the only ones. Last year around $4.4 billion was spent on jeans in the U.S. during the back-to-school season.

In with the new is always exciting, but what about those castoff clothes? You know the ones. The outfits you clear out to make room for the latest looks. That beloved pair of pants that are a little too snug, not quite long enough, or “just not my style” this school year?

Typically, too many of these used items end up in landfills. The average consumer throws away 68 pounds of clothing and textiles every year; only about 15 percent of discarded clothing is recycled or reused.

So, this year we’re encouraging you to do something different and make a more sustainable choice. Instead of trashing your child’s clothing rejects, create a donation pile for Goodwill®. Their locator tool makes it easy to find a donation site near you.

When making room in your child’s closet for new school clothes, you can help people and our planet by donating used clothes to Goodwill.

This simple act will help make a dent in the waste we all produce, give those well-loved Levi’s jeans a second lease on life, and even create a job through Goodwill. The organization helps meet the needs of all job seekers, including programs for youth, seniors, veterans, and people with disabilities, criminal backgrounds and other specialized needs.  So far this year, 157,239 people have earned a job with Goodwill’s help, and your donations can help even more people.

Calculate your impact with Goodwill’s donation impact calculator:

Images courtesy of: SF Goodwill , Goodwill Industries International