With fast fashion, people buy and discard clothes like never before. Many used garments often end up in landfills, harming the environment. However, the Kiswa Project (Insta: kiswaomn) provides eco-friendly solutions for managing your unwanted clothes. The Kiswa team, according to its CEO Hanaa al Hashemi, collects unwanted clothes from customers, associations, and charitable teams and recycles them to minimise pollution.
Donating clothes helps others, but it also contributes to reducing the burden on landfills and the environment. Every time you donate your used clothes instead of throwing them away, you help reduce the pressure on the Earth’s resources to make new clothes. Clothes, in general, take hundreds of years to decompose, so disposing of them unsafely contributes to global warming.
“Donating is the best option for the planet’s health. Donating clothes saves throwing, burning, or disposing of them in unsafe ways. It also reduces the manufacture of clothes, which costs a lot of environmental resources,” she said.
Kiswa paves the way for better health for the planet. “Kiswa receives approximately 200 to 300 orders per day from all regions of the Sultanate of Oman. That is, Kiswa receives 210,000 tonnes during the month, which is equivalent to 1,050,000 pieces of cloth,” she said. This means, as Hana added, “Kiswa saves the environment every month from 756,000 kg of carbon dioxide emissions, 1,260,000 litres of water, 63,000 kg of fertiliser, 42,000 kg of pesticides. Producing the same weight of clothes that Kiswa receives per month would cost the environment and resources to that extent in the production stage.”
You will no longer have to worry about the clothes piled up in your cupboards, even those that look in very bad condition. “We accept all types of clothes in any condition, as Kiswa is a company specialised in recycling surplus clothing to protect the environment and support charities by providing financial proceeds from recycling,” she clarified.
“Kiswa has smart, illuminated, environmentally friendly containers that operate on solar energy. They are located in most of the wilayats of the Sultanate of Oman. Anyone can make donations with ease,” she added.
If you are busy, send your request to donate via Kiswa’s website or WhatsApp or mobile app, and the representative will reach you within 24 hours. Clothes are sorted and recycled by specialists. “After sorting the clothes, we send the good pieces to the associations that have a contract with Kiswa. The unsuitable ones go into recycling, and the proceeds are provided to the associations as well.”
Kiswa clearly contributes to supporting needy families in the Sultanate of Oman. “During its operation from 2021 in the Sultanate of Oman, Kiswa Company distributed approximately 20,000 new garments. This is during the annual charity exhibitions on Eid al Fitr and Eid al Adha as well as during other initiatives,” Hana said. The donations that Kiswa receives are not limited to clothes. “We receive small cotton toys, bed sheets or covers, and blankets, shoes, and bags.”
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