Goodwill Industries has launched a new campaign geared towards encouraging people to rethink how they get rid of unwanted items.

We’re all familiar with the recycling movement and its logo:

To hopefully go right alongside with it, Goodwill has launched their new campaign with a new donation logo:

I think it’s a great idea to go with the “green movement.”

After all, the mantra is…

Reduce. Reuse. Recycle.

Just because you no longer have use for something, doesn’t mean someone else won’t.

And as an added benefit to the environment, you can save so much more energy by reusing something (or allowing someone else to) than you could by simply recycling it.

Also, I truly believe we’ve been blessed (and called to live simply) so that we can be a blessing to others — and this is one of those great ways to do that.

It might sound surprising that we need to have initiatives like this, but seven out of 10 consumers admit that sometimes, they choose not to donate and simply discard their items. Not only that, but for every one article of clothing donated, people have at least 30 more articles of clothing that are ready to be donated. These statistics are astounding! – Jim Gibbons, Goodwill Industries CEO

When we’re decluttering, or simplifying, or taking part in a monthly purge, I hope we’re all considering organizations like Goodwill for our unwanted items.

The impact of donating your goods rather than trashing them can be tremendous.

According to the online widget Goodwill provides on their site:

• a used pot or pan can provide three minutes of job search classes
• each used video game, DVD or CD can provide three minutes of career counseling
• one pair of jeans can provide nine minutes of financial planning classes
• a used bike can provide 34 minutes of resume preparation
• a used chair can provide 19 minutes of on the job training

That’s a lot of help, for just a few small donations!

The way we at Goodwill look at it, we need to reach consumers and encourage them to always donate their used and unused goods. Why? The easy answer is to help others. The more compelling answer is with every 30 items that we receive, a person in your community receives 4 hours of job search training. This could be a person in your community who doesn’t have a job and is struggling to support a family.

By donating a working computer, you can give a person 5.3 hours of career counseling. This could be your neighbor who lost his job because an industry left your community. – Jim Gibbons

So next time your decluttering and purging your closet or garage, be sure to remember great organizations like Goodwill that are working to better our communities.

As a small aside, my only nit-pick with this campaign is that Goodwill has service marked the donation logo. I’d much rather see it out there in the public domain so that other organizations can take advantage of this great campaign as well — especially in communities where Goodwill isn’t present.

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