Small Things Make a Big Difference
Ditto Hanger
Recent developments in the garment industry have clothing sent to big box stores “floor ready” - that is pre-tagged and pre-hung on disposable hangers. You might not see the hangers as a big problem but when you consider that there are billions of hangers…
This, like many human problems, is a design problem and the good folks at Green Heart Global have come up with a solution.
From Ditto Hangers:
Over the last several years a new trend is developing in the big-box retailers across the country: floor-ready garments shipped directly from the manufacturer to the clothing retailer stores. These garments are pre-hung and pre-ticketed before shipping so that all the individual store has to do is to open the box and hang up the garment.
But this convenience comes at a huge cost. With this new supply trend municipal landfills are receiving millions more hangers than in years past.1 Add on top of that the expected lifespan of most hangers on display: sometimes 2-3 months, often just weeks or days. The result is an environmental catastrophe.
Plastic and wire hangers have become so commonplace in the retail environment that they have become virtually invisible. That is until it’s time to dispose of them. Municipal recyclers won’t and can’t take them. Made of 7 different types of low-grade plastic (if marked at all), they are extremely difficult to identify and segregate on a rapidly moving recycling line. Made from multiple materials (plastic, wire, non-slip vinyl pads, etc.) the components are costly to separate. Most of all wire hooks are notorious for jamming the lofting cams in expense recycling machinery, bringing entire recycling lines to a grinding halt.
So where do all these plastic hangers go? Every year an estimated 8-10 billion unrecyclable plastic/wire hangers end up clogging our municipal landfills, requiring over 1,000 years to break down. That’s 4.6 Empire State Buildings full of plastic hangers–every year. An estimated 3.5 million wire hangers end up in landfills and can take over 100 years to decompose.
And once in landfills these billions of hangers leach dangerous chemicals into our ground water, chemicals such as Benzene ([6] PS-Polystyrene) a known carcinogen and hormone disruptor Biphenyl-A ([7] PS-Polycarbonate) into our ground water.
Now we have to insist that stores recycle cardboard, paper, packaging, plastics and metals.
More at Ditto
