Wyandotte Collects More Than 47,000 Pounds of Clothing in 2012

How many shirts would it take to create a pile of shirts weighing about 47,000 pounds?

If the average shirt weighs about 8 ounces, that's about 100,000 shirts.

The city of Wyandotte received an award last week from the Institute for International Cooperation and Development (IICD) Michigan for diverting more than 47,300 pounds of clothes and shoes from landfills.

"We just want to thank the city of Wyandotte (and its) citizens for recycling some of their clothing and shoes and not letting them go into landfills," said Line Henriksen, IICD's clothes collection manager.

Statewide, the IICD Michigan Clothes Collection effort recycled nearly 2,249,000 pounds of clothing and shoes in 2012.

The effort was made possible because city officials agreed to host large, blue-colored collection boxes where residents could drop off old clothes and shoes rather than throwing them away.

There are 500 of the bins throughout the state of Michigan, five of which are located in Wyandotte.

Clothing and shoe donations help fund a training program called "Fighting Shoulder to Shoulder with the Poor," where volunteers are trained in how to use education to empower people, how to lead and mobilize communities and how to prepare Michigan's youth for the challenges of the future, according to a IICD release.

The volunteers then take that training and apply it to help fight hunger in Africa.