Textiles Recycling carpet

We know there was a reason to save our tattered Dungarees in the corporate workplace, a little reinforcement can pay big dividends. Tomato and chicken noodle are lunch time staples at Campbell Soup Co. headquarters.

In Scott Paper Co. washrooms, the house brand fills dispensers. So it should come as no surprise that the faint blue tint of the new letterhead, envelopes and memo pads at Levi Strauss & Co. headquarters reminds employees of a well worn pair of jeans.

Actually, the reinforcement is less subtle than that: All the company's new stationery is being made from denim. The Levi's jeans factory in Albuquerque, N.M., sweeps up its scraps and ships them to a paper plant, which turns them into attractive, 100% recycled cotton products. The idea came from neighbor Stefan Watson, whose specialty paper company shuns wood fiber because it gradually deteriorates. Looking around for cotton raw materials, he discovered that the Levi's plant was sending a million pounds of denim scrap a year to the landfill. "With their permission, I took some of the jean material and started beating it up with my machines," he says. Levi Strauss executives liked the results so much that Mr. Watson's small plant couldn't keep up with demand. So he helped arrange a bigger contract with Crane Paper Co. in Dalton, Mass. In the past year, about 100.000 pounds of Denim paper products have been made. Virtually everyday at our headquarters is using it in some form, says Steven Meyette, a senior purchasing agent. And the project is still expanding. The company sales force hands out new business cards printed on recycled denim.

Two more U.S. plants are adding their scrap to the stream, and a third will join soon. Crane has started making Levi corrugated boxes from denim that are proving more durable than conventional corrugated. The Levi's only store in Columbus, Ohio, promotes denim note cards. In Europe, about 4,500 Levi Strauss workers now receive an employee newsletter, published in six languages, that has been printed on the blue paper. In Albuquerque, meanwhile, not a shred of denim has gone into the trash bin 13 months. Dale Neese, the plant's assistant manager, says the garbage hauling bill has been cut by a third. And Mr. Watson, the paper maker, calculates that the Albuquerque scraps spare about 8,000 trees a year.

(Source: Wall Street Journal, November 30, 1992)


Generation:

  • An estimated 7.4 million tons of textiles were generated in 1995.

    Percent:

  • Textiles made up nearly 3.6 percent of the MSW stream.

    Recovery:

  • About 12.2 percent of textiles were recovered from the MSW stream.

    Source: U.S. EPA 1996. Characterization of Municipal Solid Waste in the United States: 1996 Update EPA530-R-97-015, Washington, D.C.

  • Green Networld
    Westfield, Massachusetts
    Email: networld@westfield-ma.com

    Last update: 11/09/1999