CORNWALL, Ontario – The City of Cornwall’s third annual Give a Shirt campaign will return on Oct. 21 to 25.
That week is also Waste Reduction Week.
As in previous years, the public is asked to leave out bags of their unwanted clothes on their garbage pick-up day, marked with a Give a Shirt tag, which will be collected for local thrift stores.
The three thrift stores that will be benefiting from this year’s Give a Shirt campaign will be Maison Baldwin House/ Serendipity, The Agapè Centre/ New for You and Value Village.
Last year, around 6,000 lbs of clothing and textiles were donated to local thrift stores, 1,000 lbs more than in 2017.
For local thrift stores like Serendipity and the Agapè Centre, these donations make a big difference.
The Agapè Centre uses funds raised from it’s New for You thrift store to fund it’s food bank.
“Without these donations, our thrift store would cease to exist,” said Danielle MacNeil of Serendipity.
City of Cornwall Environmental Analyst David Kuhn explained that this will make a big difference not just for the local thrift stores, but for the City’s landfill as well.
“It is estimated that around 37kg of textiles goes into landfills per-person, per-year in Canada,” he said.
“We have around 10 years left at our landfill,” said City of Cornwall Waste Management Supervisor Danielle Watson. “Around 10 per cent of our annual waste are textiles. If we could divert that to a good cause it is a better way to extend the life of our landfill.”
The Give a Shirt campaign is looking for gently used clothing and textiles including towels, mittens, shirts, coats, pants, boots, bedding and more.
Be sure to clearly mark donation bags. A donation sign can be found on the City of Cornwall website. Those bags can then be set out to be collected on a resident’s regular garbage day between Oct. 21 and 25. The Give a Shirt donation bags will not count towards the six bag garbage limit.
