7 Facts That Will Make You Want to Donate Clothes

Every year 70% of the people in the United States give something to charity, whether it’s clothing, household goods, money, or time. In fact, a whole 3% of the entire national income goes to charities every year: and that doesn’t even count what the government of the United States spends in giving to its own poor and to the needy around the world. If you’re not already making used clothing donations or giving of your time to help a charity or non-profit of some kind, here are some of the fact that just might help inspire you to start.

• The donations and giving that goes to non-profits actually boosts the entire economy. There are a lot of reasons for this, but you probably didn’t think about the fact that when you donate clothes to Red Cross centers, you’re actually helping the economy. Non-profits inject over $666 billion into America’s economy every year.
• You’re wasting a lot of clothing. Don’t be offended, because this is something we’re all doing. We consume, nationally, 20 billion garments every year. That’s an average of seven pairs of shoes and 68 garments for each person, which means most people are buying more than one item of clothing every week. The EPA estimates that we’re throwing away about 10 pounds of clothes every year each, and all those could be clothing donations instead. When you donate clothes to Red Cross centers you’re keeping those items out of landfills and helping to cut down on the total amount of new clothing we need to consume in a year.
• We all want to give back. If you’ve got anything good in life, you’re probably looking for a way you can give to others, just like others surely gave their time, advice, support, love, and perhaps even their clothes to help you out as you learned the ropes of life. When donors with high net worth five, 63% of the cite “giving back to the community” as an important motivation for giving.
• Red Cross donations are going straight to help others. The American Red Cross is one of the biggest and most reliable charities in America. It’s the 13th largest ranked by private donation levels, and when you donate clothes to Red Cross centers you know that they’ll go to good use. Every hour of every day, every day of every year, the Red Cross is providing clothes, shelter, food, water, and blood to needy families all across America.
• There are a lot of people who could stand to benefit from your used clothing donations. Did you know that during the coldest month of the year in 2015–January–there were over 550,000 homeless people living outside at night? Over 83,000 homeless people, or 15% of that population, are chronically homeless and never make it off the street. When you donate clothes, some of them go directly to the homeless, while others are sold to raise funds to get them food and other important necessities.
• When you donate clothes to Red Cross centers, you can deduct the value from your taxes. You can take a tax deduction for the value of the items that you donated to a charity. You’ll need to get a receipt for anything that’s valued over $200, but some of those old clothes can really be worth something when it comes to taxes.
• When you donate clothes, you help more than just your own people. Donated clothing doesn’t just help Americans: it goes all around the world. Internationally, over 14 million tons of textiles and clothes help people. Not only do these items help the needy directly, but they even provided needed jobs at the ports for people to sort and arrange all those donated clothes.

If you’re not donated your used textiles already, isn’t it about time you got started? Your clothes can do more good than you know, and will help you, others, and the environment. There’s really no reason not to for a clothing donation pickup today.