Unwanted textiles are transformed with new purpose

Aug 09, 2023

Helpsy recycles donated clothing while one artist uses unwanted materials in her work.

Helpsy recycles donated clothing while one artist uses unwanted materials in her work.

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Helpsy recycles donated clothing while one artist uses unwanted materials in her work.

What happens to your unneeded clothes, shoes, and linens after you drop them off in a donation bin? Textile collection company Helpsy took Chronicle inside their Woburn warehouse. Helpsy estimates the average person throws away more than 100 pounds of textiles every year.

When drivers drop off textiles at the warehouse, they go straight into the baler. They’re turned into thousand-pound bundles. Helpsy packs them into trailers and sells them to bulk customers. The textiles are sorted by what can be reused as clothing and what needs to be recycled into a wiper, insulation, or stuffing.

Arlington artist Lis Sartori is giving textiles a second life, one scrap at a time. She transforms cast-off materials into abstract landscapes, dyeing the fabrics to create her color scheme. Sartori uses secondhand materials for a variety of reasons: it is more cost effective, it is environmentally friendly, and she prefers materials that have a little more character.