[HN Gopher] Many of the clothes we donate to charity end up dump...
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Many of the clothes we donate to charity end up dumped in landfill
Author : bryanrasmussen
Score : 217 points
Date : 2021-08-17 10:36 UTC (12 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.abc.net.au)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.abc.net.au)
| francisofascii wrote:
| Any tips on extending the life of our clothes? I love new
| t-shirts, but they seem to wear down quickly. Maybe there is a
| way to wash them and get the sweat smell out without wearing down
| the shirt. I always use cold water, and only wash/dry when
| necessary. I heard washer agitation is a problem.
| woodwireandfood wrote:
| Silly one that I discovered: my t-shirts all developed a hole
| in the center of the stomach area first, before any other
| damage. It appears to be from rubbing between the seat belt of
| the car and the zipper/button area of my pants. So I've started
| pulling the shirt out of that spot after I put the seat belt
| on. Too early to tell how much of a difference it's made.
| kaybe wrote:
| I have the same issue and I only ride cars very very rarely.
| I'm still wondering about the reason.
| mindB wrote:
| A few simple things:
|
| - Air-dry clothes when possible instead of the dryer. - Only
| wash clothes when they're actually dirty. - Using cold water in
| the washing machine may help as well.
| retSava wrote:
| Washing clothes do wear them a lot, so if you can avoid washing
| clothes too often that'll help. Socks, undergarments, and (most
| often) t-shirts I don't do this with, but everything else like
| shirts or pants, do hang them nicely across the back of a chair
| so that they can air properly. Avoid wrinkles when hanging
| them.
|
| I'm about to buy new bed sheets etc, and the advice I've read
| is as follows:
|
| * satin is nice and soft, but wears faster than plain weave
| (aka percale when above 200 thread count), so don't use satin
| for bed sheet, but for the duvet cover and potentially the
| pillowcase. Percale may have a more hotel'y feeling of
| "crispyness".
|
| * use percale/plain for the bed sheet since that'll wear evenly
|
| * look for extra long cotton fibers since that'll last longer.
| It's classified in ranges, such as "long staple" or "extra long
| staple", but often not typed out. Instead some opt for saying
| "combed cotton" meaning they removed shorter fibers through
| "combing"
|
| * "egyptian cotton" says nothing, it'll include all cotton made
| in egypt, which is not by default good. "Supima" cotton is
| actually a trademarked name for Pima cotton fibers upholding
| some level of quality that's supposedly good.
|
| Four types of cotton: Gossypium [Hirsutum, Barbadense,
| Arboreum, Herbaceum]. Most grown is Hirsutum. Barbadense ==
| Pima, and certified Pima at some minimum fiber length etc ==
| Supima trademark.
|
| Many hotels don't own their sheets, they rent as a service
| including washing. I've read many use a small amount of
| synthetic fibers in the mix.
|
| Ideal thread count range is about 300-600, lower doesn't
| necessarily give the percale feel, and higher is just marketing
| blaha which doesn't really notice either.
|
| He. Turned out to be quite the post. Let's stop there. Guess
| you can tell I'm nerding down on the topic.
| lazerpants wrote:
| Look for Oeko-Tex certifications too. My wife is in textiles
| and is impressed with their processes. A lot of "organic"
| sheets are not carefully sourced and are not actually
| organic.
| mbernstein wrote:
| While the price my be a bit high (watch for their sales for
| styles being discontinued, especially around Black Friday) -
| but I got really tired of replacing sheets that fell apart
| and just bought Frette ones as as splurge and got a second
| set awhile ago. I've gotten really tired of buying cheap
| throwaway things and have instead invested in some of the
| nicer, higher quality brands and so far I haven't been
| disappointed.
| Scoundreller wrote:
| Unless my clothes as super dirty, I'll wash in cold water
| with a fraction of the recommended amount of detergent.
|
| And ++ to air drying. Hot temperatures + tumbling creates a
| ton of wear.
| NikolaNovak wrote:
| How quickly do they seem to wear down?
|
| I'm wearing a 15yo t-shirt as I speak and it's in great shape.
| I have several in closet that are 20yo. I don't take any
| particular care other than always washing on cold and using low
| temperature drier.
|
| My polo shirts depending on material do seem to wear down, on
| the collar in particular. They seem to be from different
| material than most t shirts.
| sumtechguy wrote:
| That could be a bit of survivorship bias too. I too have
| cloths that are 20+ years old. But other stuff from the same
| era is long gone too.
|
| For me it is one of two things the stitching just comes
| undone and ends up tearing the fabric. Or the fabric is just
| threadbare.
|
| I do have to agree though with the quality. It has really
| dipped in the past 10 or so years I would say. Especially in
| things I used to consider durable, like jeans. I recently
| bought a shirt about 3 years ago, elbows blown out stitching
| coming undone. Not low end cost stuff either...
| UnFleshedOne wrote:
| Kids these days are buying jeans with holes in them
| already. They don't even have a decency to get them worn
| down personally...
| sumtechguy wrote:
| Think holes in jeans has been a thing for awhile :)
| Pretty sure we we had them when I was a kid and that was
| a decent time back...
|
| There is a difference though for making holes. If I just
| whip out a pair of scissors and go to town that hole will
| get larger and larger until the garment is unusable. I
| usually get the same if I get them naturally. But holes
| that are put in at the factory they seem to put some
| thought into it and they last a decent amount of time and
| do not grow as badly. Have not dug to much into it
| because I prefer it without so I have not looked into how
| to DIY.
| Foobar8568 wrote:
| All my uniqlo t-shirts are falling aparts within 3 years.
| Other brands aren't much better..
| JohnJamesRambo wrote:
| Have you tried washing on cold and using cold water detergent?
|
| https://www.maids.com/blog/pros-and-cons-of-washing-your-clo...
| mschuster91 wrote:
| > Any tips on extending the life of our clothes? I love new
| t-shirts, but they seem to wear down quickly.
|
| Buy better quality. I know it's hard since most clothing is
| "fast fashion" crap that is _designed_ to be worn three, four,
| five times tops. Thin material, thin yarn, it simply breaks
| down physically.
| SeasonalEnnui wrote:
| After wearing my t-shirts to the point of being thread-bare or
| irrevocably stained (3-10 years), they become excellent lint-free
| rags for the electronics workbench & garage/workshop.
|
| The front and back panels of the t-shirt can be easily segmented
| into the desired size of rag (credit card sized for electronics,
| hand sized for the garage).
| abstractbarista wrote:
| They are also perfect for gun cleaning! Cut small squares for
| cleaning barrels, and keep bigger pieces for wiping down parts.
| I do this with my old nasty shirts.
| Sammi wrote:
| They're also excellent for window cleaning. Just wash the
| window with a wet old clothing rag and dry it with a dry one
| afterwards. It works so well. Much faster than any cleaning
| products and it leaves no residue.
| gambiting wrote:
| We run a processing company for second hand clothing in Poland(as
| well as our own shops), and while I can't comment on exports to
| Africa or elsewhere, that's definitely not the case for us.
| Primarly because we try to make use of absolutely everything we
| import, but also because few years back certain legislations were
| introduced that basically prevent companies like ours from
| producing large amounts of waste, with draconian fines if we do.
|
| So basically we buy clothes from say.....charities in UK or
| elsewhere, import them to Poland, sort them in our own warehouse,
| price everything individually, sell in our own shops. Then goods
| which are damaged/stained/faulty are cut into pieces and sold as
| cleaning rags(also done in house). Then things which literally
| cannot be cut into rags are sold further to a company that shreds
| them for textile filling for car seats etc. And finally, if you
| have something so utterly destroyed that it's literally useless -
| say a pair of shoes that have been through mud and
| disentegrated(why would anyone "donate" these is a different
| matter), those have to go to the landfill. But I'd estimate
| that's less than 1% of our entire output.
| dylan604 wrote:
| >why would anyone "donate" these is a different matter
|
| This is a very big question though. WTF are people thinking?
| There's a difference between no longer wearing something
| because it no longer fits but is otherwise in good condition to
| not being used because it's completely ruined. What mental
| block exists in the original owner from just throwing away the
| ruined items vs just holding onto them to donate so someone
| else can throw it away? Do they actually feel like some good is
| coming from donating worthless items? I honestly just do
| understand this.
| gambiting wrote:
| >>Do they actually feel like some good is coming from
| donating worthless items?
|
| Unfortunately, I believe people are encouraged to donate
| everything no matter the state, because importers like us pay
| per kg, so a charity that we buy from will get money for
| those dirty destroyed shoes, even though they do actually go
| to landfill on the other end. In a way charities don't really
| care what's in the bags, the heavier the better. That's why
| recently it's actually a bit more popular to import from
| Cash4Clothes charities, as they at the very least have a
| cursory glance through the goods, so you rarely get actual
| pure rubbish in there. It has other downsides though.
| Swizec wrote:
| I often donate my running shoes to the street.
