- It's now been a few weeks that we've all been stuck inside
social distancing because of the coronavirus.
I'm actually holed up at my parents house,
this is my childhood bedroom, you can tell,
still got the Harry Potter poster,
and I've been trying to come up with chores to pass the time
and one thing that's been on my mind is my closet.
It's overflowing, it's disorganized
and it just needs some attention.
I wanna do the right thing and donate
but I can't leave my house,
luckily for us there's a company called thredUP
that lets you mail in your old clothes.
On this week's episode of One Small Step
I'm gonna talk to someone from thredUP and learn how
to clean out my closet from the safety of my home.
We all love clothes, but everything we wear
requires a ton of resources.
Take this cotton shirt, it's estimated it takes
Every time we're donating our clothes we're giving them
a second life and preventing new clothes from being made.
I'm excited to Skype with Erin Wallace,
thredUP's VP of Integrated Marketing,
to learn how the company is tackling this issue.
So what is the environmental benefit of using a service
like ThredUp versus just throwing my clothing in the garbage
'cause I'm done with it?
- The thing with clothing, right, is that if you extend
its life by reselling it versus throwing it in the trash,
you're making the most of the natural resources
that were used to create the garment.
and the decomposition there
will emit global greenhouse gases,
so essentially it contributes to climate change.
- And what makes ThredUp unique
from other secondhand stores?
- It really is the breadth of what we accept,
pretty much means you can send in anything and everything.
We accept women and children's clothing.
- And I have Clean Out Kit,
right here.
So, what's your advice for going about filling this bag?
- You're looking for items obviously
that you don't wear anymore but that still have value.
So that means we can't accept things that have rips,
stains, holes, any sort of damage in that way.
We often say sometimes if there are items
that you would give to your best friend
that is kind of the perfect item to put in the bag.
- Then what happens to this bag once I fill it?
- So when you fill it and leave it for your mail carrier,
they bring it to one of our distribution centers.
It's received, opened, evaluated for, again,
the kind of, high quality standards that we have,
and then it goes through kind of like a crazy process,
so our distribution centers were really designed by former
Netflix and SpaceX engineers so they're some of the largest
automated garment-on-hanger facilities in the world,
and we receive up to a 100,000 items a day.
I think we can process more than one item
per second at this point,
but that goes through a multi-step process,
we triple check for quality, we measure, we photograph,
and list incredibly quickly.
It takes a lot of expertise and innovation
to run the company at the scale that we do.
- So I've got my Clean Out Bag,
and right when you open it
you're gonna wanna go activate it
on their website, I already did that,
basically once you get your bag delivered
you gotta register it.
And look how big this is!
I think I will definitely fill this
and probably have some room left over.
The first thing that Erin said was to fill it with stuff
that my friends would like, my best friends...
And I've got a lotta clothes in here that are nice
that I just don't wear anymore
so I'm gonna just start filling 'em up.
And they said on their website that you should do things
like in the season that is about to happen,
so right now it's a spring season so I should be putting in
spring shoes, skirts, dresses, warmer weather clothing,
ThredUp says that those things are more likely to sell,
versus like a winter coat in April.
So obviously with the coronavirus,
the whole world has been put on hold and I wanna know
is that impacting your operations at all at thredUP?
- We have made a ton of adjustments
in our distribution centers to allow for employee safety
and we have reduced the number of people
in our distribution centers obviously to allow
for maximum social distancing and reducing the number
of workstations et cetera.
So there are some delays, they're not significant...
One of the things that we have done though
is extend our return period to allow our customers
the time that they might need to be able to get
to a post office or anything like that.
- And obviously there's just so much more concern
than there's ever been around health and safety,
is there any risk that say I had a corona
and I was cleaning out my closet
that that could get passed through my clothes
to another person down the line?
- I would say it's virtually impossible for the virus
to survive even during like shipping conditions
let alone the time that it takes to be mailed from your home
to our warehouses and our warehouses to someone else's home.
- That makes sense because it's not like I'm taking
my clothes and it's directly going in the hands of somebody
from me to them, there's all these steps in between.
- Exactly.
- I've done videos on clothing recycling before
and I know that it's very problematic in a lot of ways
because there's just so much clothing.
You could donate to a place
and then they're exporting it overseas
and that's creating a whole other host of issues,
so how do you control for that problem
of exporting clothing?
- We're pretty passionate about that specific issue,
so we work with a group of third-party textile recyclers
who adhere to our code of conduct that does ensure things
like sensitivity to emerging nations
and has a focus on returning that clothing domestically.
So the vast majority of the clothing
that we are unable to sell that goes on to our partners
is returned here in the US.
- Okay, my bag is full,
I hope I can close this 'cause I really filled it
to the brim so let's try.
(plastic crinkling)
So the inside just has like a little sticker and,
you take that off,
stick it,
oh my gosh.
Is it possible from turning in a bag
that you can get money from that?
- Most of the things that we list
sell within the first 30 days,
and you will earn a percentage from that sale.
- To get a Clean Out Kit, all you have to do
is visit ThredUp's website.
From there you click on "sell" and then you can decide
if you wanna get a Donation Kit or a Selling Kit.
Because of coronavirus ThredUp is currently donating
$15 to Feeding America for every Donation Kit.
If you picked the Selling Kit you'll get a percentage
of whatever sells and you can choose to get a cash payout
or a credit on ThredUp's website.
So what's one small step that people can take?
- My favorite small step that people can take
is to consider the fact that
- Absolutely.
- All right, so I cleaned out my closet.
I definitely feel much more peace at mind
having to give away some stuff I no longer use.
I got rid of some blouses, some dresses,
lots of shoes actually and purses and I love that thredUP
really accepts the full range of clothing,
it doesn't have to be designer for them to accept it,
so, this has definitely been a positive experience.
Now all I have to do is put this out on my stoop
and thredUP does free shipping.
So they've really thought of everything
and now I can feel good, my closet is clean
and my clothes are donated and I did something good
for the environment.
That's all for this week's episode of One Small Step.
If you liked it, please share it
and we'll see you guys next time.
I hope you're all staying safe wherever you are.