skip to main content
skip to newscasts

Tuesday, January 14, 2025

Public News Service Logo
facebook instagram linkedin reddit youtube twitter
view newscast page
play newscast audioPlay

Hegseth could lead troops who'd face getting fired for actions he's done in the past; Strong Santa Ana winds return for SoCal; Southeast Asian refugees in MA fear deportation, seek Biden pardon; RSV rise puts Indiana hospitals on alert; CT lawmakers urged to focus on LGBTQ+ legislation.

view newscast page
play newscast audioPlay

The Special Counsel's report says Donald Trump would have been convicted for election interference. Defense Secretary pick Pete Hegseth faces harsh questioning from Senate Democrats, and law enforcement will be increased for next week's inauguration.

view newscast page
play newscast audioPlay

"Drill, baby, drill" is a tough sell for oil and gas companies in Alaska's Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, rising sea levels create struggles for Washington's coastal communities, and more folks than ever are taking advantage of America's great outdoors.

Homeboy Expands into a New Industry – Recycling Clothes

play audio
Play

Monday, May 8, 2023   

By Caleigh Wells for KCRW.
Broadcast version by Suzanne Potter for California News Service reporting for the Solutions Journalism Network-Public News Service Collaboration


Chanalisa Sera navigates a forklift around hundreds of boxes of clothes in a Commerce warehouse. Some are tattered and worn out, others haven’t been used at all. Her job: to keep them from going to a landfill.

Sera works for Homeboy Threads, a new for-profit arm of the mission-driven organization that rehabilitates and trains formerly gang-affiliated and incarcerated people.

“I learned the forklift, I learned how to input weights and data entry into the computers,” Sera says of her job. “I learned how to sell things online, on e-com. I never, never in my life thought I would know how to do any of that stuff.”

Sera started as a trainee with Homeboy Industries a year and a half ago and became the first full-time employee at Homeboy Threads. Now she supervises the next cohort of trainees and teaches them what she’s learned.

The trucks bringing in loads of clothes for Sera to sort are filled with company inventory that didn’t sell, rolls of fabric that didn’t get used, or worn materials that customers returned to the store.

Homeboy can profit in a few ways: They can just sort the clothes for a company and hand them back; fix or sew new clothes and sell them; sell the raw materials to be recycled into a new medium, such as insulation. 

Homeboy Threads CEO Chris Zwicke explains it’s a labor-intensive process: “Sorting out all the different pieces: what's used, what could be resold, what needs to be repaired, or what's completely beyond salvage and needs to be recycled.”

Some of the clothes in the warehouse belong to the clothing company GUESS. It worked with Homeboy for more than a year in a pilot project before it publicly announced its launch last week. 

“Initially we started the pilot with store returns, damages, irregular product,” explains Director of Brand Partnerships Nicolai Marciano. “Since the launch of our pilot program in December 2021, Homeboy’s received over 200,000 pounds of garments to avoid ending up in landfill.”

Textiles are California’s fastest growing landfill waste. U.S. consumers toss about 81 pounds of clothes every year, and buy a new piece of clothing every five or six days. That’s about five times as much as we were buying 40 years ago. 

But Zwicke says he’s seeing more consumers and companies who want to know where their unsellable clothes are ending up. “Corporations are more sensitive to the idea now that there is no ‘away’ when you throw something away. It's actually going somewhere.”

Homeboy Threads is coming online just in time. California politicians introduced a bill this year called the Responsible Textile Recovery Act of 2023, which would require producers to figure out how to collect and recycle reusable clothes and textiles. That means there could be a spike in demand for authorized collectors to do all that sorting and repair for companies.

“It's a gap in the market that we've seen, and that we're filling kind of with our workforce development mission,” says Zwicke. “We're here to create jobs, and there's a lot of kind of manual work that goes into what we do.”



Caleigh Wells wrote this article for KCRW.


get more stories like this via email

more stories
In December, the Oregon Investment council found the state's Public Employee Retirement System returned 2.7%, which lagged other states and its benchmark, in part because of fewer public investments. (Ded Pixto/Adobe Stock)

Social Issues

play sound

A new bill aims to further reduce investments in fossil fuels by Oregon's Public Employee Retirement System. The Pause Act would impose a five-year …


play sound

As the popular role-playing game Dungeons and Dragons turns 50, one Colorado State University instructor suggests today's political leaders could …

Social Issues

play sound

Michigan's tipped wage system is on the brink of extinction, with changes set to take effect next month after a state Supreme Court ruling last year …


According to the American Immigration Council, immigrants make up more than 22% of Florida's population, with undocumented residents comprising nearly 4%, contributing significantly to the state's economy and workforce. (Adobe Stock)

Social Issues

play sound

Florida has been a key battleground in the national immigration debate, with past legislation banning sanctuary cities and requiring companies to use …

Social Issues

play sound

A proposed amendment to strip Chicago of its sanctuary protections is scheduled to be voted on this week. The change to the Welcome City Ordinance …

The Human Rights Campaign Foundation estimated the United States is home to 2 million transgender people. (Sabrina/Adobe Stock)

Social Issues

play sound

A California nonprofit dedicated to helping transgender and gender-nonconforming people find good jobs is looking to expand its mission in 2025…

Environment

play sound

By Yessenia Funes for Next City and Yale Climate Connections. Broadcast version by Shanteya Hudson for Georgia News Connection reporting for the …

Social Issues

play sound

Members of the Texas Legislature are back in Austin for its 89th legislative session. After newly elected lawmakers are sworn in, members will vote …

 

Phone: 303.448.9105 Toll Free: 888.891.9416 Fax: 208.247.1830 Your trusted member- and audience-supported news source since 1996 Copyright © 2021