CEO Alex Husted and Helpsy Keep Millions of Pounds of Clothing out of Landfills Each Year
Alex Husted is the founder and CEO of Helpsy, a Certified B Corporation with a mission to reduce textile waste by helping people easily recycle their used clothing. (The B Corp has saved over 25 million pounds of clothes and shoes from being thrown into a landfill in the last year alone!)
Helpsy was founded in 2017 by Husted and his two childhood best friends who were interested in a career pivot. They weren’t sure what industry to develop a business in, but they did all have one key goal in mind: founding a business that addressed the triple bottom line, as they were interested in social entrepreneurism.
When an email came across Husted’s desk about a used clothing business that was on the market, that and two more acquisitions were made and Helpsy was born. Helpsy is already the largest textile collection company in the northeastern United States, now partnering with the city of Boston to determine how textile waste can be addressed in the city’s zero waste plan. Husted hopes that Boston will lead the way, creating a domino effect that will prompt other cities to look at how they can do the same thing.
In this episode of the Grow Ensemble Podcast, we discuss the need to move away from fast fashion and create a more sustainable future for the clothing and textile industry—and how Helpsy is working to champion that cause. We also go in-depth on the values of joining the B Corp community and how rigorous but rewarding the process of certification can be.
Want more episodes on innovative companies reducing waste in their industries? Listen to:
- #12 — How to Divert Over 50,000 Plastic Bottles from Landfills While Growing a Business to $1M in Sales in 2 Years with Lindsey McCoy CEO and Co-Founder of Plaine Products
- #08 — Going Pound for Pound with Co-Founder & CEO of Grain4Grain, Yoni Medhin — How to Use Farmer’s Markets to Shape a Pitch & Sustainable Pancakes to Feed Families in San Antonio
- #16 — From a Quarter-Life Crisis, to Overdosing on Caffeine, to Creating Year Round Jobs on Coffee Farms with Max Rivest, CEO of Wize Monkey
Bonus material: Get the full show notes and extras for this episode.
Helpsy is part of the community of Certified B Corporations that have used a third-party verification of their impact. Use the free B Impact Assessment to evaluate your company’s impact on all stakeholders, including the environment, your workers, your community and your customers.
Listen in to our chat with Husted for a few of our favorite takeways:
- Helpsy’s origin story.
- The greatest limiting factor to Helpsy’s growth.
- His sustainable vision for transforming the clothing and textile industry.
- What consumers should consider doing with old clothing.
- The B Corp certification process for Helpsy.
Bonus material: Get the full show notes and extras for this episode.
B the Change gathers and shares the voices from within the movement of people using business as a force for good and the community of Certified B Corporations. The opinions expressed do not necessarily reflect those of the nonprofit B Lab.
A Sustainable Vision for Fashion’s Future was originally published in B The Change on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.
