Households across Timmins have received in their mail in the past week a textile recycling kit.
It’s for a pilot project approved by city council with a Southern Ontario company called Recycling Rewards.
The city’s environmental coordinator – Christina Beaton – says an audit shows that over three percent of material thrown in the garbage is fabric, shoes and linens.
“Which equates to just over 200 tonnes of textile waste,” she tells My Timmins Now Dot Com.
…That’s every year. Those figures come from a 2017-2018 curbside audit.
“You know, if every year we’re putting 200 tonnes of textiles into our landfill” says Beaton, ”it’s something that we’ve seen an opportunity for, to divert the items.”
Beaton says the company will take those items in the clear plastic bags you got in your mail last week and sell some, recycle most, and dispose of very little.
Now, you wouldn’t be wrong in thinking that anything made of cloth would decompose in a landfill site.
“Textiles that are made up of carbon, like let’s say cellulose with cloth material,” Beaton explains, “they will also produce greenhouse gases in the landfill during decomposition.”
The kit you received also outlines pick-up dates. They are not necessarily the same as your garbage and recycling days.