What is Kloth Cares Fabric Recycling Movement (KCFRM)?
Kloth cares
An environmental, economic and social impact brand committed to catalysing the circular textile and clothing economy. They establish and develop value chains and movements where multi-stakeholders join hands to divert waste from landfills. In turn, waste is recycled into new products and resources with higher material value and purpose, dedicated to raising awareness, providing recycling facilities such as fabric bins, managing effective waste collection, gathering data and recycling unwanted items.
Kloth Cares is a movement that aims to reduce textile waste in landfills and promote sustainable practices. Kloth Malaysia Sdn. Bhd. (KMSB) and Life Line Clothing Malaysia Sdn. Bhd. (LLCM) have partnered to establish a movement called Kloth Cares. LLCM is the sole fabric recycling factory in Malaysia. It has been given the MS ISO 14001:2015 certification for its Environmental Management System, which includes collecting, recycling, producing, and exporting used textiles and personal and household items. By partnering with LLCM and utilising their expertise in textile recycling, KMSB has established a system that benefits both the environment and the local economy.
LLCM is committed to supporting the Kloth Cares movement by operating collection trucks daily, including on public holidays. The truck’s size is tailored to the collection site or type of items being collected. The staff responsible for picking up items from Kloth Cares bins and other designated locations place them in white bags labelled with the serial numbers of the bins for easy identification. At the factory, an industrial digital scale machine weighs the items before manually sorting them into over 500 categories based on gender, clothing type, and condition. These categories include women’s blouses, denim skirts, and scarves; men’s t-shirts, denim pants, and hats; and children’s dresses, soft toys, plastic toys, bed sheets, towels, pillows, fabric rolls, high heels, and sports shoes.
Since August 2018, LLCM’s Kloth Cares fabric recycling campaign has recycled approximately 4,000,000 kg of discarded textiles and garments in Malaysia. This effort has reduced 7.3 million kg of CO2 emissions by installing over 400 Kloth Cares bins in Selangor, Kuala Lumpur, Putrajaya, Negeri Sembilan, Melaka, and Johor. Based on a 21kg daily CO2 output, this GHG savings equals 350,476 days of a person’s CO2 emission (Source: LLCM). The Kloth Cares fabric recycling bucket debuted in Singapore in June 2022, broadening the movement’s reach. Kloth Cares encourages individuals and communities to reuse fabric, which benefits the environment and local economy.
