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HOME NEWS > GREEN <br />See the Box. Do the Drop. <br />gj Recommend Iwoet 0 pi u Em .I e pfint <br />kvtu:3 .t f <br />Roughly 10,000 of USAgain's signature green and white boxes pepper church, school and store parking lots around the country. <br />by Ginger Zee <br />Mention the term "recycling" and most automatically think of glass and plastic. But textiles are another big <br />resource hog and shouldn't be forgotten, advocates say. <br />The Environmental Protection Agency estimates that only about 15 percent of the clothing discarded in the United <br />States is donated or recycled. The remaining eight million tons goes into landfills each year. <br />In Illinois, almost 10 percent of household waste is made up of textiles. <br />For Mattias Waltander, the CEO of US'Again in West Chicago, that's a number that needs to change. <br />His textile recycling company, with a processing center in West Chicago, has a goal for the month of April to <br />collect five million pounds of clothing across the country. <br />Multimedia <br />That would elminate 35 million pounds of greenhouse gases, he said. <br />"It's incredible because it's a material that you can take and reuse," the Swedish -born Wallander explained. "It's <br />not like paper or glass that you have to break down and turn into new material. The cost to the environment is <br />miniscule to reuse clothing." <br />USAgain -- which can be read as "USA Gain" and pronounced as "Use Again" -- was launched 10 years ago in <br />Seattle. Now their signature red boxes, designed by the son of Sydney Opera House architect Jorn Utzon, pepper <br />5,000 church, school, and store parking lots around the country. <br />Drop gently worn clothes and shoes in the box and they're picked up to be sifted, weighed, bundled, and shipped. <br />"About half the clothes stay in the US. The other half is exported. We sell to Central America, South America, <br />Africa, to Europe," he said. <br />He said his company isn't trying to outdo other organizations like Goodwill and the Salvation Army, but instead just <br />wants to make it easier for everyone to do the right thing. <br />"This is a win -win operation. We take something that is a surplus that is basically a waste in our society and we <br />move it to a place that can use it," said Wallender. <br />www.usaaain.carn <br />41 <br />