On average in the U.S., a person will throw away 81 pounds of clothing each year, piling up millions of tons of unwanted textiles in landfills. About 8% of all municipal solid waste is from textiles, a number that has doubled since 2007, according to the EPA.
Recycled clothing has become part of this loop, and as fast fashion has grown, so has the industry for textile recyclers. In Billings, Nathan Belden and Joshua Young and identified a need to take unwanted clothing from regional charities and nonprofits. They founded On-Q Recycling and Salvage in April 2018, starting first in a 1,500 square foot warehouse in Billings that they outgrew in two months, relocating to a 10,000-square-foot warehouse at 3105 Drury Lane near Shepherd.
“When we first started this, we thought it was going to be a side gig,” Belden described. “We realized within two weeks, this was going to be a full-time job, and there was a whole lot more product out there than we thought.”
By picking up the excess clothing that piles up in thrift stores across the state, Belden and Young now have a cycle of product that fills a semi-trailer weekly with as much as 44,000 pounds of clothing, which is transported to the west coast then purchased and shipped overseas.
The business has been so busy that they helped a friend open a franchise location in Yakima, Washington. Between the two locations, goods are obtained from 52 nonprofits and charities in Montana, Wyoming, Washington, and Oregon. In 2019, they shipped 4 million pounds of clothing out of the country.