One of the things that production weavers have to deal with is their thrums or waste. If you weave a lot, you have a lot of thrums!
The local Salvation Army has a textile recycling program that brings income to them and other organizations in town that have thrift shops. Instead of disposing of the clothing that isn't good enough to be re-sold, they now collect the rags from their thrift shops and the others in town, sell them to a mill that recycles the rags into new textiles and earns a tidy sum from this effort instead of having to pay tipping fees to the local landfill.
When I heard about the program, I went and talked to the manager of the thrift shop, showing him a selection of my thrums and asked if they could recycle them. He said yes, so now I toss all my thrums into a container and when it is full take the bag to the thrift shop to be recycled.
I've also been telling local quilters etc. so that they know they can also recycle their textile 'waste'.
Cheers,
Laura