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.
So you're saying we could cut out a major source of greenhouse-gas emissions by just going naked all the time?
North Korea has made a credible threat to drop Disco on the USA.
Maybe Monsanto or somebody else can simply engineer a bacteria that eats old clothes . . . ?
Now, it might be tricky deciding what exactly is old, but the results are guaranteed to be a hilariously hit at parties.
Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
I can't believe there are not plenty of poor areas of the world that are more concerned with meeting human needs rather than catering to fashion taste.
That's because most female and male Americans have NO skills in altering clothes to fit them, let alone make something new.
Poor people don't care about fashion over freezing to death.
New clothes are not as cheap as used as used often goes for free if you use that donation box.
The Salvation Army is going strong in my town and all across the state.
This article has some sort of bullshit agenda.
The amount of Thrift stores around me has drastically increased in the past decade. My wife lived in Rome for years, and there's daily street fairs where there's many many used clothes being traded.
The article references used FIBERS, totally different from clothes. I see no evidence that thrift, or open air market prices are anywhere near the prices of new clothes. Used fibers turned into new clothes/goods are a different matter. I suspect the fibers will be used for something even cheaper. Insulation?
new clothes are becoming as cheap as used ones
Here in the U.S. "fashion retail" will sell a shirt for ~$50, while the very same shirt will show up a few months later at a thrift shop for ~$4. Some of the "upmarket" clothiers sell shirts (marginally nicer than the retail variety) for $100+ per shirt. At the local mall, I don't think you can even buy a T-shirt for less than $20 anymore. And they wonder why the place is so empty...
So wouldn't making the recyclers more efficient reduce their costs as well? I suppose they're missing
Or would efficiency overcome the raw material source?
Isn't textile one of the most recyclable materials in existence?
Even if the old clothes need to be shredded into fibers and re-spun, the recycled material doesn't have to be suitable as dress whites, it can be tent canvas, insulation, upholstery stuffing, etc.
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.
What am I supposed to do with all my old leisure suits? Some of those fabrics could survive a direct nuclear strike.
First law of people: People are generally stupid.
Why is this on Slashdot?
#DeleteFacebook
I just wear my clothes until they break down naturally and are shed in the next molting cycle.
Account -> Discussions -> Disable Sigs
When I wear your granddad's clothes I look incredible. Now what do I do?
There are also economists who are complaining that we are not recycling old clothes as much as we should.
Who is right?
"We mustn't be caught by surprise by our own advancing technology" -- Aldous Huxley
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.
What does global warming have to do with anything?
Where do all those non-sequitors come from suddenly? /. used to be a place where you'd get mostly on-topic discussions, interrupted only by the goatse-guy, the one with the app apps and the moo-cow. Hell, even APK is most of the time on topic.
But for some freakish reason in the past year or two we had an influx of people who keep droning on with their bullshit agenda. Whatever it may be this time. For fuck's sake, get back to Reddit and Twitter.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Fashion trends are accelerating, new clothes are becoming as cheap as used ones, and poor countries are turning their backs on the secondhand trade.
This is fantastic news. If a country is in a position to turn up their collective noses at perfectly serviceable used clothing because it's not new/trendy enough, I think we can take that as an official declaration that they're in fine shape to fend for themselves all the way around.
Donated clothes destroyed the domestic textiles industry in some countries and made people dependent on a constant supply of clothes from the West which were actually made in Southeast Asia
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.
Because Everytime at the local thrift stores was too ratty to wear. Part of that is cloths are made more cheaply now (thanks fast fashion) and part of that is the thrift stores eBay all the really nice stuff. I suspect if your poor that's got to suck. When I was a broke ass college kid I could get something ok for a job interview for $20 bucks. Nowadays that stuff is on eBay for $100 or more...
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The used clothing market used to be different. A collector in the United States would first sort by quality. Clean, no stains, no rips clothing would be separated for shipment to markets, almost always international. There was no market otherwise. Rejected clothes would go to US rag manufacturers. But before shipment of the good items, they would be sorted a second time by designer label, because shops in foreign countries, such as Senegal, specialized by designer. And the markets were not only poor countries. The largest market for American used clothing was once Japan, because kids wanted to make a fashion statement. And it was a very complex market even there. When grunge rock became popular worldwide, the market for used American flannel shirts in Japan shot up, with much higher prices both there and here for the American collectors who knew what they were doing. We need a return for those good old days when buying and wearing obviously used clothing was a sign of cultural equality and virtue ("His clothes are dirty but his hands are clean. And he's the best thing that you've ever seen.").
What does global warming have to do with anything?
