"Clothes" that are thrown away in large quantities every year.
In order to promote its reuse, a demonstration experiment has begun to accept the collection of clothes at the ticket gates of some stations in JR East.
This will be carried out daily by JR East
from the 1st to the end of September at 4 stations including Musashisakai, Higashi-Koganei, Nishikokubunji on the Chuo Line and Inaginaganuma on the Nambu Line.
The target is clothing excluding socks and underwear, and collection will be accepted by handing it directly to the station staff at the ticket gate from 10 am to 4 pm.
No advance reservation is required, and up to 5 items can be collected per person.
On the first day, clothes that were no longer used, such as jackets and trousers, were brought to Nishi-Kokubunji Station on the Chuo Line one after another.
The collected clothes will be used by local companies as work clothes by removing the color in cooperation with venture companies, and will be remade into cement materials by decomposing fibers.
Nanase Saito, chief of JR East's group company, said, "By effectively using the station, we want to create a system for reusing clothes used in the area."
According to the Ministry of the Environment, about two-thirds of the clothes used in Japan are disposed of as garbage, and there is a growing movement in the apparel industry to reuse them toward the realization of a sustainable society.