|
| After 700km they're no longer good for running. But they're
| perfectly fine for walking around and as general footwear.
| Better shape than a lot of what I've seen folks living in the
| streets wear.
|
| Someone always takes them within 3 hours of putting them out.
| whimsicalism wrote:
| I mean, it seems like you're directing a lot of ire at what
| the above commentator says is an extremely small (less than
| 1%) share of donated items.
|
| Clearly having this sort of "mental block" is not an
| extremely common thing.
| dylan604 wrote:
| My ire was not directed at the original post at all, but
| towards the people that were specifically called out in
| that post. I took one part of that post and expanded on it.
| The natural progression of conversations.
| netrus wrote:
| Clothes only get worse while being used (or cleaned). Thus,
| all clothes I donate are basically in a condition that I
| considered "fit-to-wear" just one usage ago. Is it a stretch
| that someone would be happy to get for free what worked for
| me just until now?
|
| That being said, after reading articles like this some years
| ago, I started to throw everything that is actually damaged
| to the trash (even if it is only a small hole). Maybe I am
| overdoing it - but I totally understand the mindset of "worst
| case they will have to trash it in my place".
| mulmen wrote:
| Those damaged clothes can be repaired, used as fabric in
| new clothes, cut into rags or shredded into filling.
| Throwing them in the trash is the most wasteful thing you
| can do. All the energy involved in making that fabric is
| lost.
| JamesSwift wrote:
| For myself, I tend to be in the "let the professionals decide
| what to scrap" camp.
|
| If the alternative is that I throw it in the garbage, what is
| the net loss by letting the workers who do this all day long
| decide what should be thrown in the garbage? As the OP says,
| they have various uses for items, so it makes sense to let
| them handle the sorting through of junk to decide what is
| ultimately landfill material. Sure, I could educate myself
| better about the details on what happens once I hand it over,
| so that time isn't being wasted, but I am, of course, lazy.
| tablespoon wrote:
| > If the alternative is that I throw it in the garbage,
| what is the net loss by letting the workers who do this all
| day long decide what should be thrown in the garbage?
|
| Because a lot of the organizations that take donated items
| are charities, and disposing of _your_ garbage costs _them_
| money that they then cannot use to do good.
|
| https://www.npr.org/2021/05/06/993821945/goodwill-doesnt-
| wan...
|
| It's the same thing with recycling. If you "hopefully" put
| unrecyclable stuff in with it, all you're doing is making
| recycling less economically viable and increasing the
| chance that the batch is ruined. The sorters only have the
| capacity to _imperfectly_ remove the _most obviously
| unrecyclable_ trash
| (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=83sYHe3jdGA), not to
| ponder if your yogurt container is made of the right kind
| of plastic or determining if every wrapper is food-stained
| or not. The contents of your entire recycling bin flies
| past their eyes in a _literal second or two_.
| JamesSwift wrote:
| The increased cost aspect is interesting, and is
| something I've recently learned about. Fortunately our
| local goodwill is very active in pre-screening items when
| you drop off so I don't feel a huge need to get into the
| weeds with it.
|
| For recycling, it sounds more and more like our current
| systems just aren't well designed. If there is so much
| incidental complexity downstream that can actually ruin
| the recycleability of other items, we as consumers should
| aggressively under-recycle. But then that makes recycling
| that much less impactful as well. I don't know what the
| right answer is here other than we need to improve the
| sorting/processing to avoid consumers needing to
| understand the intricacies.
| tablespoon wrote:
| > The increased cost aspect is interesting, and is
| something I've recently learned about. Fortunately our
| local goodwill is very active in pre-screening items when
| you drop off so I don't feel a huge need to get into the
| weeds with it.
|
| So they're paying some dude to pre-screen instead of
| paying a larger trash bill. It's still a cost to them. If
| people were a little more conscientious, those costs
| could be eliminated.
|
| > But then that makes recycling that much less impactful
| as well. I don't know what the right answer is here other
| than we need to improve the sorting/processing to avoid
| consumers needing to understand the intricacies.
|
| Those intricacies are not hard to learn, and the
| improvements you seek are probably a lot harder than you
| or I realize.
| c22 wrote:
| If people were (universally) a little more conscientious
| _a lot_ of costs could be eliminated...
| qqqwerty wrote:
| You are making it harder for recycling to be
| profitable/worthwhile. Sorting the material and disposing
| the trash is one of the biggest costs associated with
| recycling. If the inputs to the processes get too saturated
| with waste, the recycling process stops being a net
| positive to society. As an example posted elsewhere in this
| thread, a soiled food container is not only non-recyclable,
| it will contaminate the other material next to it also
| making those materials non-recyclable.
|
| Basically, if you think you are being a good steward of the
| earth by throwing your trash into the recycling bin, you
| are wrong, you are making the problem worse.
|
| https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-
| report/environm...
| JamesSwift wrote:
| I should note that I'm only addressing donating items to
| e.g. Goodwill.
|
| I am more careful with recycling, but only because I have
| slightly more knowledge about what to recycle since there
| is a somewhat helpful graphic on our city's recycling
| bin.
| topkai22 wrote:
| I'm sure I'm guilty of doing this, but it's mostly mental
| laziness. When I'm sorting stuff for donation I'm mostly
| thinking "keep" versus "donate." The third category of "throw
| away" is there and their is a pile, but it's not one of the
| two defaults, so unless I notice the article is quite bad I
| don't toss it there.
|
| This has also meant I've kept clothes that really should have
| been tossed as well...
| kaybe wrote:
| It's also 'this is broken and should go to cloth recycling,
| but I do not have access to any cloth recycling facility,
| whereas the donation centers do'.
| scruple wrote:
| > This is a very big question though. WTF are people
| thinking?
|
| I obviously can't speak for elsewhere but donated goods are a
| tax deduction in the USA. Now, I do not donate junk but I
| also do 1-2 donation runs a year. The person who accepts my
| donations always asks, "Do you want a donation form?" without
| ever inspecting any of the items I am handing them for
| viability. Certain items are rejected because they simply
| cannot accept them but I have never once in my decades of
| donating seen someone inspect the items to ensure they are in
| "good" quality. I've always assumed that people are gaming
| their tax write-offs by donating their junk.
| tablespoon wrote:
| > This is a very big question though. WTF are people
| thinking? There's a difference between no longer wearing
| something because it no longer fits but is otherwise in good
| condition to not being used because it's completely ruined.
| What mental block exists in the original owner from just
| throwing away the ruined items vs just holding onto them to
| donate so someone else can throw it away? Do they actually
| feel like some good is coming from donating worthless items?
| I honestly just do understand this.
|
| It's still "good," just not good enough for them, and they
| don't want the item "to go to waste." Basically, they can
| _imagine_ someone using it, but it 's an unrealistic fantasy.
|
| I think that also applies to freebie crap no one wants.
| mumblemumble wrote:
| To add to what others have said, I think that a lot of people
| have this idea that "trash = bad" so deeply internalized that
| they're heavily biased toward only putting things in the bin
| when there can be no doubt whatsoever that it is garbage.
|
| You also see this when people put greasy paper take-out food
| containers in the recycling. No, it's not recyclable, and
| worse, it might further contaminate other things and render
| them non-recyclable as well. But, when I ask houseguests not
| to put them in our recycle bin, they seem to be honestly
| startled by the request. Oftentimes they assume it's because
| I'm a lax recycler and would rather throw things away than
| sully my pristine recycle bin with uneaten curry.
| ctdonath wrote:
| Plainly dirty, obviously goes in the trash.
|
| But where then is the line for what's otherwise clearly
| marked with the recycling symbol? ...especially when
| there's lingering suspicion the recycling bin contents are
| ultimately ending up in the landfill with the rest of it
| all?
| handrous wrote:
| > You also see this when people put greasy paper take-out
| food containers in the recycling. No, it's not recyclable,
| and worse, it might further contaminate other things and
| render them non-recyclable as well. But, when I ask
| houseguests not to put them in our recycle bin, they seem
| to be honestly startled by the request. Oftentimes they
| assume it's because I'm a lax recycler and would rather
| throw things away than sully my pristine recycle bin with
| uneaten curry.
|
| It happens here because recycling volume is unlimited,
| while regular trash has a fairly low limit.
|
| However.
|
| You do not have to sort the recycling. They do not reject
| it for being _entirely_ take-out containers. And it 's
| collected in open-top containers that result in a mass
| littering event every time trash day happens to be windy.
|
| I suspect they're just picking out the metal and putting
| everything else in the landfill, anyway.
| ZeroGravitas wrote:
| If they are, then that's still better than the
| alternative.
|
| Some nations just burn their trash, with energy recovery,
| and then extract any metals from the ashes. Again still
| notably better than landfilling in a modern, well
| designed landfill, which in turn is better than
| unregulated landfills which are better than open burning.
