Tony Shumpert oversees the recycling and reuse business operations for Savers, a purpose-driven thrift retailer with nearly 330 stores across the U.S., Canada and Australia. During his tenure at Savers, Tony has been instrumental in establishing the company as a global leader in clothing and textile reuse and recycling. In his 16 years with Savers he has worked to grow the company’s recycling division, expanding the scope of items diverted from landfills from three categories to almost 20, including plastics, metals, sporting goods and kitchenware. These advances enabled Savers to divert more than 700 million pounds of goods from reaching North American landfills in 2017 alone.
Tony is passionate about reuse, representing Savers through his membership on the National Zero Waste Council’s Circular Economy Working Group, as a board member of Secondary Materials and Recycled Textiles Association(SMART), an international trade association focused on promoting high standards and best practices for reducing solid waste by recycling textiles and related secondary materials, and through his Huffington Post contributions. Through his work with these organizations, Tony is helping bring the reuse and recycling industries together with the goal of working towards a circular economy. By sharing his experience as a leader in the textile reuse space with industry groups, public officials and communities, Tony is working towards reducing the amount of reusable clothing that ends up in landfills every year.