The Cranston-based nonprofit Big Brothers Big Sisters of Rhode Island is upset that for-profit collectors of hand-me-downs, particularly an Ohio company named Simple Recycling, have been cutting into its fundraising.
For many years, Big Brothers Big Sisters has been collecting old clothes, shoes and other household items in Rhode Island. The nonprofit sells what it collects to thrift-store chain Savers to raise money for its youth mentoring programs.
Meanwhile, Simple Recycling has started free curbside collection this year of such items in Bristol, Coventry, Middletown and North Providence – Rhode Island being one of its newest markets. The company mails out notices to residents in those communities, telling them to put out old clothes and other items in company-issued bags on certain days of the week, and the company collects them.
Like Big Brothers Big Sisters, Simple Recycling sells the items to secondhand retailers, though Savers is not among them, and to charities that run thrift stores nationwide.
Whatever the thrift stores don’t want, the company tries to sell to secondhand dealers at reduced rates for shipment overseas.
Typically, Simple Recycling pays cities and towns $20 for each ton of its collections. In return, the company gets exclusivity for curbside pickup of clothes, shoes and household items on the same day as trash pickup.
Big Brothers Big Sisters is worried about for-profit collectors infringing on its hand-me-downs business. It generates about 60% of the organization’s annual revenue, which totaled $1.3 million in 2017. The organization offers home pickups to residents who schedule it, and it has nearly 100 donation bins and four drop-off centers statewide.
“We have offered free home pickups to Rhode Island residents for more than 20 years,” Big Brothers Big Sisters Executive Director Katje Afonseca said in a recent press release on the issue. “It is surprising to see for-profit companies both in our state and from out of state who are just beginning to offer home pickups [inaccurately] state that this is a new service to Rhode Islanders.”
Simple Recycling maintains that there’s an overabundance of used textiles nationwide that nonprofits and charities are not able to handle. According to the company, 85% of all used clothing ends up in landfills and only 15% gets donated or recycled.
“My program doesn’t compete with organizations [such as] Big Brothers Big Sisters. We compete with landfills,” said Sonny Wilkinson, Simple Recycling’s vice president of municipal relations.
“People who support Big Brothers Big Sisters by donating clothes are going to continue to do that,” Wilkinson said. “My program is for people who don’t have the time or transportation to go to a drop-off center or collection bin.”
So far, Big Brothers Big Sisters says its collections are down 21.2% in Bristol, 13.8% in Coventry and 2.6% in Middletown, year over year between January and September. But collections rose 13.4% in North Providence, where Mayor Charles A. Lombardi helped the nonprofit place additional bins there.
Lombardi, a commissioner for the R.I. Resource Recovery Corp., the quasi-public agency that runs the state’s Central Landfill, said he has supported Simple Recycling to reduce the amount of “trash” going to the landfill.
Scott Blake is a PBN staff writer. Contact him at Blake@PBN.com.