It's affecting the natural fiber crops, like cotton. If I didn't wear them until they were holey, the third world would be happy to have my castoffs because they are overwhelmingly made of natural fibers. I'm happy wearing secondhand clothing, but that's difficult for me because I'm two meters tall and there's not that much of it available to me compared to what's out there for others. Still, almost everything I own is made out of cotton, rayon, linen, or silk. I have a few poly blend overgarments, but I prefer to keep that stuff away from my skin.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Washing helps with that.
Well, since the textile industry is a huge greenhouse-gas emitter already, and since they're just going to raise those emissions to meet the apparent increase in demand for new textiles, it seems they should just get taxed, right? I mean, slapping on a new textile tax will help decrease demand by denizens of the developing world by raising prices for new textiles out of their reach, thereby increasing demand for second-hand textiles again. Tax revenues could also be used to develop cleaner energy sources and mitigation techniques for greenhouse-gas emissions. It's a giant win, right?
Unless, of course, you happen to be one of those denizens... I'm sure that the prospect of helping the environment will fill them with warm fuzzies, though, even if they don't end up with particularly warm fuzzies to wear.
"Is not a sentence" is not a sentence. Well damn.
How does this not surprise me
Hold on to your out of date clothing. They will be back in style in 10 years. This is why I don't buy name brand clothing. It doesn't have any more quality and hearing people say "cool jacket" is only nice for so long.
Funny you say that. Back in the early 1970's, I was in Rome, and saw an older homeless gentleman in an old suit, probably 30 or 40 years old, because it had wide lapels ... just like what had recently come back in style!
I think I saw the youtube video of you fighting him for that jacket. Kudos for your win!
It's hard to tell, though; it appeared to be originally recorded in 8mm.
Friends have very little in the way of influence on your life. It's the strangers who judge you that are the problem.
In 1900 a man could build a serious canoe or row boat with paper. Today that is unwise. But back then they had paper that resembled our dollar bill. If was fabric and paper in sheets that they called paper. So they would build their boats and cover them with some sort of pain or varnish to lessen contact with water ans use those boats even on very long trips. so not so many people are building canoes these days but this type of product could be pressed into a board like product used to build or make patios and the like. Keep in mind that back then they had limited ways to seal their creations whereas we have coatings that are sturdy and long lasting. Paper pulp and fabric pressed with a mix of Elmers carpenters glue would have great strength an be quite useful.
I do. I want your old clothes. If they're in my size and not stained or worn-out. My wardrobe is mostly clothes that people got rid of that I think are cool. Why should I look like a clone with the latest fashions? Clones are boring.
In the book Brave New World the hypnotically-implanted mottos included "ending is better than mending" and "the more stitches, the less riches."
Between driverless cars delivering me pizza, and the internet, and meeting avatars, I really don't need to dress and leave the house.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
We donate a lot of clothes and other items all year.
We have been deducting donations, but even with the deduction cap being much higher next year and likely not itemizing, it's not like we'd stop doing that. The stuff has to go out and it's way easier and better for all to throw boxes of random but still useful stuff at Goodwill rather than in the trash, what a waste...
Also we never deducted full value, I don't think you can do that. I forget what the guidelines were but I'd say it's more like 10% of what we paid for it we used as the donated value - if that.
Lastly even though we are well off we still shop at goodwill ourselves. Some older clothes are better than modern, and you never know what other interesting stuff they may have. I have noticed in recent years the quality of electronics at Goodwill has gone way down, I think more people are selling anything half-decent on eBay now...
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Most of the clothes I buy are 100% cotton. Can't you just shred cotton, wool, linen, silk, rayon, etc. clothes and scatter the bits into the wind? They're natural fibers. That's what would've happened to the material anyway if they hadn't been turned into a textile. These things have been growing and dying for millions of years, and we're not buried up to our ears in them. So I assume bacteria are able to decompose them and re-enter the natural food cycles.
So what is this big incentive for the industry? They do not care that second hand are thrown away instead of used again. They even would welcome it. "Pleasy buy my stuff and throw it away without wearing it." "Please use it as a fule source." All things they would be totally ok with, as long as you give them monies.
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
Yes, please. Seems that the only thing you can buy is women's pants with a man's label.
You could also wear them longer. It astounds me that people throw out perfectly good stuff. But I don't mind since I pick it up. I buy used cloths. A lot of people I know buy used cloths. The cost is about $1 typically, that's for a jacket, a shirt, pants, shoes, etc. Many people shop at thrift stores. These cloths are perfectly good. The new market isn't going to drop that low so there is going to be a market. So someone does want your used cloths. BTW, I'm in a third world country: Vermont (USA). :)
This sounds like an episode of Seinfeld.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Could've fooled me. Street near me has about six charity shops. People drop in clothes all the time, they sell them, and the money goes to various causes. So uh, this article is bollocks.
