 Reduce; limiting the amount of natural resources that are used to produce a new item, or reduce the amount of rubbish thrown on landfill.
Reusing; the object itself is used again for the same of a different purpose.
Recycling; the material the object is made from is used again to make something new.
Ways children and schools can get involved.
Children can encourage their families to take old clothes to their local clothing bank – but what happens to clothes that are deposited in to clothing banks?
How the deposited clothes are used |
Average
out of 10 items |
% of total
deposited material |
The clothes are reused and sold as second hand clothing |
5 |
52 |
The buttons and zips are removed and the fabric then used as cleaning rags |
1 |
12 |
The fabric is shredded and used to make material that fills furniture, mattresses, car seats and carpet underlay |
2 |
22 |
The fibres in some materials are sorted, washed and then recycled into new clothing |
1 |
7 |
The clothes that aren’t good enough to reuse or recycle are dumped in landfill |
1 |
7 |
Using the 5 categories listed in the table you could conduct your own clothes sorting activity.
Bring in or get children to bring in some old items of clothing and encourage them to think about which group each item would be best suited to, or can they think of an alternative use for the item or material.
As a link to Numeracy ask the children to draw up a table, a bar chart or even work out percentages of their results. How do they compare to the DTI figures in the table above.
What are the implications of their results, how much would still end up on landfill, how could charities benefit from more clothing being deposited, what other things could be put in the clothing bins – i.e. shoes, curtains, bedding etc.
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