Donated Clothing Chain

[Karen]

How Europe processes donated clothing. I found it fascinating.

[Jay]

Very cool. All of us are right at the beginning of the cycle. Our goal is to get as close to the original source as we can.

[Sharyn]

Looks like an interesting video. I’m on a short trip right now and will have to watch it later.

I found out last year about the clothing donation fundraisers run by a few school groups in my area. They collect used clothes and give them to a company that gives them money per pound. They don’t pay too much, maybe $0.20? Then the company categorizes the clothes into better quality, ave quality, and rags. They will then sell by the pallet for a few dollars per pound. They will also fill one of those big shipping containers full of pallets and then ship it to a foreign country where US clothing is in demand.

[Amatino]

I’ve been to the street markets like the ones shown at 21:20 onwards. The clothes are dirt cheap and in huge piles through which you rummage for what you want. It’s quite an experience!

[Inglewood]

I’ve seen documentaries that paint a different picture on “donations” being dumped in 3rd world countries and they are just burned to get rid of them.

Countries like Uganda are starting to ban imports of used items as they can’t handle all the junk coming in.

Unfortunately, even poor people don’t want a used corporate training exercise shirt from 2008, even for free.

Just look up donation dumping, clothing dumping, or other key terms on Google and you will get a different picture of how all this garbage is polluting these poor countries.

The same thing happens in the U.S. – CBS Sunday Morning had a good story of donation dumping after various hurricanes in Houston and NYC last year. Some of the first responders called it a “second disaster” as they have a bunch of “garbage” to clean up.

Many people feel good donating, but the majority of items are not put to good use, and are a burden on those who get them and can’t pass them onto the next sucker…

[Jay]

Yeah, African and South Asian countries are banning these shipping containers of clothing because it competes with local manufacturing. Why make local clothes if the donate clothes are so cheap?

[BigSally]

Et al.
Slobby’s World on Netflix is a fun reselling show to watch- Especially if you like 70’s 80’s and 90’s stuff.
episode 10 they pick a warehouse in LA that sells vintage clothing in bulk. This warehouse sorts through the tonnage you refer to above and gets the gold nuggets…I’m guessing they were VIPs for TV and random scavengers like me wouldn’t be on the guest list. But it looks like a very interesting business operation.

[Winchester38]

It’s kind of heartbreaking to see how incredibly wasteful our society is. For every item worthy of picking up and reselling on ebay/etc, there are probably 100 others that are so cheaply made and undesirable that they become literal garbage once they’ve been worn a few times.

[Terri]

When my kids were younger, we bought some tourist t-shirts for them from a vendor on the street in Boston. The first time he wore it, his brother yanked on the sleeve and the whole sleeve separated from the armhole and came completely off:)

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