Posted on 24th Jun
Caring people donating clothing to The Salvation Army’s 10 banks in Mansfield and Ashfield are now part of a textiles revolution.
SATCoL — The Salvation Army Trading Company — is the largest charity-owned textiles collector in the UK, working to support organisations to reduce their carbon footprint and combat climate change.
It said through the reuse and recycling schemes, SATCoL is lessening the impact on overflowing landfill sites by extending the useful life of products and minimising waste
The Mansfield area has 10 banks out of SATCoL’s 8,000 across the UK, each one in Mansfield collecting more than 870kgs per month.
Nationally, SATCoL diverts over 250 million items to good causes each year and over the past 10 years it has raised more than £78m for The Salvation Army and corporate partner charities.
When donated items are unable to be sent to Salvation Army stores to be sold because of their condition, they are put through the newly-launched Fibresort system.
A textiles revolution, it is used to accurately sort and grade non-wearable clothing and textiles by fibre type, blend, and colour for recycling.
The automated Materials Recovery Facility (MRF) reprocesses clothing and other items no longer in a condition that can be reused.
The innovative approach identifies and classifies non-wearable textile items into grades. It uses an infra-red camera and blows items from a conveyor belt into bins using air jets. The process separates them into fibres such as cotton, polyester, and wool.
Simultaneously, Fibersort recognises the fibre content percentage of each item and sorts specified blends such as polycotton and wool mixes at a higher level of accuracy than manual sorting.
Fibersort also sorts fibres by specific or mixed colours categories.
Supported by the Government’s Resource Action Fund, the project is managed by climate action NGO WRAP.
Profits received from the resale of the donations is given to The Salvation Army to support its work throughout the country.
Kirk Bradley, SATCoL’s head of corporate partnerships, said: “We are thrilled to be working with this new ground-breaking technology. It helps to reduce waste and more donated garments can be repurposed, resold, and raise more money for vital charity work.”
Claire Shrewsbury, director of Insights and Innovation, WRAP, added: “Donations of unwanted clothing are essential to keep the cycle of clothing turning and move us towards a more sustainable model of clothing.
“WRAP is delighted to have been involved in the funding of this brilliant development. By working with retail partners to providing raw materials from the Fibersort process for recycling, SATCoL is helping to ‘close the loop’ at a key stage in the circle economy.”
To find your nearest Salvation Army clothing banks, go to https://www.
