Environment

How Green Are Plastic and Wire Coat Hangers?

by Barbara Mathieson | December 12, 2008 at 06:10 am

414 views | 12 Recommendations | 5 comments

Thursday, December 11, 2008

By Steven Kotler

Hangers? I mean, seriously, do we really need eco-friendly clothing hangers?

“Do we ever,” says Danny Schrager, CEO of Mountain Valley Recycling in Morristown, Tenn. “Ninety percent of America’s clothes are now imported, and every garment that comes in from overseas comes in on a hanger — 30 to 40 billion of them each year.”

Laid end to end, 40 billion coat hangers would stretch about 8 million miles, far beyond the orbit of the moon.

Worse, most of these hangers are plastic and have a lifespan of one season — about three months.

Yes, we do. I take my wire hangers back to the dry cleaners. I use the plastic hangers as long as possible.

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Amy Judd

at 14:03 on December 12th, 2008

I never thought about the volume of coat hangers brought in with imported clothes...

sparklyeric

at 17:50 on December 12th, 2008

Make use of them people. They make comfy seats

mlehet

at 18:42 on December 12th, 2008

I take my used hangers to the lady that used to do my laundry, so they're getting at least one more use.

jahrock91

at 03:42 on December 13th, 2008

A "crowd" of hangers. We really haven't got anytime to do our ironing at our house, so we pay someone else to do it for us. So after a day or two, we get our clothes neatly ironed, and most of it hanged in wire hangers.

jahrock91 has contributed a photo to this story.