Clothing Drive

• Where will the clothes go?
  • Items collected will be sorted into different categories at the Sort-a-Thon event. After they are carefully checked, they’ll be redistributed: 50%-60% will be given to local charities, 20-30% will be downcycled, 10%-15% will be resold at our popup/shops. Only damaged non-textile items (broken shoes, plastic bags, etc) will go to landfill, which represents less than 4%.

• Which charities do you work with? 
  • The clothes sorted for donation will be redistributed to our network of 20+ local charity partners for reuse by their beneficiaries, including Crossroads, Caritas, YWAM, ImpactHK, Christian Action, and many more.

• What about clothes that cannot be reused? 
  • ​​Clothes that have reached the end of their ‘wearable’ life (e.g. used personal items like underwear, socks, sleepwear, and swimwear, or really worn out/stained/damaged items), or clothes that our charity partners don’t want (e.g. company/school uniforms), are difficult for us to deal with. Globally, including in Hong Kong, there is a lack of viable recycling technologies to deal with these ‘bottom layer’ clothes at scale. At the moment, Redress is working with a partner in Hong Kong to downcycle these items, by shredding the materials and using them to produce boxing bags (to be sent to Thailand boxing schools). Metal pieces (zipper, buttons) are removed at the shredding process to be recycled separately. Each boxing bag requires approximately 40–50 kg of shredded materials.