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?
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.
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?
Hold on to your out of date clothing.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 just wear my clothes until they break down naturally and are shed in the next molting cycle.
Account -> Discussions -> Disable Sigs
The thrift stores are thriving, and so I wonder about the motivations of the poster-- propaganda? I think the used clothing stores are thriving and cutting into the margins of the highly over priced brand-merchandized disasters marketed in dying malls, and on-line.
Goodwill, Salvation Army, St Vincent de Paul, Amvets, all of these organizations have pretty efficient operations for re-purposing or selling clothes, at least in the USA.
Like you, I believe the BS agenda is behind the scenes here. Follow the money-- or efficiency of it.
---- Teach Peace. It's Cheaper Than War.
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.
"And mixes, which are most clothes today, are often hard to recycle."
Leviticus tried to warn us.
Friends have very little in the way of influence on your life. It's the strangers who judge you that are the problem.
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