|
| The media seem to love "shocking" people with stories
| about how recycling might not be 100% perfect. Is it
| still a useful thing that all sensibly run countries do a
| continually increasing amount of. Yes, even the US where
| it continues to be a weirdly political topic along with
| climate change and evolution for no obvious reason and so
| there's no real federal support for it.
| Clubber wrote:
| Plastic recycling is a sham.
|
| We were paying China to take it, and they were putting it
| in a landfill (probably). China won't take our trash, I
| mean recycling anymore, so now we're putting it in
| landfills.
|
| General rule of thumb is if you can get money for
| scrapping it, it's recyclable (aluminum, glass, steel,
| etc).
|
| Companies use plastic because it's cheap and the
| government won't regulate it. I remember when sodas used
| to come in bottles, and food came in wax paper wrapping,
| and it tasted better.
|
| From an npr article posted by someone else:
|
| >Here's the basic problem: All used plastic can be turned
| into new things, but picking it up, sorting it out and
| melting it down is expensive. Plastic also degrades each
| time it is reused, _meaning it can 't be reused more than
| once or twice._
|
| https://www.npr.org/2020/09/11/897692090/how-big-oil-
| misled-...
| legerdemain wrote:
| Glass is mostly "recycled" by crushing, mostly to reduce
| the hazard of broken glass littering the street. In many
| states, buying a drink in a glass container carries a
| nominal extra fee to cover the "recycling." No one
| actually wants to buy your used glass containers for
| their own sake.
| handrous wrote:
| As recently as the early 90s there were still grocery
| stores that'd take back glass soda bottles to refill
| them, but the only places I know that still do anything
| like that are some fancy dairies (via the grocery stores
| that distribute their product).
| legerdemain wrote:
| Yeah, and I remember beer in iron cans... and that's
| about as relevant to the majority of consumers.
| handrous wrote:
| Sure, it's just that not _that_ long ago, it was
| economically feasible, so it 's not like it's some kind
| of unattainable fantasy. A couple laws, and a 5-10% hike
| on the costs of drinks distributed in bottles (thanks to
| the added costs of handling & recycling glass), and we'd
| be back there. It's something we definitely _could_ do.
|
| But yes, right now the main glass recycler in our area
| just crushes everything up and turns it into fiber glass.
| Only an irrelevantly-small fraction of bottles are re-
| used. I expect we'll switch to some kind of plant-based
| plastics before we bring back glass recycling for drink
| containers, though I wouldn't _wholly_ rule out the
| possibility of a shift back to glass.
| mumblemumble wrote:
| Another challenge with bringing back reusable glass
| bottles is that that approach belonged to an era with
| more local brands and a smaller variety of products.
| There were a few brands of soft drink that were all being
| mixed and bottled at local distributors, and cities had
| their own breweries that mostly only distributed locally.
|
| Now that we have enough different brands of soda and beer
| to cover three sides of a convenience store, all made and
| packaged at one location and then shipped across the
| continent, I don't know that glass can be considered a
| less wasteful option. It's not just about the actual
| piece of packaging, it's also about how much diesel fuel
| is being burned in shipping such heavy packaging over
| long distances.
| legerdemain wrote:
| Reusable glass bottles also mean that you either bring
| the exact bottle to the exact retailer to get refilled
| with the exact product, or brands lose the ability to use
| the container for advertising and brand identity.
|
| Even the frou-frou dairies that let you bring in their
| reusable bottles only want you to bring back _their_
| reusable bottles with _their_ stenciled logos on them.
| pmyteh wrote:
| In the UK there is (still, in some places) milk delivery
| to the doorstep in 1 pint bottles. These are all a
| standard size, and they're all branded by the dairy. But
| interestingly the dairies are perfectly happy to use
| another company's bottles if they end up with them -
| branding be damned.
|
| When I lived in a place with only one delivering dairy,
| this was quite rare. In Liverpool, I'd say that 10% of
| the bottles I get are 'foreign'.
| detaro wrote:
| Glass return schemes basically require standardized
| bottles. That's how it works in part in Germany: there's
| a small number of standard shapes of beer bottles,
| breweries get their share of bottles from return
| locations around them where possible. It breaks down with
| more and more breweries using custom bottles, which do
| need to be sorted out and returned separately, over large
| distances.
| jbc1 wrote:
| Cheaper is often because something was easier to make.
| Less materials and less energy.
|
| That's certainly the case on a one plastic bottle to one
| glass bottle ratio, but I wonder just how energy
| efficient is making that bottle over the glass one?
| Twice? Ten times? A hundred? Then how many times will a
| glass bottle get reused on average? What sort of
| resources are used in the process of bringing them back
| and cleaning them?
|
| This might be my bias as an Australian, tons of space but
| already having our natural wonder smashed by climate
| change, but I'm very uninterested in 'pro environment'
| moves that results in trading higher emissions for less
| land fill.
|
| Although potentially an argument could be made that
| because ocean waste is less contained and more harmful
| than landfill, a 5-10% hike on plastic bottle drinks in
| low water polluting countries and using it to subsidise
| glass bottle drinks in high water polluting countries
| would be worthwhile.
| handrous wrote:
| I'd expect there are lots of factors with glass. Making a
| new plastic bottle every time _might_ be cheaper on a
| resource-use than making a glass bottle and washing it
| for re-use (which uses energy, and water) some average
| number of times before it gets broken (5? 20? 50? No
| clue). But it might not.
|
| However, other factors include: labor; transportation &
| waste costs (glass is heavier and breaks easier); and
| labor-geographic efficiency enabled by lower transport
| costs--for example, you might choose fewer bottling
| plants farther apart for cost efficiency, so you can
| reduce overhead and concentrate your labor costs in cheap
| locations, rather than every town having a small bottling
| plant, or stores having fill-n-cap stations directly in
| them, or whatever.
|
| [EDIT] that is, with lower transportation costs _of
| plastic_ you might be able to concentrate production in
| places with cheaper labor.
| ZeroGravitas wrote:
| Its a popular misconception that recycling and climate
| change are in opposition. Landfills are the biggest
| producers of greenhouse gasses after electricity
| generation, transport and agriculture.
|
| The reduced carbon impact is one of the reasons to
| recycle, but your not the first person on HN that I've
| seen claim exactly the opposite.
|
| (Of note, burning the trash and using the energy produced
| is also better for climate change than landfill).
| jbc1 wrote:
| Is it the plastic in landfills causing the greenhouse
| gases?
| ZeroGravitas wrote:
| Probably mostly rotting food and other organic matter,
| maybe some fridges and other chemicals. But once you
| start recycling one thing, it makes it easier to recycle
| others as they share infrastructure.
|
| But recycling plastic specifically uses less energy which
| in turn saves carbon.
|
| Even burning the plastic as fuel is regularly cited by
| life cycle analyses as less carbon intensive than
| landfilling it and creating totally new plastic to
| replace it.
| ZeroGravitas wrote:
| In the UK 70% of a typical green glass wine bottle will
| be recycled material and the limiting factor is the
| availability of the recycled material, the manufacturers
| would use more if they could get it, since it saves
| energy to do so.
|
| And we generally don't offer deposits. When we did, the
| bottles were actually re-used directly.
|
| When recycled, it is crushed, that creates something
| called "cullet" which can be used in the glassmaking
| process and is easier to transport. But I don't see the
| link to keeping broken glass of the street, that should
| be possible without crushing or recycling.
| jeromegv wrote:
| Yep, I asked people to do the same recently at a party.
| They were entirely shocked. It's like realizing that your
| disposable cutlery and plates are actually waste and seeing
| it going into the actual trash makes them realize how
| wasteful it is. Recycle (or charity giving of clothes) is
| such a "guilt free" behaviour, feeling like you do
| something good for no efforts, so I'm not surprised people
| would do it even when it makes no sense.
| X6S1x6Okd1st wrote:
| Depressingly that was the point of recycling in the US
|
| https://www.npr.org/2020/09/11/897692090/how-big-oil-
| misled-...
| rhino369 wrote:
| Recycling education is awful in America. I made it about 33
| years without hearing that take out containers, etc. can't
| be recycled.
| jxramos wrote:
| the problem is the recycling triangle that's imprinted on
| the containers, the one's showing the material code on
| it. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Recycling_codes.
| Somewhere along the line the recycle triangle had become
| synonymous with recyclable, but what didn't get
| communicated is that only certain codes paired with that
| triangle are actually recyclable.
| soco wrote:
| So they use the recycling logo to indicate the material,
| NOT that it's recyclable. I wonder which genius came up
| with this idea...
