The Gabriola Island Recycling Organization is reaching out to the Regional District of Nanaimo in hopes of securing funding to turn pounds of discarded textiles into new products. Gabriola Island group receives about 100 bags of donated fabric a week, each having 10kg of weight.
Michelle MacEwen, the organization’s general manager, said, “I think everybody was clearing out their closets while isolating at home due to pandemic. Before COVID-19, it would take about 400 bags every eight weeks from the island to be sold at thrift stores elsewhere.
That is no longer the case because everyone is at capacity for clothes right now. The group gets about 100 bags weighing about 10 kilograms every week of used garments and fabrics.
While some can be sold in a local island thrift store, nearly half of it is not.
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The company has now received $100,000 from the RDN. With this investment, MacEwan hopes to work with other islanders, many of whom she says have some great ideas for the heaps of cloth, to turn the fabrics into new products.
Doing so, she says, will stop bags of clothes from ending up in the Nanaimo landfill.
MacEwan said the funding would be used to help pay for equipment such as a commercial shredder or digital sewing machines. The RDN will make a funding decision by the end of January. MacEwan said if it does not pan out, the organization will look elsewhere. She said funding could also possibly come from Western Economic Diversification Canada.
