Do you have a stash of Eileen Fisher items you no longer need? You are in luck: return five of them to any Eileen Fisher store. They’ll spruce them up and make them available to women and girls in need via their Green Eileen store, a project of the Eileen Fisher Community Foundation. (Details at the end of this post.) And afterwards, grab 20 points from Practically Green!

PS if you are free on Thursday, April 189from 12:30-1:30pm ET, join us as Eileen Fisher’s special guest on a Twitter chat re: sustainability and clothing: “The Lifecycle of a Garment.” Please use hashtag #EFCSRChat. See you there!

Did you know that donating or selling one item of your used clothing can cut your carbon emissions by 27.1 pounds? So says CarbonRally.com. Donating clothes also takes something you’re no longer wearing and puts it on the back of someone who will wear it, promoting reuse. We all know how much stuff we have just sitting in our closets collecting dust. It doesn’t make much (common) sense to toss what might be someone else’s treasure.

By donating to consignment or thrift stores, you help the people who shop there avoid the considerable resources needed to produce any new item they would have bought instead–fabric, pesticides on cotton, dyes, manufacturing processes, shipping, packaging and more. It’s also faster and easier than consignment, selling on eBay or Craigslist, or organizing a garage sale.

Donating unwanted clothes to a charity is sure to put a smile on your face! GREAT satisfaction!

Go through your closets and see what you’re no longer wearing or using. Pile these items into bags.

Decide where to donate your goods. Common national options include Goodwill, The Salvation Army, and Vietnam Veterans Association. Your community is likely to have several smaller shops and local charities—ask around.

Some charities specialize in specific types of clothing. Dress For Success, for example, takes donations of professional women’s wear and offers it to unemployed and low-income women for job interviews.

“Inspired by the way our clothes live new lives across the years, Eileen created a garment recycling program that has its own store, GREEN EILEEN, and a mission of supporting women and girls. In honor of Earth Day, our retail stores, Company Stores and select wholesale locations in the United States are collecting your gently worn items. Bring us up to five EILEEN FISHER pieces and we’ll give them a comeback. A new role for your jacket, a new opportunity for women and girls.”