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| It also recently came out that much of the recyclable
| recycling was and/or is not being recycled anyway, so I
| doubt any education would have made a difference. I
| assume all the recycling efforts are simply for political
| purposes at this point.
| kube-system wrote:
| It recently got coverage in popular media -- but those
| familiar with sanitation operations and secondhand
| materials markets know that recycling has been subject to
| market demands for those materials for its entire
| existence. Recycling has never operated outside of the
| realm of economics.
|
| The reasons changes to recycling programs are slow are:
|
| 1. People don't pay attention anyway
|
| 2. If the price of plastics go way up 5 years from now,
| you'll never retrain people to recycle again
|
| 3. Recycled metals are still valuable
| klyrs wrote:
| Some can, if you wash them. Puts a damper in the easy
| disposal that folks are accustomed to, though.
| [deleted]
| mulmen wrote:
| > WTF are people thinking?
|
| I can understand people just dumping everything in the bin
| because sorting it properly is an overwhelming task.
|
| I recently signed up for Ridwell [1] and pay them to properly
| dispose of (sort and redistribute) all kinds of waste I
| _could_ get rid of for "free". The problem is figuring out
| where to take everything and then actually getting there in
| my car. As far as I can tell there isn't one single drop off
| point in my area for plastic film, food containers, clothing,
| electronics, and styrofoam. At some point just putting
| everything in a bin for $10.00 /mo makes a lot more sense.
|
| Muddy boots are an extreme but I have things like ripped
| shirts that _might_ be repairable or useful as rags or some
| thing I just can't think of.
|
| [1]: https://www.ridwell.com/
| pfranz wrote:
| I've seen videos about recycling where they call it
| "wishcycling" and point to things like lamps and umbrellas
| tossed in their city's curbside recycling bin. I think the
| wish is that someone will find a use for it and it will avoid
| a landfill. In actuality, it can be a waste of someone else's
| time and money.
| mywittyname wrote:
| > This is a very big question though. WTF are people
| thinking?
|
| From what I've seen, there's a segment of people who feel the
| urge to donate, but have this elitist attitude towards less
| fortunate people who need assistance that can be summed up
| as, "they should take what they are given with a smile."
| Like, they have this notion that accepting any charity should
| involve some degree of humiliation. Almost like they feel
| like a person must not really be in need if they aren't
| willing to, for example, accept expired food.
|
| It's a really fucking toxic attitude and I suspect being on
| the receiving end of such behavior can be a cause for a lot
| of people who need assistance to not seek it out.
|
| My mother works at a women's shelter and this comes up when
| it comes to donations around Christmas time. People claim
| they want to donate, but when it comes to donating things
| women actually need, they will sometimes get all huffy. The
| women who come to the shelter came there with basically
| _nothing_ and potential donators sometimes raise a stink
| about giving women nice toiletry baskets, as though they are
| entitled to no "luxuries" by virtue of being poor, homeless,
| and without a support system.
| treeman79 wrote:
| Clean the garage. Trash bin is full. The bias toward good
| will or trash bin can be come compromised.
| KillahBhyte wrote:
| If something ever seems like a popular but illogical set of
| actions by people, the best way to understand it is to look
| at the incentives that drive it (thanks Freakonomics).
|
| In this case I'd wager two things. As a kid I had family who
| worked a receiving center for Goodwill. Fairly affluent part
| of our town near the beach. I remember two distinct things
| being odd to me then. The items people would bring would
| sometimes be questionable as to how they'd be useful to the
| needy, either from wear or function. The other part was most
| people wanted and received a receipt for their donation. Cue
| Mitch Hedburg receipt for a donut routine. I was told then
| when I asked this was an approximate value of their donation
| and it was used for tax purposes. So one is probably tax
| write offs.
|
| Throwing things away costs money. When my wife and I moved
| recently we cleaned house. A second trash can was around 150
| a year with limited volume. Trips to the landfill are charged
| by weight differential. Charity donation is free with the
| added bonus of someone coming to pick it up if the donation
| is big enough. We both commented at the time that if we were
| a little less moral we could easily pack the rubbish in with
| the donations and save a ton of money. So second is probably
| convenience with some working the system added in.
| prvc wrote:
| >I was told then when I asked this was an approximate value
| of their donation and it was used for tax purposes. So one
| is probably tax write offs.
|
| Anything preventing them from just making up that figure?
| VLM wrote:
| Hilariously there is a motivation to provide low value
| receipts for estate executors.
|
| "That old bookcase? It was only worth a dollar so I sent
| it to Goodwill after his death, it wasn't in the will and
| nobody wanted it".
|
| Now maybe an antique dealer could sell it for $400,
| meaning maybe the seller might have gotten $100, and now
| the estate executor is in trouble. But he died and
| there's three days to get all the stuff out of the
| apartment and nobody has set up an estate-paid-for
| storage unit (how long can you afford to store something
| only worth $100 anyway? If estate/probate process takes a
| year...) or prepared a deal with an antique dealer to
| immediately accept (and who's going to drive it over
| there, I don't have time?) and if its not disposed of in
| three days the building mgr will hire a very expensive
| per hour cleaning crew to toss it in the trash (at some
| expense) and deliver a hefty bill to the estate. And
| Goodwill gave him a receipt for a dollar so its
| documented at least. The Goodwill receipt at least proves
| the executor didn't steal from the estate by hiding the
| bookcase in her basement and selling it later on ebay for
| $400. As if she's young enough to know what ebay is.
| ctdonath wrote:
| Bill Clinton famously donated used underwear, tax write-
| off claim of $2-6 each.
| michaelmrose wrote:
| An eventual audit that if they hit the anti lottery could
| cost them more than they could possibly save. Remember
| that you don't get to just deduct a donation from your
| taxes you deduct it from your income which lowers your
| taxes. For example if you ultimately pay about 30% of
| your income in federal taxes and you lower your income by
| 1000 you ultimately have reduced your taxes by $300.
|
| Donations 5000 and up require the person you donated to
| to fill out a tax form for that donation so making up the
| numbers would require a confederate in the donating org
| to be willing to risk prison to enrich you.
|
| https://www.amazinggoodwill.com/donating/IRS-guidelines
|
| Also remember that the bottom half of the country pays
| little federal income tax (because they don't make much
| of the income in America) and the top 10-20% has MUCH
| better legal tax avoidance strategies.
|
| It's likely that some portion of middle income
| individuals could avoid a small dollar figure in taxes by
| inflating or even fabricating a string of small donations
| and presumably out of hundreds of millions of people a
| few do but you would have to make up a LOT of bullshit
| donations to make much of a difference but before you
| could actually save much money you would end up sticking
| out like a sore thumb. Yes Mr IRS auditor I totally
| donated over 1000 in goods to goodwill on 10 separate
| occasions over 2021 and I totally deserve the
| corresponding $3000 deduction!
|
| On net its probably a small issue. At this point we have
| people making 6 figures + who just don't file tax returns
| and haven't been addressed.
| mumblemumble wrote:
| I wouldn't be surprised if there's something there, but I
| do have a hard time lining those theories up with my past
| interactions around the subject.
|
| For example, a long time ago a roommate of mine wanted to
| get rid of some furniture, so he had a thrift store send a
| van to pick it up. It had all been pretty severely damaged
| by his dog. Having previously worked at a thrift store, I
| was pretty confident that they wouldn't want any of it, and
| mentioned as much to him, but he was sure they would be
| able to find a use for it, and so we schlepped it out to
| the curb.
|
| After the van had left without taking much of any of it,
| and we were carrying it all around to the alley for the
| garbage trucks to pick up (which is free in our city, even
| for furniture), the thing he expressed remorse about wasn't
| the donation receipt. It was that he thought it was
| wasteful to throw all this furniture in the trash just
| because his dog had been chewing on it.
|
| I still have similar conversations with my partner about
| this. Her bias is, she wants to hold on to even the
| slightest glimmer of hope that someone might find a use for
| an item. I lean toward not wanting to make the staff of the
| thrift store throw out my trash for me. I think it might
| just be hard to see if that way if you haven't been there.
| Neither of us cares about donation receipts, which we don't
| bother to collect, and still live in the same city that
| will take anything that will physically fit inside a
| garbage truck for no extra charge.
|
| Tangentially, if you haven't seen one swallow a full-size
| sofa, put it on your bucket list. It's a fascinating
| spectacle.
| AnthonyMouse wrote:
| The big question here is how to minimize transaction
| costs.
|
| You often have an item which in good condition would be
| worth e.g. $55, but it's damaged. If you ask someone how
| much they need to repair it, they say $50. So in a
| frictionless plane you would make $5.
|
| But in order to pay them, you would have to fill out tax
| paperwork, and they would have to fill out tax paperwork,
| and you would have to pay payroll tax, and they would
| have to pay income tax, and in the end you would pay $60
| and they would receive $30. So instead you throw the item
| away.
|
| Whereas what you should do instead is to just give it to
| them. They were willing to fix the item for what in
| practice was $30. If you gave it to them, they would do
| the labor they valued at $30, or at $25 because they can
| omit the labor of doing the tax paperwork, and then they
| have a $55 item instead of the item going into a
| landfill.
|
| There are also people who might be willing to use the
| item as-is without repairing it, if it was free.
|
| So the real problem here is that these organizations
| aren't allowing people to pick through what they're
| throwing out. Which wouldn't make them any money, but it
| would be better for the world.
