Meet the Modern-day ‘Ragmen’ Tackling Fashion’s Waste Problem

Helpsy is a modern-day “ragmen” — collecting, dealing and diverting used, sometimes unusable clothing and textile waste. Its biggest supporter is a fashion industry looking to be more sustainable, and its fiercest competitor are overflowing landfills. Helpsy is also the first for-profit “certified B corporation” in the used clothing industry and largest clothing collector in the Northeast U.S. Across an eight-state footprint, which includes three warehouse locations in Massachusetts, New Jersey and New York, Helpsy collected 25 million pounds of textile waste last year, and 12 percent of New York City’s clothing waste. This footprint includes some 1,850 collection containers, with retail integration as recently as with Bloomingdale’s, who partnered with Helpsy during “Denim Days” from March 21 to 24, collecting unwanted denim in 33 Bloomingdale’s nationwide. Through in-store Helpsy collection bins, items are responsibly collected for reuse and downcycling. Retailers and brands can display a collection bin as a “loud call-to-action,” as Helpsy cofounder Rachel Kibbe describes it. Kibbe’s call-to-action started with what may be considered a conventional foundation for a career in fashion, earning a degree in fashion design from Parsons. Yet she always questioned the status quo in the fashion industry and found it to be both resource and labor exploitative. She

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