WHY WE PAUSED OUR TEXTILE RECYCLING OPERATIONS,

Since the inception of SUAY in 2017, we have repurposed and upcycled over 7 million pounds of textiles through our reuse programs like the Community Dye Bath™, repair, and our textile recycling program SUAY IT FORWARD. And while the flow of unwanted items was always steady, we saw how incredibly broken the system is in response to the LA 2025 fires when, in just a few short weeks, over 120,000 pounds of textiles were dropped at our doors. 

Our commitment has always been to repurpose, reuse and keep textiles in circulation, unlike other programs that cannot repurpose and only sell “as-is”, SUAY has the power of garment workers to transform textiles for a second life, keeping them out of landfills. Part of this commitment means honoring the reuse of what we have, before we accept more. 

WHY RECYCLE WITH US? SUAY VS. THE GOODWILL

Goodwill’s model is resale first, and while resale is a legitimate form of circularity, it only works for items that are sellable as-is, in style, in good condition, in season, no rips, stains, or damages. What doesn’t sell is sent to secondary markets, and often ends up circulating the globe and landing in waste streams, polluting precious natural resources. 

SUAY’s model is different. True textile circularity, powered by skilled manual laborers. Upcycling intercepts material regardless of resale viability, and SUAY uses repair, overdye, and remaking to transform textiles through reuse, ensuring that imperfections don’t trash a whole garment. 

Let's get into how you can plug in?

If nothing else, sponsor a bag, spend your coffee money this weekend to keep textiles out of landfills.

And to follow up on why we paused, we are working on something behind-the-scenes that will continue to evolve and transform our model to create more access and more garment-worker power to repurpose your textiles at scale. Stay tuned!

Every sponsored bag helps keep 20lbs of textiles out of landfill, provides green jobs for skilled manual laborers, and supports the kind of model we need in this environmental and social justice crisis.