GreenYour.com

Whether your motivation stems from the simple thrill of finding a bargain or from fashion-driven philanthropy, choosing a secondhand sweater lets you participate in the most eco-friendly type of shopping—buying recycled clothes.

How to choose secondhand sweaters

• Pick a charity. Organizations such as the secular Goodwill and the Christian-based The Salvation Army operate ubiquitous thrift stores that generate a large part of their inventory from donations and direct revenues to charitable causes, such as career training for the disadvantaged and disaster relief. If there's a charity or cause you're interested in supporting, investigate to see if an affiliated thrift store exists and start there.

• Buy, sell, trade. For-profit consignment stores and vintage/designer clothing resale shops that function on a buy/sell/trade basis are goldmines for scoring desirable (and maybe designer) secondhand sweaters. It's more likely that sweaters sold at these stores are of higher quality than those found at run-of-the-mill thrift stores. That's because for-profit consignment and designer resale shops are typically selective and employ fashion buyers to choose between the good, the bad, and the ugly. The rejects from these stores are generally given to charity.

• Make a plan of attack, keep your options open, and don't get frustrated. Vintage and used clothing shopping—especially when you're after the ultimate in vintage European sports jumpers or a finely weathered red and black striped cardigan—is often based on pure dumb luck. Our picks are examples of both charitable and for-profit stores that are good places to start a search. If they don't yield results, keep trying. The thrill of the chase and the eventual capture is part of vintage shopping's inherent appeal.

• Look elsewhere. If a musty thrift store doesn't appeal to you, there are other options: Garage and yard sales, auctions, flea markets, rummage sales, and clothing swaps are all potential jackpots. Often the best finds are hiding in the most unlikely places—you never know what woolen diamonds-in-the-rough you'll stumble upon at the rummage sale sponsored by your great aunt's retirement home.

• Use common sense. Don't buy 50 sweaters you'll never wear just because they cost $5. Check for tears, holes, stains, or other damage before you buy. Wash the clothing after you purchase it. And to make your thrift experience completely eco-friendly, bring your own shopping bag.

• For additional guidance on the art of shopping secondhand, The Sideroad offers helpful tips.

Find it! Used clothing shops and thrift stores

Find it! Thrift and resale store resources

Peruse these excellent resources when seeking a local charity-driven thrift or clothing resale store.

• National Association of Resale and Thrift Shops
• Resale Network
• The Thrift Shopper
• Thrifty Planet Resource Guide

Choosing secondhand sweaters helps you go green because…

• When you buy new clothing, sustainable or not, there will be some attached environmental impact, whether it comes from the transport of bamboo fiber from China to a manufacturer in Canada or from the pesticide-heavy treatment of conventional cotton. By purchasing a used sweater or other article of clothing there are few, if any, environmental repercussions.
• When you buy used clothing it's no longer in a state of recycling limbo. Your purchase is the only fool-proof way to ensure that it doesn't eventually enter a landfill.
• When you purchase an article of clothing from a thrift shop operated by a charitable organization, you are contributing directly to a social cause, sometimes even an environmental one. Many for-profit thrift stores are also associated with altruistic groups and causes.

Sweaters are typically made from sheep’s wool and/or cotton, although other fibers, both natural and synthetic, can be used. While only 2.4 percent of farmland worldwide is dedicated to cotton, it accounts for 24 percent of global insecticide sales and 11 percent of global pesticide sales.[1] In total, $2 billion worth of chemicals are sprayed on global cotton crops each year, almost half of which are classified as hazardous by the World Health Organization.[2]

Although the wool used to make sweaters is a completely renewable resource, "grown" in all 50 states, it also poses environmental risks.[3] In 2000, sheep used in wool production were treated with over 14,000 pounds of pesticides to ward off lice, flies, mange, and other pests. The three leading insecticides used on sheep in 2005—fenvalerate, malathion, and permethrin—pose various environmental dangers, including high toxicity to fish and amphibians and groundwater contamination. Chemical antibiotic feed additives used to boost growth rates in sheep are believed to contaminate surface and groundwater, and in some cases, drinking water supplies in rural areas. This is a result of antibiotics in sheep feces.[4]

Additionally, each year nearly 9 billion pounds of textiles and clothing enter the public waste stream and are sent to landfills.[5] An estimated 10.6 million tons of textiles were generated in 2003, with the average American discarding about 68 pounds of clothing and textiles per year—85 percent of which ends up in landfills.[6] The US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has shown that even state-of-the-art landfills, those with the latest technology for liners and operating
methods, will eventually leak, releasing potentially hazardous chemicals from discarded items into the groundwater.[7] Choosing used sweaters can help cut back on the amount of textile waste that goes to landfills.

Donating also saves the clothing from being incinerated. The incineration process releases different chemicals into the environment depending on the material of the garment.

External Links

• Time.com - The New Trend of Used
• Ideal Bite - Can 80's clothes really be considered vintage?
• Style Will Save Us
• Gridskipper - NYC Thrift Shops