St. Vincent de Paul employee Wendy Chand stood before a huge pile of men’s shirts.
“I am currently hanging the clothes that we sorted that are in good enough condition to send into the stores,” Chand explained.
Chand is working in a clothing warehouse on Seneca Road in West Eugene. It’s a sprawling space with lines of tables stacked 10 feet high with every kind of clothing imaginable. Forklifts buzz around, loading and unloading massive shipping boxes.
This is the epicenter of a major recycling operation in the Willamette Valley that aims to combat “fast fashion” waste.
Fast fashion is clothing that is cheaply made and quickly produced to follow the latest trends. Consumers are encouraged to buy more — and discard faster — sometimes after only a few wears. Research shows fast fashion pollutes waterways, releases greenhouse gases and spreads microplastics.
In fact, the fashion industry is one of the planet’s biggest polluters, churning out mountains of waste while wreaking havoc on the environment. In the U.S. alone, more than 11 million tons of discarded clothing pile up every year.
There are places in the world that have become illegal dumping grounds for discarded clothes. National Geographic reported on a desert site in northern Chile, where a “mountain” of fast fashion waste spans over 750 acres and is visible from space.
But here in Oregon, one charitable nonprofit is intercepting that waste stream — one piece of clothing at a time.
St. Vincent de Paul of Lane County is a nonprofit human services organization with a network of stores in Eugene and Springfield and around the state, from The Dalles to Cottage Grove, Florence to Oakridge.
And they’ve been recognized as one of Oregon’s largest fabric and textile recyclers.
Last year, St. Vincent de Paul of Lane County alone diverted nearly 3 million pounds of these clothing materials from landfills. This branch has the biggest clothing sorting operation in the state.
And they are a major job creator, too. Network-wide, nearly 600 St. Vinnie’s employees work in homeless services, mattress recycling, thrift store operations and the local textile sorting warehouse.
The extended life of that old T-shirt
The recycling journey begins when all the clothing donations from around the state are delivered to the warehouse in West Eugene.
“We take it and we process it,” explained Brandi Carter, St. Vinnie’s clothing warehouse manager. “It gets dumped onto large tables. I have 20 clothing sorters, and they start by sorting through the clothes, and it gets sorted in different ways.”
Carter said the goal for each employee is to sort out 500 pieces of good, quality clothing.
“No rips, no stains, no tears,” she said.
The clothes are sorted by size, hung up, tagged and put into the huge shipping boxes. They’ll later be sold off the racks at 14 stores throughout Oregon.
“We are currently working on a project called ‘Boston,’” Carter said. “So, we've gotten stuff from the Boston area and we are sorting out expensive clothing. And then we look it up and try to get a third of the price.”
Besides selling off the racks, clothing is also sold by the pound at one of their stores.
Carter said they try to get use out of every stitch of donated clothing.
“We sort out cotton T-shirts,” she said. “If they have stains, rips, or tears on them, then they go for the Bag ‘o Rags.”
Carter said they sell these packaged tees for construction crews and different paint shops.
“All different kinds of companies like to buy them to use them as rags,” she said.
A second-chance employer
Shelly Sovens slid material into a cutting machine to make 12-by-12 inch cloth squares.
“I worked here for 25 years, and then I got sick,” Sovens said as she worked. “So, I was off for four years, and I've been back for almost a year here now.
“I love my job.”
Many of the individuals working in this warehouse — and across theSt. Vinnie’s network — are part of the Supported Work Experience program.
Chilisa Hernandez manages this aspect of St. Vinnie’s operations in Lane County.
“What sets us apart at St. Vincent de Paul is that we are a second-chance employer,” Hernandez said. “This plan is appropriate when a participant who has little to no work history or experience in a field specific to their employment goal.”
Hernandez herself worked her way up to management in this way. She said the organization continues to fulfill its mission by providing vouchers to unhoused clients at St. Vinnie’s service stations. These allow folks to shop for clothes at any of the organization’s thrift stores.
As she spoke, Hernandez pointed to her outfit and said the entire ensemble was put together with repurposed clothing from St. Vincent de Paul’s thrift stores. She said those stores are run by people who took a second chance when offered.
“Any time we can create more jobs for folks and help people through that self-sufficiency process, the happier families are in our communities.”
Breathing new life into old favorites
Back at the warehouse, when sorters come across “distressed” clothing — they don’t automatically discard it. Instead, they direct those items to a newer section of the clothing operation called “Upsmart.”
Julia Martin started as the e-commerce sales manager for St. Vincent de Paul a few years ago, and she runs this program.
“I noticed just how much stuff that I thought had value for the company,” she said. “And so I started getting into all the distressed stuff.”
Martin grew up in England and moved to the States after college. She ran a clothing resale business on eBay for 20 years, so she’s got a good eye for pieces that can be re-envisioned rather than thrown away.
“We're looking for stuff that's cool, interesting, that especially young people are very interested in wearing,” she said. “And we're also looking for specific genres of clothing.”
At first, she said it came down to two fashion categories: “Work and weird.”
“Over time, we started separating those categories out, and we came up with — for example — bohemian clothing, alternative clothing, western clothing, vintage Y2K clothing,” she said.
And Martin has learned that “world worn” clothes sell.
“One of our first successes with distressed clothing online was Carhartt double knee pants — the ones that are made of the very thick duck fabric,” Martin said. “I put a pair up that had a giant hole in the crotch for $70, and they sold right away to a customer in Japan. That’s when I knew I was on to something!”
She added that vintage University of Oregon Ducks items have fetched a pretty penny. And then there was that vintage Levi’s jacket.
“It looked terrible. It was dirty, it was ripped, the seams were coming apart,” she said. “But we realized that we had something that was pretty amazing. We put it online. It sold right away at $3,500.”
Martin and her team of six sorters are experts in “upcycling” — taking something old and breathing new life into it.
Right now, they’re collaborating with a graffiti artist from Eugene called ‘Suspish,’ who’s agreed to put their designs on Upsmart’s clothing.
“We source T-shirts and hoodies and sweatpants,” she said, speaking of the Suspish pieces, “and we're very focused right now on tie-dye, because it's the perfect time of year for tie-dye.”
Overall, the Upsmart program is thriving. Martin isn't too shy to make a projection.
"We're going to make a million dollars this year as a result of all this work that we've been doing,” Martin said with a grin. “We're very successful, and we've managed to keep a lot of clothing items out of the bailer.”
The bailer is the final stop for clothing on this recycling journey. It’s stuff that could not be sold — as hard as the team tried. Discarded clothes are compacted into 1,500-pound bales, just like hay.
St. Vinnie’s officials said they have domestic and foreign buyers who still find use for these clothes. The organization insists it’s conscious of where the bales end up, working to prevent items from littering beaches or deserts in other parts of the world. Still, they acknowledged, there are always unknowns.
But one thing is for certain: a lot of the clothes being bailed in Eugene are flimsy, fast fashion items. Martin hopes the next generation will change that.
“Young people today are really open to thrifting,” she said. “They love that things are unique and interesting and not fast fashion.”
