Bulging capsacks filled with hundreds of pounds of unwanted clothes, shoes, and accessories are stacked nearly floor to ceiling in Apparel Impact’s 16,000-square-foot warehouse. Multiple truckloads, each weighing approximately 40,000 pounds, enter and exit the facility every day. And all of it would have ended up in a landfill.
Co-founder and CEO Joe Whitten claims he’s “not an environmentalist at heart,” but spend a few minutes in conversation with him at the company’s Hooksett headquarters and you may beg to differ.
Whitten co-founded the company in 2014 when he realized that clothing is one of our biggest waste streams. Seventeen million tons of textiles makes its way into American landfills each year. That’s 17 million multiplied by 2,000 pounds, “a number almost too large to be seen on a calculator without turning it sideways,” Whitten joked grimly.
In 1991, textile waste accounted for one percent of all waste in America. Today, that number is eight percent, “and it’s only getting worse,” said Whitten. “There is no true solution for it.”
Enter Apparel Impact. The company partners with municipalities, government agencies, schools, colleges, and other companies and organizations across the six New England states and New York. These partners host Apparel Impact-branded collection bins in high-traffic, visible areas where people can easily donate their unwanted clothing, shoes, and accessories. Apparel Impact collects these donations and transports them to its warehouse in Hooksett or its secondary location in Colonie, NY, where they are bundled into large capsacks and shipped to clothing graders.
The clothing graders pay Apparel Impact for these shipments, and they assess the quality of each item. Everything is either reused, recycled, or downcycled. The vast majority of items -- around seventy to eighty percent -- can be reused, and Whitten confirmed that “reuse is the number one goal.” A lot of those items end up in non-profit thrift shops, consignment stores, and vintage clothing shops, but some of it goes right back into the communities Apparel Impact serves.
Each month, the company hosts multiple community outreach events and “shopping experiences” in underserved locations throughout its footprint. Whitten characterized these events as “fun, guilt-free shopping experiences where [people] can take as much as they want, free of charge.” Apparel Impact often partners with other organizations to provide toys and groceries at these events as well.
“Outreach has always been a part of the fabric of the company,” said Whitten.
Earlier this year, the company launched a new initiative designed to help it double the number of people it serves: The Municipal Impact Program. Apparel Impact is partnering with municipalities to help them reduce landfill waste while also saving them money they would have spent on textile waste. As an added bonus, those municipalities can request clothing, shoes, backpacks, and other items that are needed by children, veterans, and others in the community, and Apparel Impact will meet those needs.
“We design a program for them to divert waste from their landfills while also providing clothing to the people who need it the most,” said Whitten. “It’s a win-win. This is the future for us at Apparel Impact.”
Whitten believes it should be part of the future of every town in the country. The wealthiest town in America is in California, where the median income is $275,000, and yet three percent of children in that town cannot afford clothing, said Whitten.
“Any town manager who says, ‘We don’t need this, we are fine,’ doesn’t understand the dynamics [of this problem]. All towns have kids who need access to good clothing,” he explained. “It’s a no-brainer.”
As for the twenty to thirty percent of textiles that cannot be reused by people in need or resold to secondhand clothing stores, the company has a strategy for that too. What isn’t reused is upcycled and repurposed or downcycled.
Apparel Impact recently entered into a partnership with Vermont company BirdieBlue, whose owner, Kate Harvey, is “obsessed with reusing and upcycling textiles,” said Whitten. The two companies are working together to co-brand a line of high-quality, brightly colored travel bags, carry-alls, and fanny packs made entirely from ripped or damaged ski and snow gear that cannot be reworn. The products are not yet available for purchase, but the company hopes to launch this new business venture soon.
The five percent of clothing that cannot be reused or repurposed gets downcycled. It finds new life as insulation, industrial rags, and pet bed stuffing, among other uses.
Last year, Apparel Impact prevented 17 million pounds of clothing, shoes, and accessories from entering the landfill. This year, they expect that number to reach 20 million pounds.
More than a decade after its founding, the company remains committed to tackling the issue of textile waste while also combatting clothing insecurity in the communities it serves.
“I don’t see anyone in the country in our industry doing [what we’re doing],” said Whitten. “It’s the right thing to do, and it’s working for us.”
