Recycled togs

Got an old fleece coat you don’t know what to do with? Some polyester duds that have seen better days? Drop them off at Mountain Equipment Co-op (MEC), who’ll recycle your old togs and save them from the landfill. The environmentally responsible outdoors retailer introduced a garment-recycling program in stores across Canada this year and has repurposed more than 1800 kilograms of clothing through the Toronto store alone.

“It’s part of who we are, so it just makes sense,” says David Robinson, MEC’s sustainability and community involvement co-ordinator.

Stuff dropped in the stores’ garment recycling bins are sorted, and products that still show signs of life are donated to local shelters and organizations like Council Fire and Scouts Canada. Everything else is sent to Teijin, a fabric manufacturer in Japan, where they are reprocessed into new fibres through an Eco Circle™ closed-loop recycling system. In this process, garments are crushed, turned into granules, then run through a chemical reaction process that removes dyes and other chemicals before turning it back into raw polyester and eventually new Eco Circle™ fibre garments.

MEC accepts any of the following with a 90% or greater polyester content:

• MEC
• Polartec (any brand)
• Eco Circle (any brand)
• Patagonia Common Threads Recycling Program garments

Plus, if you shop for new stuff while you’re at the store, 1% of any purchase you make will be donated to Canadian environmental causes. MEC is the first major Canadian retailer to join 1% For The Planet, an alliance of businesses that believe in providing financial support to environmental initiatives.

And if you need a bag to haul home your cache, MEC uses 100% compostable and biodegradable BioBags made from corn starch (non-GMO corn). Production of BioBags requires less energy and produces two-thirds less greenhouse gasses than the manufacturing of plastic bags. Even better, if you bring your own cloth satchel, MEC will donate 5 cents to an environmental cause. In 2006, those donations totaled $5,682 in Toronto.