Can We Recycle Clothes, Shoes And Books? ♻️ Podcast Ep. 36 Don’t Be A Waster

Can We Recycle Clothes, Shoes And Books? ♻️ Podcast Ep. 36 Don’t Be A Waster

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Transcript: Can We Recycle Clothes, Shoes And Books?

Can We Recycle Clothes, Shoes And Books? ♻️: Hello and welcome to another edition of Recycle: Don’t be a Waster! In today’s episode, I suppose, I just want to get something off my chest – have a moan. Or in a more positive light, suggest… suggest a new initiative. I feel a little bit like a bad politician. I always say politicians announce things nine times and do nothing. You know, they call for a road, you know, say a road, should be built. They call for further study on that road. They call for funding for the road.

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And they then announced the road might be built. They then announced the road, so it’s starting to be built. And then they open the road, so you know, the milky for everything is worth, I suppose. Today, what I’m doing is I’m calling for a recycling initiative. One of the things that wasted – that really bugs me is when people say, “Oh, can I recycle this? Can I recycle that?” and often, yes, you can.

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But there is nowhere to drop it off. And you know, I think the area that really is, I suppose – I see a lot of potential is, is clothing, stuff like shoes. Specifically shoes and, also specifically clothing. And they’re often very good quality, but maybe not good enough to be dropped off at, you know – that could be sold. So it can’t go to people like Vinnies, the Smith family, those sort of organizations, you know, where they’re selling for profit. And then the money’s used for, you know, charitable works.

Act 2: Can We Recycle Clothes, Shoes And Books?

But you know, there’s clearly a huge amount of items that are still… have life left in them that just don’t fit people, you know, that could be given to charity, could be given to, I suppose, people in need. Copy got given overseas to people who require them, and as the other area is books like literature books, what things people have read, you know, old textbooks – that aspect. And people feel bad about throwing these out because clearly, the wisdom doesn’t decay. The wisdom’s still in those pages and it’s just finding someone who can take it and use those and take advantage of it who obviously needs them.

Clearly, getting in touch for, you know, finding the person, the marketing theory between the people in need and the people who want to give is the big issue, you know. There are… there’s…. there’s companies, I think, it’s a… focusing in particularly on shoes, on Runners, whereby they can be given a new life. And I think oftentimes, they’re given to kids in Africa just for running around. You know, they’re focusing on running shoes or training shoes, but I think that certainly, in Australia, there’s a major appetite for this sort of stuff. Clearly, there’s a constant supply of people getting, growing out of items.

It’s not the style they’re looking for anymore, you know, or house clearances, whatever. It is… there’s clearly always going to be people wanting to get rid of books but not wanting to throw them out because it’s a real pity. Clothing, shoes etc. and people who would take them if they are available for free, you know. And I would suggest, you know, a government initiative that, whereby, you could have a facility – drop-off facilities, and people who could go in and browse.

Act 3: Can We Recycle Clothes, Shoes And Books?

One of the very interesting things I saw was in Turkey. It was on the internet in Turkey. Garbage collectors had built their own library based on books included in just rubbish bins and they’d take them. And they put them in this library, and I’m sure you could build landing libraries or just even books people can take away, you know, large – nearly every suburb in Australia. And so that is an initiative that I would, you know, I think there’s a lot of room for this – just a facility whereby you have someone sitting there.

You can come in, drop off your clothes or your shoes, you know. They take them and say “Yes, these are fine” and then off you go. And it will give someone… it will stop a lot of the fly tipping that you see at Smith family or Vinnie’s drop-off points, where people, you know, fundamentally just drop their own junk on the doorstep despite the signs saying that, you know, they don’t need that stuff because they need some people like that have to pay to dispose of stuff that’s not up to standard. So this is something that I think will be very useful, clearly, for people like school students, uni students.

And if the books were collected, put in an order, you know, I’m sure the school textbooks or the uni textbooks that people had this year – there’s people who want them next year. And that obviously applies in all aspects. You know, once you’ve read a book, there’s ones you want to reread. There’s other ones that you don’t, and so I think this would be a good initiative. Shoes, running shoes, clothing clearly, there is an appetite forward.

But I think there’s definitely room for probably not at the level where stuff is almost pristine and can be resold or vintage where it’s got some sort of, you know, some coolness element, or you know, collectibility element – just standard stuff. I think there’s also room for that, and I think once you collect it and have a more central Area, if it’s not up to sell ability, it could be used for recycling, for Rags etc.

And we’re seeing that hop in a place like where they do collect all clothing but I think a centralized point would be very useful. So yeah, that’s all I wanted to add today. I think those three sectors clothing shoes and books I think would be the most opportune to start with um and at the end of the day it’s everyone has them and they’re never going to go out or run out. Okay, we’ll leave it there today. I’ll be interested to see what people’s feedback is. And of course, in the meantime, Recycle: Don’t be a Waster!