Clothes and other fabric items which can't sell at the Gabriola Island Recycling Organization's store are diverted into a growing program which created new items from old material. (GIRO)

By Alex Rawnsley

next steps

New funding helping Gabriola recycling group pull more clothing waste from landfill

Dec 11, 2022 | 7:25 AM

GABRIOLA ISLAND — New funding from the Regional District of Nanaimo is set to trigger some major steps forward for a local textile recycling organization.

A total of $61,545 in zero waste grant funding was awarded to Gabriola Island Recycling Organization (GIRO) for their continued work in diverting and recycling textile waste in the community.

General manager Michelle Kresnyak said half the money will be put toward operational costs over the next year, while the remainder will help construction finish on their new building.

“The next steps are windows and doors and getting the roof on, the exterior cladding then all the finishing will happen after that. We hope if things continue to go the way they’re going right now, that we’ll complete at the end of January.”

Currently, construction includes a concrete slab, walls and trusses.

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Once complete, the new building will offer both a base of operations for the rapidly growing group but also a new makerspace for the Gabriola community.

A big piece to GIRO’s puzzle is taking the hundreds of pounds of discarded clothing they receive on a weekly basis and turning it into new products.

Their members have created over 2,000 individual items from the waste stream.

“Those products help to replace the waste that is created form single use disposable paper, plastic bags, plastic wrap, paper towels,” Kresnyak told NanaimoNewsNOW. These products are really durable and they’re using the textile waste we’re producing here at GIRO.”

Once the building construction wraps, the industrial shredder can be plugged in and work can ramp up.

“We can get to shredding about 800 bags of waste textiles we’ve been stockpiling for the last couple of years and we hope to sell that shredding fibre to manufacturers who would like to look at an alternative stuffing for their own applications.”

One of the products still in development are acoustic sound panels filled with shredded textile waste.

Kresnyak said a professor at the British Columbia Institute of Technology (BCIT) continues testing different combinations of materials and type of shredding.

“To determine which is the most suitable fibre and shred size to use in the panels to capture the most noise reverberation. That testing has to continue and we can’t really do that until the building is complete and the shredding machine we’ve purchased can be hard wired into the building.”

More information on GIRO is available on their website.

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