SUSTAINABILITY
As good stewards of the donated items and funds entrusted to us for the advancement of our nonprofit mission, and of our natural environment, Goodwill endeavors to make the most of every item we receive and minimize what we send to landfills.
We’re working to identify ways to operate more sustainably by transforming unsaleable donations into usable materials. This means exploring opportunities with businesses, student innovators, and researchers to turn plastic, glass and textiles into things like decking, shoe soles, filtration systems, park benches, insulation, upcycled fabrics and even asphalt and jet fuel.
Expansion of our sustainability initiatives will benefit communities environmentally and through creation of new entry-level and middle skills jobs with skillsets that are easily transferrable to regional employers.
Learn about some of the items we’re recycling and locate a convenient Goodwill donation center near you!
BOOKS
Through our book recycling program beloved old stories get new lives! Your donated (hard cover, soft cover, reference and textbooks, fiction and non-fiction) books are sold in our retail and our online stores. Books that don’t sell through retail and online are diverted from landfills and sold as textile salvage through our book salvage operations. The revenue generated from these sales helps fund our workforce development programs.
COMPUTERS & ELECTRONICS
Through our partnership with Dell Reconnect, we’re able to offer consumers free recycling of any brand of computer equipment in any condition. Dell Reconnect diverts more than 2 million pounds of used computers and computer equipment from area landfills and provides consumer education on the importance of environmentally responsible computer disposal.
Simply bring your old computer equipment of any brand, working or not, to one of our 20 donation centers throughout Delaware and Delaware County, PA, and we’ll make sure your system and accessories are refurbished or recycled responsibly. Whatever parts cannot be reused or refurbished will be broken down securely and recycled responsibly, meeting Dell’s extensive and strict Electronic Disposition Policy.
PLASTIC FILM
You already know that donating your gently-used clothing and household items to Goodwill does good for your community by funding our Workforce Development programs. Now you can do even more GOOD by recycling your plastic bags and plastic films with us and TREX!
One of the largest recyclers of plastic film in North America, TREX uses more than 400 million pounds of recycled plastics – including more than 1.5 billion plastic bags each year to make its high-performance, wood alternative decking. A standard 16-foot TREX deck board contains recycled materials from approximately 2,250 plastic bags and is 95% recycled content.
Help Goodwill keep plastic bags and other plastic films out of our region’s waterways, beaches, roadsides and landfills.
TEXTILES
In collaboration with the University of Delaware, Department of Fashion and Apparel Studies we’ve hosted textile upcycling workshops and together we’re looking at ways to create jobs and new fabrics using clothing and other items that didn’t sell in our stores. In addition to our existing recycling initiatives, we’re piloting new ways to minimize trash, reduce our waste management expenses and create new revenue streams that will increase our ability to provide life-changing job services.
2021
COMMUNITY
IMPACT
6200 +
TONS of goods diverted from landfills.
576900 +
DONATIONS of clothing and household items.
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