What we do

“There is no such thing as away.
When we throw anything away it must go somewhere."

— Annie Leonard, Creator of 'The Story of Stuff'

HI, WE'RE Helpsy.

We're the largest textile collection company in the Northeast US. Unlike most used clothing businesses we have an environmental mission: to keep clothes out of the trash. In just the last year we collected 25 million pounds of clothes. The impact of the clothes we collected is the following:

·       320 million pounds of CO₂ emissions

·       20 billion gallons of water

·       The electricity usage of 10,000 American homes

We are proud to be a Public Benefit Corporation and a Certified B Corp with an environmental mission. We believe that the tragedy of clothing filling our landfills and incinerators needs to stop.

To fight this battle, we work with partners large and small to place clothing collection containers, schedule collection drives, engage with cities and towns, manage unwanted inventories, and spread the word that CLOTHES AREN’T TRASH.

But where do the clothes actually go?

95% of what we collect is reused, upcycled, or recycled. 50% is reusable, 45% is recyclable. It is first sorted by our partners and divided into grades. The higher grades are resold to thrift stores in North America and other secondhand markets around the world. The lower grades get turned into rags for industrial use or things like stuffing and insulation. Clothing reuse is a big deal. It reduces the enormous environmental burden of the second most polluting industry in the world.