Starting next year, Levi Strauss will extend the idea of Care Tags for washing, drying and ironing, to add an encouragement for consumers to donate these clothes when no longer needed.
Goodwill Industries joined with Levis yesterday to announce A Care Tag for Our Planet, a new initiative that aims to put billions of pounds of unwanted clothing to good use, instead of into landfills.
“This initiative uses our global voice to empower hundreds of millions of consumers around the world to join us by providing simple and actionable ways to help care for our planet,” said John Anderson, president and chief executive officer of Levi Strauss & Co.
“As the ‘Original Recycler,’ 166 community-based Goodwills in the US and Canada collectively divert more than 1.5 billion pounds of clothing and textiles every year from landfills,” said Goodwill Industries International CEO and President Jim Gibbons. “In addition to funding community-based services, these landfill diversion programs create job-training opportunities for more than 1.5 million people a year.”
The initiative was conceived by BBDO West, Goodwill of San Francisco`s pro bono agency, which came up with the unique idea to use product care tags to communicate this message encouraging people to donate clothing once its owner tires of it. Approximately 23.8 billion pounds of clothing and textiles end up in U.S. landfills each year.
The tags will be seen starting January 2010 in Levi’s retail and wholesale products and by Fall 2010 they’ll appear on regional and global items.