Slashdot Mirror
'No One Wants Your Used Clothes Anymore' (bloomberg.com)
An anonymous reader shares a report: For decades, the donation bin has offered consumers in rich countries a guilt-free way to unload their old clothing. In a virtuous and profitable cycle, a global network of traders would collect these garments, grade them, and transport them around the world to be recycled, worn again, or turned into rags and stuffing. Now that cycle is breaking down. Fashion trends are accelerating, new clothes are becoming as cheap as used ones, and poor countries are turning their backs on the secondhand trade. Without significant changes in the way that clothes are made and marketed, this could add up to an environmental disaster in the making. [...] The tide of secondhand clothes keeps growing even as the markets to reuse them are disappearing. From an environmental standpoint, that's a big problem. Already, the textile industry accounts for more greenhouse-gas emissions than all international flights and maritime shipping combined; as recycling markets break down, its contribution could soar. The good news is that nobody has a bigger incentive to address this problem than the industry itself.
Hold on to your out of date clothing. They will be back in style in 10 years.
Or simply wear them. If your friends judge you buy your clothes, they're not your friends.
I volunteer at a local food pantry that also makes donated clothes available to its clients. I generally only volunteer once a week, but I see a lot of people lining up to get clothing...whether it's for themselves or someone else.
Maybe other countries don't need/want our used clothing as much, but there's still a demand/need in the USA at least.
Give a hand, not a hand-out.
When I read the original article, I get the idea that a lot of it is based on this one disaster relief blanket maker's tale of woe, discovering that they were booted out as the preferred provider of their recycled blankets made from worn out clothing material. I can't help but wonder if there's more to their story than what they reveal here, since they stated the Chinese product being purchased instead is still 50 cents per blanket more expensive than what they were selling. Don't these things generally get contracted out to the lowest bidder?
Maybe their recycled blankets weren't as durable as the new Chinese ones? Or maybe they weren't as warm or comfortable?
Additionally, I agree with another Slashdot poster who found it rather hard to believe that all over the entire world, we've actually reached a point where concerns about fashion trump any interest or need for cheap, used clothing? Here in America, I find that at least in my circle of friends (including the people I communicate with via social media), few of us are fashion conscious at all. I have a couple of female friends who are, but more of them actually tell me they just want clothing that lasts. They hate spending large amounts of time picking out clothes that fit well and look good on them, only to have their favorite selections wear out and need replacing again after a year or two. The guys I know pretty much all just have a need for "business casual" clothing plus comfortable, casual wear for weekends and days off work. It's all about buying what's reasonably priced while fitting the category they're seeking. "Fast fashion" has no role to play there.
No, just stop buying new stuff. Stop throwing away your perfectly good clothing.
Everybody has too much stuff. Don't buy more. Just stop.
(I realize that on this site, many people here are not "fashion conscious" so this may not apply. However, in the real world lots of people just keep buying new stuff and throwing away perfectly good clothing.)
I don't read your sig. Why are you reading mine?
Even people in Trump's *hole countries people have plenty of clothes. That's not the problem.
The problem is that we dump our trash on their market and destroy any local market for clothing. This prevents them from "lifting themselves up by their bootstraps" (or similar neoliberal articles of faith). Poor countries are finally saying stop sending us your trash. We need to develop our own economies.
I don't read your sig. Why are you reading mine?
Friends have very little in the way of influence on your life. It's the strangers who judge you that are the problem.
In the book Brave New World the hypnotically-implanted mottos included "ending is better than mending" and "the more stitches, the less riches."
Women's clothing in particular seems to be ephemeral... for my wife, even 'high quality' brands seem to last less time than similar quality men's clothing. Even something like a pair of jeans: whereas the men's jeans are made with real denim, the women's are blended with a lot of other materials and wear out faster.
It's true. Women's clothing is (by and large) flimsy, expensive and designed more for display than practicality compared to men's clothing. I'd be filled with happiness to find a dress with actual practical pockets! Amazing! What an idea!
So wouldn't making the recyclers more efficient reduce their costs as well?
And how do you propose to do that? Recycling means you get a mixed bag of everything people gave you and you never know what they were thinking. As an analogy, around here at Christmas time there's a donation box for gifts for the poor and because of the personal touch it encourages more and bigger contributions than paying donations. They wrap it up nice and pretty like it's ready to go from secret Santa to straight under the Christmas tree, on the card you're supposed to write the target age/sex.
Do you know what happens to all those presents? They're unwrapped, unpacked, inspected, reviewed for age/sex appropriateness, repacked and re-wrapped. And not just because some people have a bit strange ideas about what's really fit for a Christmas present or useful for a kid. But because there's always some ass hat with mental problems who'll wrap up a broken PlayStation or sex toy or dog poop and a note that says here's a little shit for a little shit. The system only works because they got volunteers willing to perpetuate a fantasy while shielding the recipients from what would actually happen.
You just can't get away from that individual checking of everything. It's the same thing that's killed much of the repair business, if your toaster is broken go buy a new one. Even if it's just a tiny fix the repair guy has exhausted the budget almost before he can get the lid off while a thousand rolled off the assembly line in China. And if the market doesn't care the manufacturer doesn't care about making manuals, parts and equipment etc. available either. Huge, controlled environments with identical items have economics of scale. Small, uncontrolled environments with mixed items don't.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
Why would you care about what strangers think of you? If they think you're horribly out of fashion, what influence will their negative opinion of you have on your life? For 99% of strangers, the answer is "none." After you've walked away from them, you might never see those strangers again. (And, if you do, the two of you might not even realize you've seen each other before.) So if a stranger is going to judge you based on your clothes, let them go right ahead. I'm sure some strangers judged me negatively because I'm a man in my 40's who wore a Harry Potter Entering The TARDIS t-shirt, but I don't care because I like that shirt.
My sci-fi novel, Ghost Thief, is now available from Amazon.com.
Maybe it would be better for those countries to take the free clothes, and use the savings to develop their economies by focusing on other stuff that we're not sending them. That way they would end up with both the clothes and the other stuff.
I only care because strangers are the people who sit on the other side of the table in job interviews
As someone who does job interviews:
For a job interview, don't wear fashion if you want the job.
It's anticipated that you, if male, wear a conservative suit, shirt and tie, unless health or poverty reasons prevent it. Whether it's new or three, five, ten or twenty years old isn't going to be noticed.
If you, on the other hand, wear what stands out as haute couture, you're going to be seen as someone self-centered with more expensive tastes that we'd like to pay for. If you don't even de-tag the suit jacket, you'll label yourself (no pun intended) as ignorant of etiquette too. Which might be OK for an office or floor job, but not if you're expected to meet customers.