It’s not pleasant to hear, but the fact of the matter is that the majority of the clothes American’s are wearing nowadays are being imported mostly from countries located overseas. Each one of these items of clothing arrives in the United States on some type of coat hanger, usually plastic or wire. This holds true even for baby hangers, used for baby clothes which are almost always made of plastic. These then get dumped in landfills, where they are left to leak toxins such as besphanol-A and benzene right into the ground water.
It’s really an almost unsolvable problem, but still many businesses defend their use. So the question becomes, just how green are plastic and wire coat hangers. Is there anything environmentally friendly about them at all?
Dry Cleaning
The dry cleaning industry is difficult to get to change their ways because all of their machines prefer metal hangers. That’s how they want you to bring your clothes in and how you take them back home. On a metal hanger covered in plastic. The industry has stood firm on this and isn’t likely to change their mind any time soon. Without their cooperation, things are highly unlikely to be any different for some time to come, unless an acceptable alternative is found.
Are Wire Hangers Eco-Friendly?
Wire hangers may be lightweight and enduring, but they are definitely not very eco-friendly. Various types of these hangers are indeed created from sustainable materials and they make an excellent for anyone who favors metal rather than wood. Naturally, plastic is the worst of them all.
However, we need to point out that while it’s true that wire hangers can be reused, they are difficult to recycle. They tend to just become a tangled mess. This can then severely damage the machines used for recycling, causing the recycling company to have to pay a costly repair bill that could have been avoided if people didn’t use wire hangers.
Plastic Hangers
All plastic hangers, while they come in a rainbow of pretty bright colors, are created using toxic chemicals. All of them. Primarily they are made from what is known as polystyrene or polycarbonate, however, they can also contain as many as 5 other kinds of plastic in them. This is what people don’t understand about plastic hangers.
As these hangers go by on a conveyer belt, it is difficult to separate them into categories because they frequently disintegrate into pieces — thus mucking up the conveyor belt, and making it impossible to sort them according to their type of plastic.
Yet another issue with plastic hangers is that most overseas companies are shipping clothing on hangers, which means that there will soon no longer be a reason for reusing hangers.
Public Apathy
Part of the reason that wire and plastic hangers are still in use and an acceptable alternative has not been found is that the public doesn’t seem to be aware of the full extent of the problem. The common consensus seems to be that we really aren’t doing anything wrong by continuing to use these materials, and that hangers are the last thing we should be worrying about when there are so many larger threats to the environment.
They simply fail to appreciate the fact that there are literally billions of hangers sitting in landfills out there waiting for Mother Nature to do her thing and decompose them. Unfortunately, that can take centuries, and in the meantime in the case of plastic hangers, they are still capable of poisoning us. It may be slowly, but the seepage from their gradual deterioration is and will continue to contaminate the soil surrounding landfills everywhere.
Furthermore, people like the convenience of using plastic and metal hangers. They want to be able to just dispose of their hangers when they aren’t of any use to them anymore. Just toss it in the trash and make it someone else’s problem. They are reluctant to change their ways, and it can be difficult to persuade them of the urgency of this.
Conclusion
If you are truly interested in protecting the environment, then you can stop using plastic and wire hangers altogether, and turn either to wood or hangers made from other more eco-friendly substances. For now there is no real commonly accepted alternative, but scientists are working every day towards the goal of finding one.
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