I do not want your cheap brainburning drugs. They are useless for work. And I am a working man today.
He makes some great points: https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
The problem is that cheap new clothes are generally really poor quality. I have bought used clothes that were high-quality and last much longer than new ones would, for about the same price. The problem is there's a lot of garbage clothing to sift through to find the good stuff, but I enjoy that sort of treasure hunt.
Of course, the fashion industry doesn't want people to keep clothes for a long time. I'd say that's the real culprit.
Like washing down tide pods with an old pair of undies
When does this happen in the movie?
from a 2013 book, https://www.amazon.com/Overdre...
“Overdressed does for T-shirts and leggings what Fast Food Nation did for burgers and fries.” —Katha Pollitt
Author got idea when returning from one of those stores like Ross with bundle of "good deals" then realizing she will never wear these and has a closet stuffed with cheap clothes she will never wear. She also found (and this was years ago) almost all donated clothing will be sent to the landfill because it is cheaper to buy new stuff than used. Unlike years ago when clothing was quality made so it can be sold used or as hand-me-downs (which younger brothers and sisters hated).
But in the long run cheap fashion is high cost. Outfit that doesn't look that great, doesn't fit that well, and money wasted.
mfwright@batnet.com
Not long ago I discovered that a few marine transport ships are enough to eclipse all of the emissions from vehicles in North America. Now you tell me that the textiles industry creates significantly more than that. North American and European cars are already far cleaner than those in the rest of the word, mostly thanks to electronic fuel injection and other forms of increased efficiency which we are all happy to have anyway. Then there are termite farts which to my knowledge far eclipse all of those things. So what exactly is the argument for focusing on reducingthe environmental impact of cars on this continent? Most of the low-hanging fruit was snapped up in the 70s and early 80s, so it really does feel like we are scrounging for peanuts.
The only argument I can see that isn't purely political is that those other types of pollution are difficult or impossible to control whereas domestic transport sort of isn't.
I have not bought new clothing since I started sewing in 1995.
Not only does it last longer, it is also a pride of creation.
If you want to see pictures of my home made clothing, you can go to www.allyn.com
Most Respectfully Yours Mark Allyn Bellingham, Washington
Some people have to settle for fake friends. Also, don't forget, sometimes you need good clothes to score a job or a pussy/dick.
Avantgarde Hebrew science fiction
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.
17th century coats (think Pirates of the Caribbean) would be good too! Men's grey business suits are just boring.
Sent from my ASR33 using ASCII
The biggest "thrift store" near me has some really expensive crap. They try to sell 10-year-old couches in great visual condition but with hideous colors for $250 with a brand new furniture store right across the street. I think DVDs are a few dollars a pop. Furniture and electronics are both insanely priced. Prices are non-negotiable. It amazes me that anyone bothers with the place. The only thing appropriately priced is VHS tapes. It doesn't matter how many used clothes you donate if they end up being priced as if they were new at the "thrift store." It doubly kills me because they get the damned stuff 100% for free. Lots of people are annoyed at how the place is being run.
Jason is right in every way, but ...
I only care because strangers are the people who sit on the other side of the table in job interviews, who select a table for me at the restaurant, who sit on the jury when I sue for breach-of-contract, who are supposed to help me make purchases in the store, and a thousand other things. And frankly, most of my co-workers are strangers that pretend to know each other.
It pisses me off to no end, but that's the reality of things.
But for some freakish reason in the past year or two we had an influx of people who keep droning on with their bullshit agenda. >
Honestly, I miss Dr Bob and his subluxations. I think grub was the last sophisticated troll I've seen on the internet.
I'm a minority race. Save your vitriol for white people.
Well it depends on how much influence that 1% has!
The article title is "No One Wants Your Used Clothes Anymore" however, the article provides no evidence to back-up that headline. Instead, it cites a single company that recycled fabric into blankets for disaster relief. So a more accurate headline would be "This One Company Doesn't Want Your Used Clothes Anymore." Recycling has never been about making things cheaper, it is about minimizing our environmental footprint. As many posters have commented, thrift stores are booming and donation boxes are popping up everywhere. The article also claims that "Fashion trends are accelerating, new clothes are becoming as cheap as used ones" but provides no evidence at all of clothing prices going down.
