Operation & Economy

Understanding how clothing donated to Planet Aid helps programs in developing countries begins with understanding how we operate.

It is important to understand that we do not receive grants or cash contributions to operate our clothes collection. In that aspect we operate under the exact same conditions as any for-profit enterprise. We have to cover the expenses of retrieving, processing and storing the clothes. Only after those expenses have been covered can we begin to donate money to the programs overseas. It is worth mentioning that  the surplus from our clothes collection operation is well over 20% of the total revenue derived from the clothes. That is a very good result, a profit margin that many businesses can only dream of.

One may look at what we do this way. Instead of going out and asking for a donation of $50 or some other amount, we are giving people the opportunity to, through our collection boxes, donate their unwanted clothes. Planet Aid is providing an organization and infrastructure that ads value to the clothes. This is not without expenses, but luckily we are able to do it at a cost well below the actual value of the clothes. The difference is what we donate.

While it does cost money to undertake this process of recycling the donated clothes, it clearly has a lot of benefits including considerable savings for our communities, as Planet Aid undertakes a part of the local waste removal and thus helps save landfill space. Nationwide the percentage of textiles being recycled in the US on an annual basis has remained at around 15%, so there is clearly a need for more being done in this area and we are happy being part of that effort.

How the money is spent
In 2006 Planet Aid’s total revenue (sales) was $20 mill. Roughly 80 percent of that was derived from the sale of used clothing. The remaining income was for grants for programs that we run in Africa. The net revenue after recovering the expenses of the recycling program was $7.4 mill. of this $5.4 mill. was used for developing programs in Africa and Asia. 73 percent of our net revenue went for international development. The remaining income is saved for future needs including growth of the operation.

See a list of development programs supported by Planet Aid in 2006 below.

The Environmental Benefits of Planet Aids Clothes Collection Operation.

In addition to the obvious advantages of saving landfill space there are a number of other secondary benefits from collecting, selling, and re-using used clothing.  Extrapolating from our 2005 numbers (the 2006 numbers were not available when we made these calculations), we estimate that we sustained approximately 16,000 jobs world wide. Reuse of the cotton clothing, that Planet Aid was responsible for in 2005, saved 60 billion gallons of water and more than 450,000 pounds of pesticides by the reduced need for growing cotton. Based on rate systems used by Massachusetts municipalities, the clothing Planet Aid collected in 2005 would have cost the taxpayers approximately $1.8 million to dispose of in landfills.

Download a copy of “Report on the Impact of Planet Aid’s Recycling”.

Programs Supported by Planet Aid in 2006