S&S Activewear, tech-enabled provider of apparel and accessories, has dropped its textile recycling program with nonprofit Give Back Box, citing a lack of verifiable end-of-life data and uncertainty over whether the initiative actually cut emissions, advertising institute ASI Media reported.
The Bolingbrook, Illinois-based supplier will reportedly shift attention to prioritizing renewable energy and efficiency upgrades at its facilities—it operates a dozen—while simultaneously seeking better-suited recycling partner(s).
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“After completing an audit review of our greenhouse gas emissions data, we’ve determined that the Textile Recycling Program negatively impacts our footprint,” S&S said to ASI Media. “Additionally, due to the lack of data, we are unable to make verifiable recycling claims.”
While S&S didn’t respond to SJ’s request for clarification—neither did GBB—a blog entry S&S posted in November 2023 said Give Back Box “checked all the boxes” because of how simple it was for the activewear brand’s distributors and printer customers to get involved.
“We wanted to eliminate any possible inhibitors and make sure that the process was easy for anyone that wanted to participate,” Kayla Lindy, ESG specialist at S&S, said at the time. “We initiated a partnership with Give Back Box in late 2021 and set up the program in 2022. The setup process was quick and hands-off, since Give Back Box takes care of all the back-end work.”
At the time, S&S Activewear’s self-reported 12-month goal was to see program participation from 25 percent of its active customer base. The following year—putting us in November 2025—that goal was “to encourage 50 percent participation among our customers,” Lindy said. “Eventually, we’d love to hit 100 percent participation.”
S&S Activewear’s textile recycling program sought to provide an easy way for customers and employees to donate items such as sample overflow, old or damaged inventory, displays and everything in between to the program. At the end of the day, it’s a win for both waste reduction and the community.
“We partnered with Give Back Box to create a textile recycling program and help provide a solution for textile waste,” the company’s 2024 sustainability report reads. “Since the start of the program in 2022, we’ve donated a lifetime total of 230,410 pounds of clothing. In 2024 we recycled over 148,416 pounds of clothing.”
Give Back Box is something of an operational force behind many big-box retailers’ donation programs; the NBC-supported company connects businesses (like Amazon and Overstock) with over 200 global charities. The nonprofit vendor lists organizations like Sole Hope and Save-A-Suit as recent additions. S&S Activewear had previously reported donating over 70,000 pounds of clothing through the program as of 2023.
The recycling program’s mechanism utilized the nonprofit’s platform, allowing donors to pack old textiles into an S&S order box before downloading a free shipping label from a special URL and sending the box to Give Back Box. The textiles would be sorted and sent to nonprofit charities or shredded for filling and insulation, according to GBB, also promoting the reuse of corrugated boxes.
S&S is a wholesale distributor that purchases finished goods—not raw virgin feedstock—from its suppliers related to apparel and accessories. In 2024, S&S self-reportedly purchased over 437 million units of finished goods across its suppliers. S&S was ranked second on ASI Media’s Counselor’s most recent list of top suppliers, the advertising institute reported, with an estimated 2024 revenue of $3.6 billion in North America.