| giantrobot wrote:
| > Her bias is, she wants to hold on to even the slightest
| glimmer of hope that someone might find a use for an
| item.
|
| I have this same problem. It's actually taken me a lot of
| effort over the years to get away from this mindset. Not
| that I try to be wasteful, it's more of just forcing
| myself to be realistic about the likelihood of me being
| able to repurpose a thing. Sure a thing _might_ be useful
| to someone but unless I 'm really interested in the
| effort required to find them and facilitate the
| transaction, that thing is just going to sit around. I
| have finite space available so unless I really want
| something or really want to make a donation happen it's
| going in the trash.
| mumblemumble wrote:
| I'm finding that I get a lot more utility out of framing
| it thus: the trash isn't created when I put it in the
| bin, the trash is created when I buy it in the first
| place. Once that happens, it's _going_ to get pitched.
| Could be today, could be in 30 years, but someday it will
| happen.
|
| Where that pays extra dividends is in limiting the
| accumulation of clutter. I used to buy electronic gizmos
| I didn't, strictly speaking, need, at a fairly regular
| pace. But I was storing up a bunch of crap I'd eventually
| have to throw away the next time I declutter. And I had a
| lot of clutter. Reminding myself that every consumer
| product is future trash helps limit the accumulation of
| clutter, which, in turn, limits how often I have to feel
| bad about throwing it away.
| giantrobot wrote:
| That's a good way to frame things which is something I
| _now_ do a better job with. My clutter problems were /are
| mostly from _old me_ not thinking in that way.
| KillahBhyte wrote:
| I can get on board with this, too. Hoarders are kind of
| the far end of that spectrum and I can see the same
| closer to home tendencies in my partner as well. She
| struggles to dispose of clearly broken beyond repair or
| reuse items.
|
| Difference in perspective down to cultural bias. Living
| too long in rural southern US has jaded me into looking
| for selfish intent behind any altruistic curtains.
| ryanmcbride wrote:
| I assume a fair amount of donations haven't been sorted
| through at all by the donators. They likely just already have
| large bags of clothes that no one wears anymore for any given
| reason and don't take the time to determine what is and isn't
| donatable. I know that's what's been done by my family when a
| family member dies. There's maybe a couple separate pieces
| that get saved for sentimental reasons (I have my grandpa's
| wedding tuxedo jacket for example) but everything else pretty
| much gets dumped into bags and sent off.
| elric wrote:
| This is highly location-dependent, but in some areas,
| charities will come to collect used items (say a big bag of
| clothes) free of charge, whereas throwing that same bag out
| in the trash is costly. So sneaking in a couple of shitty
| items basically saves money.
|
| Trash collection is -- no pun intended -- a mess.
| mulmen wrote:
| With all the different types of plastic and how easy it
| apparently is to contaminate a batch I feel like sorting
| has to basically be perfect at the collection facility. At
| that point can't we just put _everything_ in the trash and
| assume it will be sorted? Expecting individuals to do this
| perfectly across the entire population seems like it would
| never work.
|
| Separating donate from trash clearly makes sense. And maybe
| compost from trash? Maybe? But is there ever a "clean"
| batch of recycling? Does a truck ever get through a full
| route without running in to that one household that tossed
| their produce bags in the recycle or didn't completely
| rinse the yogurt tub? Is that tub even recyclable? Isn't
| recycling just the subset of trash that doesn't have to be
| landfilled or incinerated?
| VLM wrote:
| I suspect on a large scale over time, post death donations
| exceed annual donations by quite a bit.
|
| So, old uncle X dies, state fund stops paying his nursing
| home room in 3 days, after everything of value or mentioned
| in the will is picked over or set aside, its all gotta go
| somewhere and somewhere is three relatives with trailers
| driving to goodwill.
|
| There's simply not the time to determine his 1970s suit is
| currently resellable as retro kool, his 1970s neckties are
| 50:50 resellable, and his 1970s fancy dress shoes are simply
| trash. You've got less than two seconds per item, times up,
| now help load up the bookcase its all gotta go and the sooner
| we're done the quicker this depressing job is over. Toward
| the end, people are like "box of old plates? I don't have
| time for this toss it on the Goodwill trailer".
|
| Think of his neckties from the 70s, someone doing a 70s
| school play or costume party or maybe some kind of art
| exhibit might pay good money for perfect condition, and badly
| stained goes in the trash, now what about the one in between
| that's not perfect but better than most people's daily wear?
| People LARP on the internet about being experts on everything
| especially apparently clothing resales but we're kinda in a
| hurry here and my MiL is not an expert on that topic so she's
| seemingly randomly tossing stuff on piles for trash or
| recycle or goodwill, I mean she's trying but we as a culture
| do not license "cleaning up the estate of deceased relatives"
| so she's just gonna toss stuff semi-randomly.
|
| WRT to hoarding, consider that red necktie thats a little
| worn and has a tiny stain on it. He wouldn't throw that tie
| out, because he was married to my long deceased aunt while
| wearing it 60 years ago, it meant a lot to him ... but not to
| anyone else and now he's gone. Or that hideous endtable, I
| mean, sure a 1960s collector might want it if its in perfect
| condition, but he never threw it out because it worked
| perfectly well even if nobody post 1980 would consider buying
| such a thing.
|
| Oddly enough things are simpler with terminal patients. He
| handed his bible to his sister when he said goodbye so when
| its time for estate cleanup nobody has to wonder where the
| family bible is, its been at his sisters house a month ago. I
| suppose a surprise death might be more work. But, the cancer
| finally got him so just ship everything in the room that
| isn't food, to goodwill.
| kube-system wrote:
| It's cognitive bias. It might be junk, but it's _their_ junk.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mere_ownership_effect
| davidjytang wrote:
| Off topic. I thought it was a nice website with great mixing of
| video and text.
| marpayne wrote:
| There's a lot of thrift markets selling these kinds of clothes
| for a very low price. These markets are scattered worldwide,
| mainly in third-world countries, making many people afford
| branded clothes.
| credit_guy wrote:
| A comparison with the CO2 emissions, to get a sense of the scale
| of the problem. >> Globally, that's the
| equivalent of one garbage truck of textiles being burned or going
| into landfill every second.
|
| Globally we put a bit more than 1000 tons of CO2 in the air every
| second.
|
| An average garbage truck has a volume of about 20 cubic meters.
| Textiles are pretty fluffy, their density is about one tenth the
| density of water [1], so we have about 2 tons of textiles in a
| garbage truck. If all gets burned, you end up with about 6 tons
| of CO2 in the atmosphere.
|
| [1]
| https://www.epa.gov/sites/default/files/2016-03/documents/co...
| diplodocusaur wrote:
| It would be interesting to have a map of trash flow.
|
| Out of sight, out of mind.
| leroman wrote:
| Planned Obsolescence & Perceived Obsolescence
|
| I can't escape the conclusion that we are the paperclip
| maximizers, where paperclips = $, all else is expendable..
| paulie4542 wrote:
| Does social media have a part in this? People have to keep up
| with "influencer" trends?
| wirthjason wrote:
| Interesting article.
|
| On discussing buying clothes sight unseen the article mentioned:
| It's only once a bale has been opened that the quality of the
| clothing is discovered. If it's in good condition, profits can
| tally quickly to as much as $14,000. But if the clothes are torn
| or stained, or long out of fashion, their importer may as well
| have put a torch to their money.
|
| I find it interesting that the clothes they want and will pay
| money for fits the description of what clothes people in
| developed nations want too. Human nature is quite the same no
| matter where you go.
|
| Id be curious to know what other factors impact price/demand. Eg.
| Brands, materials, styles/designs, etc.
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| I find the general concept of a business model where you buy
| unknown items and hope they end up covering your costs pretty
| interesting. I think jade works in a very similar way - the
| mine produces boulders of unknown quality, and middlemen buy
| them on the theory that there's probably good jade in some of
| them.
| toast0 wrote:
| It's delegation or specialization, more or less.
|
| The people in the mine don't have time or space or desire to
| process the boulders, but they can source them. Etc.
|
| Vertical integration would increase the amount of total
| margin accruing to any one business, but at the cost of
| turning a focused business into a sprawling one, and
| increasing the time and risk between aquiring the materials
| and selling them.
| greedo wrote:
| It's like the shows where people bid on abandoned storage
| units.
| xadhominemx wrote:
| > general concept of a business model where you buy unknown
| items and hope they end up covering your costs
|
| Seed stage VC?
| danparsonson wrote:
| > Human nature is quite the same no matter where you go.
|
| This shouldn't come as a surprise though - people in developing
| countries are still people, and although they may have a lower
| standard of living by some index, that doesn't mean they're
| desperate or don't care about their appearance.
| Bostonian wrote:
| It's not just whites that buy and discard clothes in the western
| world. Why does the title racialize the problem? A better title
| would have been "Charity clothes from the West fuel ..."
| bejd wrote:
| It's the local people's term for the clothing, which is
| explained in the article:
|
| > They call them "obroni wawu" -- dead white man's clothes.
