Reusing Bed Linen and Towels: Help the Planet
Donating bed linen helps the planet because a sheet or towel used again is one that doesn’t have to be made new. Making new cotton takes water, energy and raw materials. Passing on what you already have saves most of that. Both reuse and recycling beat the bin, but reuse saves far more.
This page is part of our guide to donating your bed linen and towels. It explains why reuse comes first, gives our own estimate of what it saves, and covers what to do with sheets and towels that are truly finished.
The waste hierarchy
Reuse first, recycling second
UK waste law ranks the ways of dealing with waste in order, from best to worst:
Prevent it
Buy less and make your bedding and towels last.
Reuse it
Pass it on so it gets used again as it is. This is what donating your bed linen and towels does.
Recycle it
Turn the material into something new.
Recover it
Burn it to make energy.
Dispose of it
Landfill, the last resort.
A reused fitted sheet is still a whole fitted sheet. It goes straight onto someone else’s bed with no extra growing, spinning, weaving or dyeing. Recycling breaks cotton down into shorter, weaker fibres, so it can’t do the same job again. That is why using a sheet or towel again, just as it is, is the bigger win.
Why cotton matters
What goes into a new sheet or towel
Most bed linen and towels are made of cotton, or a cotton blend. Before a new duvet cover or bath towel reaches a shop, the cotton has to be grown, often with irrigation and fertiliser. Then it is picked, cleaned, spun into yarn, woven or looped, bleached, dyed and finished, and shipped around the world.
Each of those steps uses water and energy. Towels in particular are thick and heavy, so there is a lot of material in each one. When you pass on a set of pillow cases or a stack of hand towels, all of that has already been spent. Using them again gets more out of it, instead of starting the whole process from the beginning.
What it saves
What reusing bed linen and towels saves
Every sheet or towel used again means one less needs to be made. We use one simple estimate across our site for cotton textiles kept in use rather than replaced. For every kilo of bed linen and towels used again:
Work out your own with the green calculator
These are estimates, taken from the low end of published ranges on purpose, so they understate rather than overstate. As an example, a 5 kg bag of bed sheets and bath towels would be an estimated 15 kg of CO2e and 12,500 litres of water saved by passing it on rather than replacing it.
When reuse isn’t possible
When recycling is the right answer
Some bedding and towels really are finished: worn thin, torn or badly stained. Those should be recycled, not binned. Council textile banks and household recycling centres send them on to be made into things like padding and cleaning cloths.
Your donations come back to our warehouse, where we sort them by hand and pass on what can be used again. Some find a second life in surprising places: we’ve even re-homed bed linen and towels to Battersea Dogs & Cats Home to be used as cosy pet bedding. See the full journey on what happens to my bed linen and towels.
So which should you do?
- Clean and usable? Donate it. Book a free doorstep linen and towel collection.
- Worn out? Recycle it at a council textile bank or recycling centre.
- Not sure? Check what bed linen and towels can I donate? or can I donate old towels?
The one thing never to do is bin them. Why that matters is on why old sheets and towels shouldn’t go in the bin.
Every day
Other ways to keep bed linen and towels in use
- Rotate two or three sets of sheets so each one wears more slowly.
- Wash at lower temperatures and air-dry where you can.
- Mend a loose hem or a split seam before you replace.
- Buy second-hand bedding and towels where you can.
- When you do buy new, choose good-quality cotton that will last.
- Cut up towels that are truly finished to use as cleaning cloths at home.
Every sheet and towel you pass on gives someone else an affordable choice and means one less made new. It is all collected free from your doorstep, and a large percentage of the proceeds goes to the charity you choose. Find out who your bed linen and towels help.
Sources
- The order of the waste hierarchy (prevent, reuse, recycle, recover, dispose) is the order set in UK waste law.
- Our per-kilo estimates are the conservative factors we use across our site for textiles kept in use rather than replaced. They are not measurements of what our collections have saved.
Ready to donate your linen and towels?
It’s free, you don’t need to be at home, and you choose the charity your donation supports.