The last time I had went to Old Navy to pick up a few new shirts and other accessories, the girl checking me out was having some difficulty taking off the hangers. “Just leave them on, if you don’t need them,” I said. To my astonishment, the girl replied, “OK. We just end up throwing them all out anyways.” I was flabbergasted!
I suppose I was just naive to assume that they were all just reused and recycled. When I got home and thought about it more, the more I realized just how terrible that was! Think of all of the Gap/Old Navy stores, the millions of articles of clothing they sell, and the pitiful, I’m sure, rate that people actually keep those hangers to use.
What’s even more surprising is Gap, who now owns Old Navy, claims to have an ‘environment’ policy, seen on their official page for it. Going even further, on their page to reduce waste, no where does it mention they recycle all of those millions of clothes hangers. (Though, they sure as hell pimp out the huge building with weed grass on top of it.)
Now, I wouldn’t call myself an environmentalist by any means, but doesn’t it scare you a little that all those tons of plastic and metal clips are ending up in landfills somewhere? It’s rather shocking that the company doesn’t at least send them somewhere to be melted down and used for other products? Instead, Old Navy is just going the cheap way out and dumping all of them into nameless landfills.
Want to complain? Of course you do! (I did, at least. Not sure if it will do anything, but it’s worth a try.) According to the Gap INC. contact us page, you can reach the HQ by writing or calling to:
Gap Inc. Headquarters
Two Folsom Street
San Francisco, CA 94105
(650) 952-4400
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Right on! I went to Old navy in rockville, md., and wondered the same thing about their hanger recycling. Got the same response- We trash them! It made me think alot about the issue and I wonder if there is a watchgroup of some sort for retail recycling or even a federal level group who monitors this sort of thing. I do know there are billions of these hangers resting in landfills when they could be recycled. I for one will send a letter to Gap Inc. and I also wonder if it’ll do any good.
I am so glad that you care about our environment as much as you do…I wish that more people did! As an employee at the Rockville, Md store let me attempt to clear the air a wee bit….
The cashiers are instructed to leave the hangers on the clothes as they are being purchased so that the customer can dispose of them however they see fit. When a customer specifically asks to have the hangers removed, we do so, and put them in a bin under our counters. At the end of the night we box/bag them up and put them in storage (with a constant influx of new employees, perhaps they don’t realize we do this). We DO reuse as many of them as we can (we are constantly putting merchandise on clearance and need the hangers to hang the items in our clearance section). What we don’t use, which isn’t that many, does go in the trash…it’s true…and something that I don’t particularly agree with, but we don’t have a recycling bin suitable for something that is both plastic and metal which are two items that need to be separated when recycling. Montgomery County does have certain recycling rules and procedures which we do abide by and we have even set up small recycling bins in our break room for soda cans, bottles and paper products. While the “hanger issue” continues to be just that…an issue…we are trying our best (at the Rockville store) to be environmentally conscientious.
Please do notify Gap Inc about the disposal of these hangers, perhaps they’ll switch to all to plastic hangers, which would be much easier to recycle!
Oh my gosh, I started working at Old Navy recentally and we do not recycle anything. That dosen’t sound so bad but I help with shipment and you should see the load of boxes that go off to a dumpster. Every T shirt is wrapped in plastic and they sometimes ship one t shirt in a huge box……one shirt. I hate it becuase I recycle at home and it makes me feel like why should I even try recycling if they dump a ton of it weekly. We have shipment weekly and there are enough broken down boxes and plastic when we are done to fill at least two semis. It is redicilous and all the managers say is well….we can’t do anything. Not enough people are aware of it or else I do not believe they would shop there.