Why the yellow bins are disappearing

For many years, they were a symbol of sustainability: the yellow bins, designated exclusively for clothing collection, successfully prevented a double waste: on the one hand, the pollution caused by textile waste (one of the main causes of harmful emissions), on the other, the waste of clothing that the poor, migrants, and the homeless cannot afford, yet are provided with it thanks to the network of volunteers.

In Rome, there were over 1.800, but most have been decommissioned, and textile waste collection has been entrusted exclusively (though currently only in theory) to AMA, the company responsible for Rome's garbage collection and disposal. For volunteer organizations that assist the poor and deliver clothing, from Caritas to Sant'Egidio, collection is limited to locations managed directly by the associations.

The choice to eliminate the yellow bins  In Rome, it was born on the basis of several factors. First of all, the incivility of many, too many, citizens, who had gotten into the habit of throwing everything into these containers, thus making any type of waste management ineffective. collection and potential recycling of clothing. Likewise, vandals and scavengers of various kinds (including very poor people and those not always in stable mental health) attempted to rummage through the yellow bins to select items to take, creating filth and degradation throughout the area.

Even in Milan, where civic duty is certainly higher than in Rome, the network of yellow bins is at risk of disappearing, having entered the gray zone of inefficiency and even harmful outcomes. Here, the starting point of the crisis is very clear: collecting and recovering clothing is no longer cost-effective, neither for the companies that recover and reuse raw materials and clothing (which are then resold on the second-hand market, in physical stores and online) nor for the volunteer organizations that carry out part of their work assisting the poor by recovering and donating clothing, garments, and linens.

In recent times the yellow bins in Milan have been reduced to no more than 400 (there were 950 if we include the entire metropolitan area) for a specific reason: the habit of throwing in these bins even the remains of the fast fashion, That is, clothing and garments made from materials, often related to plastic, that are not recyclable. Thus, over 40 percent of the material collected in Milan's yellow bins is unusable: it cannot be resold to raise funds or donated by volunteers of Caritas Ambrosiana; it cannot be distributed within the parish network; nor can it end up in the mega Textile Center in Rho, inaugurated with great fanfare in 2024 as the largest textile recycling center in Northern Italy, because the material is neither recyclable nor reusable. So much so that the managers of the Rho Center, starting with the cooperative Solidarity Dress, which deals with the recovery of textile garments in Milan and the province, are threatening to close the facility, which has become passive, with excessive disposal costs and continuously declining revenues. In some areas of Lombardy, the yellow bins, due to the same problems recorded in Milan, have been completely eliminated, as in the case of Sondrio and Cormano, but the situation is also critical in large cities, from North to South, such as Turin, Bologna, Florence and Naples.

The yellow bin crisis, to which no concrete response has yet been seen from public administrations, risks dealing a severe blow to the entire national waste collection and disposal system, and leaving consumers with only two options for avoiding textile waste: recycle clothes, or also give a second life to clothes once destined for the yellow bins.