Best way to keep clothing out of landfills

Most of them either donate the old clothes to beggars or hand it over to the old age home volunteers or use it as a scrap cloth for washing, cleaning and later throw with garbage. Beyond that nobody ever think of reusing them again.

Two brothers, Naushad Atif and Mohammed Alim Ansari, who have recently arrived in the city all the way from Jafrabad in New Delhi are recycling the old clothes. They collect old clothes from which the thread is carefully separated, and do weaving again and give new lease of life for the cloth.

They remove the thread from whatever clothe it may be like sarees, pants, bedspreads, curtains etc and then re-weave them into new carpets, bedspreads, door mats, wall mats, and much more. They weave new clothes right in front of the people who have brought old clothes and later, they dye them with different colours and look the materials look attractive.

Citizens opine this is one of the best way to treat the waste, and a way to keep the clothing out of landfills. According to pourakarmikas they collect quite a good number of waste clothes from households every day.

Housewife Sowmyashree says: 'I had nearly 10 kg of waste clothes. I could get new carpets and I think this is best way to treat waste and recycle. So this, we can use the used clothes for some more years.'

“This is the best way to recycle the waste. Usually old clothes are thrown with garbage. It can be recycled and given new life. This initiative will reduce the waste generation to higher extent,” adds Mangala.

They have erected a temporary shelter along a footpath in Saraswathipuram. Naushad says: 'With city has obtained cleanest city tag, we feel happy to make new clothes out of used clothes. This will reduce the clothing waste to landfills to higher extent.'

Mohammed Alim says the response is very good and daily several people are approaching him to create new carpets out of used jeans materials, saris.

'Accompanied with our parents, we started learning removing threads from the clothes, and again recycling them. We will be in Mysuru for two more months, and will erect temporary shelter in different localities during our stay. We keep traveling all over India and hardly visit twice our native in a year, during the festive time,' he adds.