At Samiyatex, we have been recycling our society’s throw away clothing and shoes for 27 years by purchasing discarded merchandise from hundreds of Thrift stores across USA. On average, we’ve sorted 10 million lbs of clothing and 4 million lbs of shoes/year, so when multiplied over all these years, that’s millions of lbs of recycling. Many people over the years have asked us, so what happens to all the clothes and shoes you guys buy and process? Well, here’s what we do:
1. 50% of all clothing & shoes are exported as wearable clothing/shoes to third would countries in Africa. These are purchased by private importers who buy a 40’container from us and then distribute them to smaller, swap meet like micro entrepreneur retailers, who sell them by the piece. These micro entrepreneurs depend on companies like us to supply them with a good quality product that sells easily so they can support their families.
2. 20% of all clothing is usually very dirty, stained or ripped that simply cannot be worn and so we cut these up into cleaning rags.
3. 20% goes to India where items like sweaters and woolen clothing are converted into recycled yarn, that is used to make new items like carpet underpadding, socks and etc.
4. 1-2% is usually vintage, which is your rare pieces from 1960’s onwards, purchased by vintage stores around the world.
So as you can see, we recycle almost 95% of all the clothing we purchase. But now, Samiyatex, through it’s sister company, LA Vintage, is expanding into a whole new field of Reworked or Upcycled Clothing & shoes.
Sustainability, Circular economy and Upcycled Clothing. There’s a growing trend these days to do something about the massive amount of pollution that fast fashion heavy weights like Zara & H&M create when making their new garments. Majority of the millennials are either cutting back on their purchases from these retailers or preferring to buy either from Thrift & Vintage stores instead that give second hand clothing and shoes, a second life. So we at LA Vintage, have decided to come up with our own Upcycled line of clothing to address this issue. Here, we planning to covert either dirty, stained, ripped or unwanted styles, into beautiful and fashionable clothing items by either dyeing, cropping & repairing whatever clothing we can.