| jaclaz wrote:
| It is not the title issue, the title comes from the local
| language expression:
|
| >They call them "obroni wawu" -- dead white man's clothes.
| throw_m239339 wrote:
| An editor still chose a controversial title, to "maximize
| engagement". Whatever these people call it doesn't justify
| the title of that feature piece.
|
| I think this constant race baiting and divisiveness western
| media chose to engage into will help no one on the long run,
| only further resentment and race strife.
| apercu wrote:
| Because controversial headlines generate clicks which allow for
| ads to be served to monetize the traffic. It's just a loop of
| bullshit. lol.
| obtino wrote:
| It was chosen because of the name given to the clothes by the
| locals.
| cyberpsybin wrote:
| western countries that dump their trash in poor nations are
| primarily white.
| throw_m239339 wrote:
| Not all western countries define their societies along racial
| lines. It's mainly US society who engages in that behavior.
| yardie wrote:
| > Not all western countries define their societies along
| racial
|
| Yes, those other western countries are 90-99% white so
| whiteness is overtly implied since any other race is an
| anomaly. You probably haven't been asked the notorious
| 6-worded question, "but where are you really from?" that
| seems to only happen to people of color in western European
| countries.
|
| > mainly US society who engages in that behavior.
|
| Yes, racism is literally written into the constitution of
| the US with many compromises for slaveholding states at the
| time of its founding.
| throw_m239339 wrote:
| > Yes, those other western countries are 90-99% white so
| whiteness
|
| I've only heard that word "whiteness" in the mouth of 2
| kind of people, neonazis and their racist counter part on
| the left.
| tetromino_ wrote:
| The article claims to translate the Akan term for these
| clothes:
|
| > In Ghana, they call them "obroni wawu" -- dead white man's
| clothes.
|
| However, a language blogger [1] suggests that "obroni" can
| refer to any foreigner from "beyond the horizon" - so
| presumably the term encompasses dead East Asian man's clothes
| too.
|
| [1] http://languagehat.com/spruik-kayayei-obroni-wawu/
| thrower123 wrote:
| When I worked in a mill, we bought pallet-sized bundles of cotton
| rags. Most of them appeared to be ripped up flannel shirts.
| maire wrote:
| Check out "Secondhand: Travels in the New Global Garage Sale" by
| Adam Minter.
|
| It turns out that what happens to your clothes depends on the
| condition when you donate and if they have synthetic fibers.
| There is still a large second hand market for natural fibers.
|
| https://www.npr.org/2019/12/04/784702588/the-best-thing-you-...
| atlasunshrugged wrote:
| Really interesting having just come back from a project in Kenya
| (and a vacation in Uganda) and one of the really striking things
| was how many older American/EU clothes were on the street (e.g.
| sweaters from smaller colleges, shirts referencing mid-sized
| sporting events for american football). I asked a few of the
| people I was working with about it and they were quite negative,
| along with cheap Chinese imports, it has really hurt the domestic
| textile market to the point where it's basically been wiped out
| of existence because they can't compete with these imports.
|
| https://www.businessoffashion.com/articles/global-markets/af...
| MomoXenosaga wrote:
| That is true of the European textile industry as well, although
| Italy still makes clothes. Made by Chinese that moved there.
| foobarian wrote:
| I'm disappointed by the shuttering of textile industries in
| east Europe. It's not just the manufacturing of finished
| garments; the raw fabrics that used to come out of there were
| above and beyond what I can find today even in fancy stores.
| It's like fabric manufacture centralized behind the scenes
| until everyone has access to the same thin, cost-optimized
| material and just puts their brand name on it.
| Zababa wrote:
| Not sure about that. I knew a few people working in textile,
| and most of if was made in Eastern Europe because the delays
| were shorter. They were high-end brands though.
| megablast wrote:
| I mean, it's a pretty common media story that these cheap
| imports are hated by the local textile shops. Weird you claim
| It like it's your discovery.
| dhosek wrote:
| I couldn't help thinking of this:
|
| https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2013/12/11/250200378/we-f...
| erfgh wrote:
| Do you mean that if people there only had access to more
| expensive clothing they would be better off?
| jeromegv wrote:
| Many African countries actually prevent import of second hand
| clothing. They can produce clothing locally for quite cheap
| with local labor (that is cheap), but having literally FREE
| clothing showing up actually decimates your local industry.
|
| That's why you have anti-dumping laws in the western world.
| Scoundreller wrote:
| But can they even compete with first hand clothing made in
| south/Southeast Asia?
|
| I haven't seen anything "Made in Africa" in North America.
| syshum wrote:
| Give a man a fish you feed him for a day, Teach a man to fish
| you feed him for a lifetime...
|
| What is more humane. Having them depend on the charity and
| free goods of others, or building their economy to be self
| sustaining
| the_gipsy wrote:
| Why should they do meaningless work?
| syshum wrote:
| because I do not believe it is meaningless??
|
| Why do you think learning a skill, providing value, and
| learning how to function in an economy are
| "meaningless"...
| boringg wrote:
| Um not to be crass but like most of the work everyone
| does on this form is probably close meaningless and often
| times redundant. I don't mean it in a derogatory way.
|
| And the adjective you should have used is redundant work.
| Clearly the work has meaning if it keeps people employed
| and building skills.
| the_gipsy wrote:
| But you are advocating against sending free clothes with
| the goal of creating a scarcity so that people work to
| produce clothing, which they'll essentially buy back.
| This is macabre.
| AngryData wrote:
| They are advocating not crashing a local industry. How
| would you fair if your own industry or other local
| businesses was suddenly destroyed because China decided
| to give your work away for free in massive overabundance?
| With zero guarantees that they wont randomly stop
| supplying on an irregular schedule.
| ctdonath wrote:
| Because doing "meaningless" work is a necessary step
| toward meaningful work.
|
| Learning & internalizing showing up to work on time,
| following directions, doing what's needed (even if
| unpleasant), completing tasks, etc is vital to becoming
| entrusted with the worthwhile.
|
| Whether individual or national, inability to produce
| basics prevents realizing future potential. Sure,
| truckloads of clothing is free - so no need to produce it
| ... but then nobody knows how to make clothing worth
| selling/exporting, and remain dependent on truckloads of
| free donated clothing. Apply same to most other skills &
| industries, and the country becomes, and stays, an
| economic basket case.
| cryptonym wrote:
| Fair price locally can generate more work for local people,
| wealth and redistribution. Overall, more expensive clothing
| could also help reducing waste. Cheap fast-fashion fails to
| significantly improve my life (and, from post, negatively
| impacts lives).
| only_as_i_fall wrote:
| How does banning the import of secondhand clothing reduce
| waste?
|
| Unless you can prevent westerners from getting rid of
| clothes in the first place this really seems like paying
| people to dig and refill holes. Work for the sake of work.
| cryptonym wrote:
| I didn't mention banning import of secondhand clothing,
| so I leave it to you.
|
| One way to prevent "westerner" from getting rid of
| clothes is by having them buying quality products at a
| fair price, including waste treatment. Now how that would
| be implemented, no idea. We all know any change will have
| side effects as we are in a complex economy and that
| doesn't mean we cannot try. Just to keep the discussion
| open on reducing waste, some random ideas: tax fast-
| fashion, ban disposable clothes, prevent waste export
| (non-wearable clothes qualify as waste).
| only_as_i_fall wrote:
| Ok, but this is literally a thread about how cheap second
| hand clothes coming from western countries affect the
| local industries of African nations so I don't really
| know what you're on about
| AngryData wrote:
| Yes, because it builds local industry, and textiles is often
| a key industry in industrialization. It is "easy" automation,
| builds local tooling and machining demands, and still
| requires significant further labor to finish which is cheap
| in that area.
|
| It certainly isn't the only way, but textile production often
| one of the first industries to get build in
| industrialization.
| tcfunk wrote:
| I'd be curious to know if it is helpful or hurtful for me (as
| someone who can afford to buy "new" cloths) to shop at secondhand
| clothing stores.
|
| Am I preventing clothes from getting shipped out to Africa, or
| preventing someone of less means from finding something to wear?
| Or a bit of both?
| clomond wrote:
| Yes there is a waste prevention piece, but the key thing on a
| personal level is preventing the purchase of the new item of
| clothing for some purpose that you were looking for.
|
| The moment the money exchanges hands for the new product, that
| is _additonal_ commerce which functionally "locks in" the
| emissions and the associated incentive structure. It's less
| about buying used, as it is about reducing the buying of new.
| jeromegv wrote:
| Buy it, a lot of those stores receive more donation than they
| can sell. So by buying it, you help turnover the inventory and
| allow them to put more on the shelves. I doubt that results in
| higher prices, supply >>>>> demand
| Scoundreller wrote:
| Usually the way those shops work around me is they'll drop the
| prices every week until it's sold. Somebody will buy it at some
| price.
