Bay Area brothers form nonprofit to recycle used school uniforms for families in need

By Molly McCrea

Inside a family garage on the Peninsula, instead of seeing parked cars, one can find bins packed with clean, used school uniforms and two busy young brothers.

Ethan and Desmond Hua are filling orders from families in need of school uniforms. They run a nonprofit called H.O.P.E., which stands for “Help Our Planet Earth.”

One of the nonprofit goals: to prevent perfectly good used clothing from piling up in landfills. Textile waste is a huge and burgeoning problem, with Americans throwing away up to 17 million tons of clothing each year.

“[The landfill] is where they decompose, and they release dangerous greenhouse gases like methane, which is roughly 25% more potent than carbon dioxide,” explained Ethan.

A second major goal of H.O.P.E is to help families in need.

“We take in gently used school uniforms from families who no longer need them, and we redistribute them back to families in the community,” said Ethan.

“Families just request it for their children and students to get uniforms at no cost, and we fill it in bags and deliver it to the schools,” added younger brother Desmond.

Ethan got the idea when he was a student at Bayside Academy, a public school in San Mateo that requires uniforms. He saw a classmate wearing shorts on a very cold day and was stunned by the reason.

“What he told me was that he couldn’t afford another pair of pants to last him till laundry day,” Ethan recalled. 

“It started with our school, and then now the whole program is across our district,” said Bayside Academy principal Maria Demattei, adding that she knows some families have a hard time buying new uniforms, especially mid-school year.

“As you know, kids grow really quickly,” Demattei said. “Parents are buying every year, new uniforms, new uniforms. And some families cannot afford to buy them.”

Demattei said H.O.P.E. fills a need. Bayside has set up a collection spot near the front offices, and the Hua brothers pick them up. The brothers then fulfill order requests from families and deliver bags full of clean uniforms to the schools to distribute. 

Nine public schools in the San Mateo-Foster City School District participate in the program.

“We are thrilled that we can contribute to that, to our Mother Earth,” said Demattei with a smile.

Ethan and Desmond hope their efforts will make a difference.

“H.O.P.E. has saved roughly 13,000 articles of school uniforms getting sent to landfill thrown away by families,” Ethan said.

“We can change what the future could look like, trying to make something better and make the environment more clean,” Desmond added.

Ethan has been recognized for his work in reducing landfill waste. He recently won the Dr. Cora Clemons Emerging Young Samaritan Award, which is sponsored by San Mateo County’s Samaritan House.

He has also made the project more accessible by building a website in three languages: English, Spanish, and Mandarin Chinese.