You CAN recycle cotton.

More Info: Cotton can be recycled and made into a variety of new items such as cotton fiber insulation.

Why Recycle Your Cotton?

In the United States, 8.75 billion pounds of textiles are produced every year.  That's nearly 35 pounds per person.  Of that number, one million tons are discarded each year, the majority coming from consumer households.  Most textiles do not decompose in landfills creating a grave environmental impact.

How to Recycle Your Cotton Textiles

You can save on garbage removal fees and make an impact on the environment by choosing to recycle your cotton textiles.  There are more than 500 textile recycling companies operating in the United States, some even willing to purchase your recyclables. 

Cotton's Dirty Laundry Tour

In 2006, Cotton Incorporated set out to demonstrate how valuable cotton is as a resource and its positive impact on the environment especially when it is recycled. The program drafted the assistance of college students to start campaigns across their respective campuses to collect old denim clothing to recycle into cotton housing insulation. The program called Cotton: from Blue to Green^TM, collected 14,566 pieces of denim, which were subsequently recycled into cotton insulation. With the help of Habitat for Humanity, the insulation was used to build twelve new homes affected by Hurricane Katrina.