Helping people one bale at a time

by: Travis Fossing

Posted: Aug 7, 2024 / 06:27 AM CDT

Updated: Aug 7, 2024 / 06:27 AM CDT

SIOUX FALLS, S.D. (KELO) — Baling hay is a common sight across KELOLAND, but a local nonprofit is baling clothes to further its mission.

There’s no shortage of clothing at the Union Gospel Mission Thrift Store, but not every donation ends up on the rack.

“It’s either stained, soiled, armpit stains, things like that, it’s just something somebody won’t wear,” Union Gospel Mission CEO Eric Weber said.

When CEO Eric Weber arrived at UGM in 2019, unusable clothes were a major issue.

“We can’t have thousands of pounds of clothing going to the landfill, let’s figure this out,” Weber said.

A year later, in the midst of a pandemic, Weber purchased a hydraulic baler.

“We got a $30,000 baler for like $8,000, and so as we did that our first truckload of clothes paid off the baler,” Weber said.

A few months ago, Weber was getting nearly 30 cents per pound, and these bales aren’t light.

“Usually, they’re about 900- to 1,100-pounds per bale,” Weber said.

Bales are created multiple times per day. It’s a job a small team can accomplish in a short amount of time.

“You start loading the bale, after it gets so full you close the door and crush ’em down,” Thrift Store Lead Assist Tim Chambers said.

Tim Chambers works in the thrift store and says there’s a certain satisfaction in smashing clothes.

“I think there’s a part in all of us that enjoys that, for sure,” Chambers said.

Once the condensed clothes are wrapped in baling wire and dumped onto a pallet, they’re wheeled into storage. Then every few months, dozens of bales are loaded onto a truck and shipped across the country.

“There’s plenty of clothes that go on to be used in other communities around the world, so it’s cool that even when it leaves here it’s use isn’t done and it’s just furthering what we’re doing here as a mission in Sioux Falls,” Chambers said.

“Sometimes they’ll go to Kentucky or Nashville and they’ll sort through them and they’ll pick out what they want for their other thrift stores, so then they will go and recycle them at other places so they’re not all going into the dump or being grinded up,” Weber said.

They’re able to salvage the clothes with a little soap and water.

“The place that we send them to actually does laundry. We don’t do laundry here, that’s a lot of clothes to do, to wash, right?” Weber said.

“Whitehouse & Schapiro is the oldest and largest secondary textile company in the world,” Whitehouse & Schapiro, LLC Mission Development Specialist Gary Steward said.

Gary Steward is with Whitehouse & Schapiro, LLC, which is based in Baltimore, Maryland. Their products are shipped around the world, everywhere from Africa and Australia to India and Japan. It wouldn’t be possible without partners like Union Gospel Mission.

“The main goal is to have as much possible in these loads that’s what we would call wearable type product, whether it’s women’s clothing, men’s clothing, baby/toddler clothing,” Steward said.

The clothing items that aren’t resold, 38-percent of the textiles become rags, the rest are turned into furniture stuffing, carpet padding, even building materials.

“They’re even now using old jeans as denim insulation. You can go into your Lowe’s or Home Depot or whatever and find denim insulation, so they’re finding new ways all the time to use the product and of course the goal of keeping it out of landfills,” Steward said.

On the local front, every shipment means thousands of dollars for the Union Gospel Mission and its people.

“This project is an intentional thing for us to use that money to actually bring it back into the community,” Weber said.

Weber says they use the money to pay for Christmas.

“We buy thousands of hoodies and shirts throughout the year so we can actually give people winter coats and jackets and gloves and all those things, all that costs money, not all the time we’re getting those donations so we subsidize and we bring in the right stuff, the good stuff, because we want to keep people warm and safe during the winter,” Weber said.

At the base of it all… a baler.

Weber says the price per pound of clothing was nearly cut in half last month, due to supply and demand, dropping from 29 to 15 cents. That said, Union Gospel Mission is always in need of donations, especially washed or gently used clothing.

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