At Columbia, we are committed to taking a holistic, life cycle approach to managing the environmental impacts of the products we make. This includes extending the life of our products and keeping these products out of landfills once they have reached the end of their wearable life. According to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, 84% of clothing, shoes and other textiles in the United States ends up in landfills – that equates to over 27 billion lbs. of waste per year or 81 lbs. of textiles waste per person per year.

Columbia is launching the ReThreads program in all U.S. Brand and Outlet locations. Columbia’s Rethreads program encourages consumers to bring in their used clothing and shoes in clean, dry condition, to our participating retail stores to be given a new life. Find a Columbia store near you, here.

Garments and footwear that are dropped in ReThreads bins in each Columbia store, will be sent to a textiles processing facility through I:CO, a textile recycling solutions provider. The products are then sorted, reprocessed, and reused or recycled. Items that are still wearable find new homes through the second-hand market. Unwearable items are reused for products like cleaning cloths or recycled into fibers for new products such as insulation, carpet padding, stuffing for toys and even new fabrics.

We are excited to be partnering with I:CO, to take the collected products on their journey to their next life. I:CO is a leading global textiles recycling solutions provider whose aim is to keep used clothing and shoes in an everlasting life cycle where these items can be reprocessed, reused and recycled again and again.

Through the Rethreads Program, Columbia is joining the movement to significantly reduce the amount of apparel and footwear that ends up in landfills in order to help conserve our material resources, reduce our collective carbon footprint, and help renew the planet and our communities.