Goodwill recycling: sparing landfills, creating jobs

Anyone who’s shopped here or made a donation knows that Goodwill’s retail effort is also about re-use. By accepting donated household items—and selling them in our stores—we keep significant volumes of goods out of landfills. 

But you may not know just how much more we’re doing. Many of the items donated to Goodwill cannot be resold in our stores— they are too worn, broken, unsafe or simply unsalable. Further processing of these reject materials results in further employment opportunities and another source of revenue: salvage markets.

We’ve developed secondary markets for salvage textiles, books, stuffed animals and shoes. In short, goods that don’t meet quality levels required for our stores, but meet minimum quality levels set by a salvage customer, are recycled through these markets and kept out of landfills. Unsalable metal items, from pots and pans to bicycles, are recycled through scrap-metal dealers. Even the cord off of a lamp or toaster oven generates revenue through copper reclamation.

Last year, in addition to the millions of pounds of goods recycled through retail sales in our stores, we used secondary markets to recycle:

• 3.4 million lbs. of unsalable textiles
• 126 tons of general scrap metal
• 130,000 lbs. of salvage shoes
• 295,000 lbs. of salvage books