Residents in the Wagga Wagga local government area of New South Wales, Australia, can now recycle unwanted clothing, footwear and household textiles: textile recycling drop-off points have been set up at the council's Gregadoo Waste Management Centre (GWMC) and seven rural transfer stations.

According to Andrea Baldwin, the city's Resource Recovery Facility Manager, GWMC has established a permanent textile recycling drop-off point, with seven rural transfer stations — Mangoplah, Collingullie, Currawarna, Galore, Humula, Tarcutta and Uranquinty — also offering drop-off services. She said the purpose of this dedicated recycling service is to give residents another responsible disposal option, thereby easing the pressure on local charities.

Accepted items include clothing, shoes, sheets, blankets, towels and other clean household items. Collected textiles are first sorted: items in good condition are donated for resale; those that can no longer be worn are taken away by a partner textile recycling contractor to be processed into cleaning rags or regenerated into new products such as mats and carpets. GWMC's waste transfer station is open seven days a year-round, and textile recycling is free to drop off.

Local residents' willingness to participate was already evident in an earlier pilot: in 2025, GWMC's textile recycling pilot received one tonne of old textiles in just five days.

Behind this initiative lies a structural challenge in how Australia handles old clothing. Each year, 98,887 tonnes of clothing are donated to charities in New South Wales, of which only 15% is suitable for resale through stores; another 13,844 tonnes of donations end up in landfill. Items dumped beside charity collection bins, especially those soaked by rain or soiled, can basically no longer be used or recycled.

Categories currently not accepted include: duvets, pillows and cushions, electric blankets and wearable electronics, large bags, mats and carpets, plush toys, textile offcuts, and damp or soaked items.

For the second-hand clothing trade and recycling industry, the Wagga Wagga case demonstrates a path in which a local council builds its own drop-off network: sorting upstream by condition, with wearable items entering resale channels and unwearable ones handed to specialist contractors for resource recovery, while free, nearby drop-off points ease the donation pressure on charities.

Source: Wagga Wagga Finds Local Fix for Textile Waste · Originally published 2026-09-17