>> Why would you care about what strangers think of you? Some strangers judged me negatively because I...wore a Harry Potter Entering The TARDIS t-shirt
I'm pretty sure you wore that shirt to annoy strangers. And there's a good chance that anyone who reacted to the shirt would stand a better chance of becoming your friends than complete strangers, right? So...I think you really wore the shirt as a social filter to help you decide who around you might be worth talking to. (I do it myself with stupid programming shirts.)
Well, that and to some being "fashionable" is not something they care about.
My wardobe contains 3 types of pants: jeans, black slacks, khaki slacks.
I have 3 types of shirts: t-shirts, polos, and long sleeve button-downs.
It's not trendy or stylish, but I can wear all of those clothes until they actually wear out rather than "go out of style" because they are kind of in the universal "never quite in but never quite out of style either" zone.
"People who think they know everything are very annoying to those of us who do."-Mark Twain
Women naturally have a keen awareness to how their appearance benefits them. How others see them influences how others treat them, so there is absolutely real practical value to ensuring that they do well on this front.
That means having clothing that is well-designed with good color blends and so on. It also means changing up often, to ensure that they can continue to get attention (and this is NOT frivolous...when the amount of social attention that women get starts to wane so can their success in romance and business).
Talking about this sort of thing gets resistance, which is why I am trying to frame it properly: women are doing what makes sense, given the response they get when doing this.
And, in this case, "what makes sense" includes regular investment in new-and-nice clothing.
I'm lucky enough to have a chain of thrift stores where I live that provides quality product. All the clothes have been cleaned and the junk never makes it to the racks. They also display by sizes. I bought my entire work wardrobe there at a fraction of the cost of new with a much higher quality of items. The older stuff seems to be better made out of better materials. And by buying used I know the exact size and color it's going to be in the future.
I don't really care about fashion. I don't care if teal is 'out' this year. I want quality clothing that fits me and doesn't break the bank.
I could pay $60 for a pair of dress slacks and hope they don't shrink or fade in the wash or I could spend $5 for a used pair that fit in the color I know they'll stay.
I donate to them as well as long as it's in the same condition as I would purchase it in. Otherwise it goes in the trash (after removing buttons and zippers of course) if I can't use it for cleaning rags due to fabric content.
If this stuff matters to you, watch the documentary The True Cost, which discusses the waste from clothing and textiles.
Here's a link to the trailer.
Could say the same thing about Trump. No matter what is being discussed, Trump somehow makes it into the conversation.
Not to mention, the constant tidal wave of donated shoes and clothes meant annihilation for any nascent indigenous clothing, shoe, or textile market...which is normally a stable and consistent business.
-Styopa
Average clothes are definitely far less durable today than 20 years ago. They appear to cost less, but I believe cost more over the long term. My jeans used to last about 150 wear / wash cycles and now seem to be good for only half that. Other clothes are far less durable than that.
It seems as though we've entered into an age where having the latest clothes is more important than how much they cost. This turns durability into something the average consumer has no desire to pay extra for. Why pay more to facilitate donating?
The ultimate evolution of this would be to have a brand new outfit every time you dress. There could be a market there for a home grown clothing industry.
Manufacturers based in the US can't compete in the clothing industry as it exists. So, perhaps they should seek instead to disrupt the industry.
We should seek to develop a device similar in size to a washer-dryer combination that will break down old clothes and create new ones. It would likely need to have supplies in canisters that are replaced. There would also likely be components that can't be recycled in the machine and must be removed to a depot for recycling. So, a service would cart away collection canisters and install new supply canisters periodically.
The business would shift from manufacturing clothes overseas to manufacturing sophisticated machines and recycling supplies locally. Also, clothing design would be a completely separate largely community-based, open source activity that these suppliers would no longer have to concern themselves with.
3D printing technology which has already shown an ability to create crude clothes would be a promising starting point for this. Ultimately I think a tech that could break material down into fibers, reform fibers into threads, and weave new clothes, perhaps from many micro threads instead of long ones, would produce better feeling, seamless clothes than a print from drops approach.
Getting there involves shifting from designing machines that automate human activities (which is what the current clothing industry does) to designing a whole process including the end product that is optimized for real-time on-site production of single-use outfits with full recycling.
The only reason new clothes are so cheap is because of the labor exploitation in all steps of the chain making the production costs cheap.
Pay the textile industry laborers, the button makers, the garment sewers, and the retail employees selling the new clothes a living wage and we'll see the price gap increase dramatically.