| spodek wrote:
| When buying clothes, never consider Goodwill or thrift shops as
| an outlet when you're done with them. Only consider wearing them,
| repairing them as necessary, as our ancestors did for the rest of
| your life.
|
| Buy only clothes that will last forever. Thrift shops receive so
| much more "donations" (read: garbage while the person throwing
| their stuff away feels good about dropping their garbage on the
| less fortunate).
|
| There are needy people who can use help clothing themselves. It
| does not help them to flood Africa with our waste, which buying
| cheap clothes contributes to.
|
| Also, watch the documentary The True Cost, available free online:
| https://thoughtmaybe.com/the-true-cost
| dpeck wrote:
| Sample size of just me, but I've done some volunteering before
| and the amount of clothes that people donate is huge. But the
| chance of people in need actually wearing what was donated was
| small.
|
| The guidance that my group was given was essentially, if it
| couldn't be worn to a job interview or a religious service (think
| men's chinos and a button up shirt, women nicer pants/skirt and
| good quality blouse), then throw it away. So I am not surprised.
| valarauko wrote:
| I think the disconnect here is between the expectations of the
| donors of who the end users are, and their needs. I would have
| expected that donated clothes would end up with the homeless,
| who at least here (NYC) have a need for layers. I would not
| have expected donated clothes to have resale value, and to
| merely be functional. The idea that donated clothes should be
| job interview quality is new to me, and I guess probably none
| of my current wardrobe would qualify.
| dpeck wrote:
| Right.
|
| I think you're correct in very different market expectations.
| People effected by homelessness would be more interested in
| layers for protection from weather and I guess wouldn't care
| much for how something looks so long as it's
| clean/functional.
|
| But the vast majority of people shopping at thrift stores or
| accepting donations and similar aren't homeless, they're just
| people without much money. They probably have plenty of old
| tshirts and jeans but might not easily have the money for a
| pair of khakis and an oxford shirt to wear to an interview
| for a new job as a retail clerk or cashier, or maybe
| receptionist at a business.
|
| I would assume that the latter are, thankfully, more common
| than the former. In most cities.
| el-salvador wrote:
| In Central America there's quite an industry here that
| resells donated clothes, used clothes and lightly used return
| products from stores from the U.S.
|
| Clothes are sorted by brand/quality/size and some of them are
| job interview or even tv interview quality (after some minor
| size adjustments).
|
| Earlier this year a group of our senators made a photo op
| while buying and wearing clothes from those stores. This was
| obviously a PR move, but quite popular with some voters.
| jnwatson wrote:
| It is articles like this that remind me that we so desperately
| need a carbon tax.
|
| Making a t-shirt in China, shipping to the US, wearing it for a
| few times, and then shipping it to Africa should not be
| economically viable.
| nitrogen wrote:
| _[commerce] should not be economically viable._
|
| Declaring that the cornerstones of modern, industrialized life
| should not be economically viable is basically calling "game
| over" and giving up. We can do much better. Climate defeatism
| should be replaced by climate entrepreneurism. If you don't
| like something, make something better!
| jnwatson wrote:
| It isn't that all convenience should be banned. All these
| items should include the actual environmental cost to produce
| the product.
|
| We've been selling timber from somebody else's forest for too
| long. It is time to charge for the trees.
| jakeinspace wrote:
| It's only possible to compete as a "climate entrepreneur" if
| negative externality costs are imposed on existing business
| (carbon tax or cap & trade).
| ctdonath wrote:
| Yet here we are, having achieved what so many claim to want yet
| fret when achieved: capitalism has increased productivity so
| high, and costs so low, that we can literally "clothe Africa
| for free". Why the imperative to _take_ from the productive,
| when they will freely give generously from their surplus?
| [deleted]
| snarf21 wrote:
| I agree that we need a carbon tax. However, mega ships are
| super carbon efficient. You driving to the store to buy the
| shirt burned added more carbon than the amount of carbon to
| ship it from Asia. Our personal vehicles are not efficient.
| Large, relatively slow moving transport (train, container ship)
| is. We are a major contributor to all the consumption driven
| pollution in Asia.
| mc32 wrote:
| On the other hand commercial shipping produces more
| hydrocarbon pollution than personal transport. Apparently the
| pollution from one large container ship produces as much
| pollution as 50MM cars!
| telchar wrote:
| That's a factoid that has been going around, but lost some
| information as you stated it. Large container ships produce
| tremendous amounts of NOx and SOx pollution compared to
| passenger cars, true, but CO2 is a different story. Still a
| lot probably but not anywhere near as much as 50MM cars per
| ship. Unfortunately I think some hear that factoid and take
| away from it that cars don't actually contribute to climate
| change that much, which is not true.
| mc32 wrote:
| Agreed. The pollution is different but it's dirty
| pollution non the less. So I think it's misleading to
| have people believe container ships are a "free ride".
| flavius29663 wrote:
| > cars don't actually contribute to climate change that
| much, which is not true
|
| I couldn't find some ready numbers, so I tried some
| estimations.
|
| 26% of all energy goes into transportation[1].
| Automobiles are about 60% from that, so about 15% of
| total energy is spent moving automobiles[2].
|
| 1 https://www.eia.gov/totalenergy/data/browser/index.php?
| tbl=T...
|
| 2 https://www.europarl.europa.eu/news/en/headlines/societ
| y/201...
|
| This does not include land use and agriculture emissions.
|
| Looking at it another way, US has close to 300 million
| vehicles, and the average automobile emits 4.8 tonnes [3]
| of CO2 a year. It comes down to 1.5 gigatons of CO2 each
| year. Total US emissions are about 5 gigatons. This would
| make it a 30% part of CO2 emissions. It's higher than the
| number above because that was based on European values of
| 60% of all transportation emissions coming from
| automobiles. The US automobiles are bigger and consume
| more.
|
| 3. https://www.epa.gov/greenvehicles/greenhouse-gas-
| emissions-t...
|
| I think it's safe to say it's somewhere in the ballpark
| of 15-30% of all CO2 emissions are from automobiles.
|
| I don't consider the manufacturing of the automobiles,
| because people will need moving regardless. It's either a
| battery powered car, plane, train etc. Those all need
| manufacturing and maintaining.
| dylan604 wrote:
| >take away from it that cars don't actually contribute to
| climate change that much, which is not true.
|
| The time during pandemic lockdown where traffic levels
| plummeted and how quickly the air cleared pretty much
| proves that personal auto traffic is huge contributor to
| bad air quality.
| mschuster91 wrote:
| Climate change != local climate != local _emissions_
| (gases, particulate matter, noise).
|
| The thing that people noticed during the 'rona was almost
| exclusively the latter... especially the noise and
| particulates. I could hear _birds_ outside when the
| windows were open, the street-facing windows accumulated
| _a lot_ less dust.
| dylan604 wrote:
| Local pollutions just don't stay local. They eventually
| become part of the entire global climate. Global climate
| is the sum of all of the local climates. There's no walls
| protecting CityA from CityB's pollution. Look at the
| effect of wild fires on parts of the globe without fires.
|
| This is just a sad way to look at things. Changes have to
| start somewhere. They can start small, and then grow
| larger. People like you saying "too small, not effective"
| just need to sit down and be quiet, thank you very much.
| mschuster91 wrote:
| edit to add: _particulate_ emissions (diesel soot, tire
| and brake wear) stay local and don 't ever become global.
|
| The focus on "individual action" is a talking point that
| BP invented in the 70s (see
| https://mashable.com/feature/carbon-footprint-pr-
| campaign-sh...). I won't _stop_ anyone from reducing
| their footprint, but we have tried this shit for decades
| now and it clearly hasn 't worked a single bit.
|
| We need to hold the big emitters of greenhouse gases
| accountable, they haven't been for about half a century.
| Remember the "ozone hole" and the CFC ban? That one
| worked, because the companies bringing CFCs into
| circulation were tackled instead of pushing the blame to
| consumers.
| 5e92cb50239222b wrote:
| Particulate emissions from large fires very much do. I
| live approximately 2500 kilometers from the forest fires
| in Russia, and air pollution in the last two or three
| weeks has been intense.
| Scoundreller wrote:
| SOx is dropping a lot as they move away to increasingly
| desulfurized fuels.
|
| To max 0.5% sulfur in fuel from max 3.5% in maritime
| fuel:
|
| https://www.imo.org/en/MediaCentre/HotTopics/Pages/Sulphu
| r-2...
| whywhywhywhy wrote:
| Or you know, just don't make it in the first place.
|
| If all low quality fast fashion were $20 instead of $7 across
| the board people would still gorge themselves on it.
|
| They're not buying stuff for the need to have clothes, they're
| buying things for the experiences of buying it and the novelty
| of something new.
| fighterpilot wrote:
| Fast fashion is probably one of the most price elastic goods
| in existence. And your suggestion to "just don't make it" is
| patently silly. Are you advocating for a ban on clothes or
| are you advocating for all manufacturers to willingly stop
| production and avoid profits? Either of these is detached
| from reality. A carbon tax is what's needed.
