Levi’s gets charitable. Approximately 23.8 billion pounds of clothing and textiles end up in landfill each year. In order to make a dent in that waste pile, Levi Strauss & Co is partnering with Goodwill Industries to create special care tags that not only tell consumers how to wash the garments, but also where to take them when they are done with them. It’s a fashion industry first encouraging consumers to donate their old jeans and other clothing items for recycling.

The ‘Original Recycler’ 166 community-based Goodwill in the United States and Canada collectively divert more than 1.5 billion pounds of clothing and textiles every year from landfill by recovering the value in people’s unwanted material goods.

On top of donation, the care tags will have other environmental and sustainable reminders – the company studied every stage in the life cycle of a typical pair of 501 Levi’s jeans and found that one of the greatest opportunities for reducing climate change and water impact happens after consumers take their jeans home. The tags will also encourage consumers to wash less, wash in cold water and line dry when possible, reducing the impact of their jeans ownership by about 50%.

The new Levi’s care tags will get sent out to facilities in the U.S. beginning in January 2010 and the regional and global tags will appear in clothes Autumn 2010.

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