Partner with a tech company to set up a corner where donors place their items on something like a fit bot and to have it automatically barcoded, photograph, categorize (size, brand, style), and tagged if they want a tax deduction receipt (or try it sans robot first, but really you want to make it easier than it would be for them to just ebay the stuff themselves), and have a computer automatically generate the receipt (I've waiting more than 30 minutes just to have someone sign off on my receipt before - could of done that work while I was waiting). Moreover, those clothes that are bar-coded, and cataloged, and photographed, can be automatically placed for sale in an an online market that the entire country has access to. And imagine how much easier it would be to shop (and maintain) the store if all the clothing had an easily identifiable size tag on it.
You can still let those that don't want receipts dump if you aren't getting enough people willing to chip in.
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.
I only ever saw people not de-tagging suits in a couple of African countries and in the Philippines...usually poor people.
I have seen 10 years ago branded used clothes in Africa sold for peanuts. This year, I have seen clothes donated for the hurricanes in Philippines...being sold. So apparently, there is still a market.
What I do see going to all brand and good names clothe stores here, is that while men still can find good looking clothes, all the women clothes have turned to shit in the name of "fashion"....nowadays all the women clothing are of much lower quality, and remember me of the old clothing my mother used to have in the closet when I was young.
Junk...
I can just roll up my clothes and smoke them when I'm done with them. I'll throw in a Tide pod for an extra kick.
don't have thrift stores. They have little outlets that only accept donations. Those donations never show up anywhere near the poor neighborhoods. I moved to here from a poorer city and was expecting the pickins to be pretty good. So when I got up here I cruised all the thrift stores for a couple months only to find junk and only junk time and time again. That's not completely true. Sometimes I'd find something marked up $10 more than new/ebay.
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I'd rather wear nothing, but I'd get no friends that way. :(
Ant(Dude) @ Quality Foraged Links (AQFL.net) & The Ant Farm (antfarm.ma.cx / antfarm.home.dhs.org).
I thought South Korea already dropped disco on the West with "Gangnam Style".
"I need food, but nobody will give me a job to earn money to buy food unless I am sufficiently fashionable." I consider a prerequisite for a need on some particular Maslow tier to lie on that same tier.
I remember that in the 70s and the 80s paper mills took cotton fabric and dresses to use for making cotton paper. They want only cotton and without buttons and so on. I remember that as a kid I collected the used clothes for the parish. Used clothes and blankets in decent state, especially the wool ones were repaied by some old widows and given to the poor.
I think the problem is that mixing different type of fabric is a pain for reuse or recycle.
You're right, well almost. I would say 99.9% of strangers have no influence on your life. The problem is the number of friends you hang out with is generally fixed while you get to meet a new set of 100 strangers every other day.
Strangers that control access to your money. Strangers that control access to your freedom. Strangers that control access to your income, your promotions, and strangers who can generally make your life a living hell.
For better or worse your friends rank barely above someone you haven't ever met in terms of true impact on your life (the exception being the ones that end up in your bedroom). They offer little more other than friendship and are generally easily discarded should that friendship go sour. The same can not be said for the strangers we truly rely on.
When you think about it you will probably also treat your friends the worst of all your acquaintances. For instance I've never called my a boss a fucking moron to his face, the same can not be said for some my friends.
I saw a post that women's clothing is more cheaply made; so is men's clothing. Maybe they don't want used clothes because they're falling apart too fast.
I know that a lot of shirts and pants are *much* thinner, and more cheaply made. Cheaply, as in they shrink when you wash them. When I was a kid (I'm a boomer), I remember seeing ads for "pre-shrunk" clothes. Now? Oh, you should dry clean all good cloths... because they're *crap*.
Another example: jeans, back in the fifties and sixties, had a thread count of better than 14. 10 years ago, you were lucky to find anything, except expensive ones (and why the hell are *jeans* expensive clothing?), that had a thread count over 9.
But of course fashion wants to sell you overpriced cheap clothes, since you're convinced that you wouldn't want to wear something that was *so* last month, right?
If my friends buy my clothes (judgement optional), then I don't need to donate them. Problem solved!
DMCA - Chilling free speech since 1998.
I've been very grateful over the years for thrift shops and Goodwill. It would have been much harder raising my kids and grandkids without them.
I generally agree with your assessment; however, I should point out that SOME strangers opinions will matter to you:
Police
Loan Officers
Car dealerships (I have some stories to tell with that!)
Hell, just anyone behind a counter.
You can not always know ahead of time when you will have to deal with these people.
For myself, and likely for you too, it just does not matter anymore. For others who need more out of society, these kinds of things just might matter.
"Someone needs to talk to the tree of liberty about its ghoulish drinking problem." by ohnocitizen
That is a true fact.
Berkowits