How to find clothes recycling bins near me
February 16, 2025How do I find clothes recycling bins near me? There’s no doubt that this being more mindful this year is an excellent New Year’s Resolution. Clothes recycling is an easy win.
If you look for drop boxes that collect textiles nearby, there is a key advantage: you can walk. It’s easy to be tempted to jump into the car even for short trips but this way you can improve your cardiovascular health. In addition, you can do lots of short trips and so you don’t have to do a massive overhaul in one go. You can try on a cardigan with an outfit, decide it doesn’t fit, and donate clothing on the the way to the shops. You don’t have to go all the way to the Salvation Army or find a thrift store accepting donations. Recycling bins are easy to find and use.
Clothes Recycling Bins Near me – The Benefits of Walking
This combination of environmental consciousness and physical exercise is excellent. Walking has been shown to have manifold benefits. First of all, it’s absolutely free. It can even save you money on transport costs. Walking brings endorphins, helps shape your muscles, lose weight if you’d like that, and helps your heart and lung health. It can even strengthen your bones and improve your co-ordination. This is really helpful to protect you in later life against falls. When you get older, your bones are more fragile, and if you fall over, it can be literally fatal. Broken bones do not heal easily in older people and they end up in hospital with serious injuries.
Walking, especially with a heavy backpack full of textile recycling, helps to build bone density and makes your bones stronger so that they won’t break as easily. It also gets you used to things like uneven pavements and potential trip hazards, so you are unlikely to stumble. Keep yourself strong so that you can not only carry your own shopping when you are 80 but other people’s, too!
Or a bit further
At first, try to find the nearest clothes recycling bin and take one item of clothing to it. Then head home. The next day, find another item of clothing and a slightly further recycling bin. On the third day you can pack two items of clothing, or maybe something a bit heavier like an old sheet. Keep increasing the distance and the amount of things you carry. Bear in mind that you always have to walk home, too! So the distance is doubled. But if you get really stuck, you can probably find a bus nearby to get home.
To keep you motivated, do a clear out at home so that you have a bag of textile recycling ready to go. You can put it by the door and pull out a bit at a time.
Explore the Neighbourhood
The Thames at Hammersmith
The advantages of doing this is that you can walk the dog at the same time. Outdoor clothes recycling bins near me of course allow you to have dogs near them and many charity shops will let you bring the dog in too.
This is such a good way to get out and explore the neighbourhood. You might be surprised what’s round the next corner. The other day we went for a walk and carried on just a little bit further than our usual route. We usually go up the riverside as far as a particular bridge, cross the bridge and head back on the other side, then complete the loop by crossing the bridge at our starting point and getting the bus back home from where we started out. And that is a great walk, and the perfect distance for us – a couple of hours.
For reference, in case you are interested, the bridges are Putney Bridge and Hammersmith Bridge – we start at Putney Bridge, go as far as Hammersmith Bridge, probably stop for a coffee or lunch at one of the lovely waterside pubs, and cross over and end up where we started.
Clothes recycling bins near me – Find Beauty
But this time we made the radical decision to go a bit further. There was a museum we wanted to check out – the William Morris Museum in Hammersmith, which used to be his home before he moved to Oxford. Do you know, I don’t associate William Morris with Hammersmith. But everyone has to live somewhere. It turned out that this is just a few yards from Hammersmith Bridge. It also turned out to be closed. No matter. We carried on a bit further, and discovered really lovely houses with their gardens on the other side of the road, right next to the river. It was so beautiful, like somewhere in an old village in Surrey. So unexpected.
And then something even more unexpected happened. The road flooded. The river was very high. I noticed it – then I noticed it was coming towards us. The riverside gardens became completely flooded. It wasn’t, I must quickly say, destructive or an emergency. In fact, looking at the healthy green grass of the gardens, I’d say it happens pretty often and it’s good for them. And then this being just before 4pm on a cold early January afternoon, a most glorious sunset happened. It was reflected in the river and the flooded street. It was wonderful – the whole area was lit up with a beautiful glow and so were we. And since we could go no further we treated ourselves to a taxi and went home. That was our New Year’s Day walk and what a brilliant beginning to the year!
Clothes recycling bins near me – Walk the Dog and Clear Your Mind
I encourage you to do the same. Breathe fresh air, take the dog or maybe the neighbour’s. Recycle some of those many tons of textile waste. See new things, encounter a sunset (or sunrise if you are an early riser). Do something magical.