| TremendousJudge wrote:
| Supply and demand: if it was more expensive, less people
| would buy it. The reason fast fashion is popular is because
| it's cheap as hell, which can give a lot of people "buying
| things for the experiences of buying it and the novelty of
| something new". If clothing was as expensive as some decades
| ago, this experience would only be affordable to rich people
| as was in the past
| themaninthedark wrote:
| And who is going to police this? All the trinkets and gadgets
| that we produce all fall in the same category.
|
| >Nest, Echo, Homepod...
|
| Just get up and turn off the damn lights yourself.
|
| >Drones
|
| How many people bought one or two, flew it around for a while
| and crashed it. Very few are making videos or doing something
| interesting with them.
|
| >Starbucks
|
| Do we really need separate stores, trucks shipping product
| all over for someone to have the convenience of a cup of
| coffee?
|
| >TV/Netflix
|
| If we want to talk about the utility of something, this one
| is amazing. How much money, time and energy has been spent so
| that someone can watch a 30 minute show on demand. And we
| have to keep spending money and energy because the novelty of
| the old stuff has worn off.
| ctdonath wrote:
| Yet the net result of all this "waste" is to employ
| billions, to incentivize productivity to the point of
| surplus bringing much of civilization into a luxurious life
| - rather than scrimping bare sustenance. Remove the smart
| speakers, entertainment UAEs, luxury drinks, screen time,
| etc and the economic ripple effects will stop funding
| essentials that near all currently enjoy.
|
| We've driven world abject poverty from >90% to <10% in half
| a century. End the products you mention (and the like), and
| those buying them won't themselves have customers enough to
| fund their own work. End Starbucks etc, and coffee farms
| worldwide will crash.
|
| Money is the ultimate arbiter of value. Many deride
| whatever as "trinkets and gadgets" etc, but they're not
| putting up the sustenance calories to support life
| otherwise.
| ovi256 wrote:
| > The number of garments produced annually has doubled since 2000
| and exceeded 100 billion for the first time in 2014: nearly 14
| items of clothing for every person on earth
|
| That may not be as outrageous as it seems. The world population
| may not have doubled since 2000, but the number of people out of
| deep poverty may have, so of course they'll buy clothing.
|
| That still doesn't excuse fast fashion, which is so wasteful.
| bserge wrote:
| That's not outrageous. The only part that might be is that some
| people have 1-2 sets of clothes for years while others have 50+
| every few months.
|
| But tbf at least they're donated en masse.
| fh973 wrote:
| Here's an interesting breakdown:
| https://sharecloth.com/blog/reports/apparel-overproduction
|
| Seems like 30% of production doesn't find a buyer. Still
| staggering numbers for how many items the average consumer
| buys.
| robjan wrote:
| The article pretty much demonstrates that donation doesn't
| solve the wate problem.
| mistrial9 wrote:
| As a small business, I personally partnered with a nomad trader
| and a local-to-me Catholic charity, to ship clothing from the US
| West Coast to a popular port city in Chile. The emphasis was on
| getting the clothing to real people who need it; jean clothing
| preferred. I got plenty of clothes (six tons over ten months
| perhaps) and did an OK job on the paperwork, saving money at all
| stages. The clothing was shipped succesfully.
|
| The trader in Chile was hurt financially by black market
| operators who used similar clothing operations as a front to
| launder money, and those operations sank the prices of the actual
| clothing to near zero. The CEO of the Catholic charity was later
| removed and is now into really different subjects I won't mention
| now and I do not support. I put a lot of time into this effort
| for many solid reasons, not for profit, and made almost no money
| by US standards, and it ended. Meanwhile the housing costs in my
| area have increased dramatically, and I am impacted by that. YMMV
| octopaulus wrote:
| Nice drone footage
| pdm55 wrote:
| I can longer fit into my old clothes - the problem of the
| expanding waistline - which is why I take them to the charity
| store. We Aussies truly are a consuming society: too much food,
| too many clothes, too many electronic gadgets, too easy a
| lifestyle.
| deft wrote:
| These kinds of donation initiatives drive me mad. If they didn't
| exist, I'd throw these clothes my partner insists on donating in
| the trash. Why would I send garbage to someone else as a
| donation??! The fact the donation receivers just ship them to a
| foreign landill proves my point. I'll keep it local :).
| SevenSigs wrote:
| In a capitalist world, If I had a clothes store, I would do the
| same... to reduce the supply.
| Causality1 wrote:
| _We're buying 60 per cent more clothes now than we did 15 years
| ago._
|
| This is something I find baffling. I have a clothes closet and a
| chest of drawers. They comfortably hold more than enough for me
| to go a week or two without doing laundry. When I've worn too
| many holes in something for me to patch and use as outdoor work
| wear it goes in the garbage.
|
| That people have such an addiction to buying new clothes they
| have to throw away or donate intact clothes is utterly perverse.
| vidarh wrote:
| In high school at one point when discussing the amount of
| agricultural space goes to cotton, the teacher asked how many
| pairs of trousers we each had. I had two. I hated going
| shopping, and two was enough for me to wear one pair while the
| others were in the wash.
|
| A bit on the low end, maybe. I have a few more now, but still
| mostly cycle 2-3.
|
| Several of my class mates claimed to have 40+. I couldn't even
| imagine that. More than a dozen was the norm.
|
| Totally baffling to me as well. It just feels like added
| stress.
| ghaff wrote:
| If you count all the specialized trousers (a lot of which
| aren't cotton) for various types of activities, the number in
| my house definitely gets up there even if I discount things
| like sweatpants and old trousers I use as work pants.
|
| Most of my unnecessary bulk though is logoware from
| tradeshows and the like which I don't go out of my way to
| accumulate but still adds up over time as I (normally) do a
| lot of that type of thing.
| vidarh wrote:
| Specialized clothes if you engage in activities that'd
| benefit from it, I can understand. But for most in my class
| these were all jeans, only differentiated in appearance, if
| that.
| II2II wrote:
| This is true of young children as well. They will notice if
| someone (another child or adult) cycles through a small set
| of clothes and comment on it, which can easily be construed
| as peer pressure.
| vidarh wrote:
| With young kids though, a lot of the time it's down to the
| parents. I know most of my son's clothes are a result of
| his mum wanting to buy him things. Only a tiny proportion
| are things he wanted.
| bserge wrote:
| That you're downvoted shows the general mindset of people. They
| just don't give a fuck.
|
| Spare me the "do your part to save the planet" next time. I'm
| already doing more than 99% ever will.
|
| Yeah, when it comes to clothes I wear them for years. I feel
| bad throwing out stuff that's literally unfixable. But I ain't
| quite right in the head tbf.
| Causality1 wrote:
| I try to keep the ruined stuff around long enough to use for
| an oil rag or barrel cleaning patch. After this article I may
| put a little more effort into doing that.
| nsxwolf wrote:
| I don't own very many clothes at all. I don't understand
| fashion and I find it frustrating to find things that fit and
| are comfortable, so I keep the rare things I find acceptable
| around for a long time.
|
| But let's get something straight: I rarely look good.
| Causality1 wrote:
| I just settled on a uniform I was happy with: jeans and a
| plaid button-down every day. No mismatching and no decisions.
| kipchak wrote:
| From the article, "A major survey in the UK six years ago found
| one in three young women considered garments "old" if they had
| been worn just twice."
|
| I'm like you, but I think there's a pretty big disconnect
| between us and the average person into fashion.
| VLM wrote:
| You can manipulate surveys to generate any requested outrage.
| Generally you can assume any mention of a survey is
| propaganda and can be ignored.
|
| Its pretty trivial to imagine how this desired result was
| produced:
|
| "Would you be angry if you paid a falsely advertised full
| 'new' price for a garment actually worn by others at least
| three or more times?"
|
| I know I'd be pretty annoyed if I paid full "new" price for
| shoes and they arrived and someone else has been wearing the
| tread off of them for the last six months, LOL.
| apercu wrote:
| Retail therapy. More people than ever are disconnected and
| deeply unhappy and advertising increases the social pressure by
| telling people they will be happier if they buy "this" or
| "that".
| jjk166 wrote:
| And how many clothes that we don't donate to charity avoid the
| landfill?
|
| Unless you're going out of your way to buy more clothes
| specifically so you can give more to charity, the giving to
| charity part is not the problem.
| throwaway4220 wrote:
| Maybe we can look into burning them as fuel as a European country
| was doing (Sweden?)
| beckman466 wrote:
| Denmark I think (and the company was H&M?)
| bdcravens wrote:
| In the US, a substantial number of clothing donation bins are
| actually owned by for-profit companies.
| hellbannedguy wrote:
| Many of the charities that collect clothing are 501c3 scams.
|
| I sometimes wonder what charities are not scams?
|
| The clothes at Goodwill are not washed.
|
| (I used to recommend donating to Goodwill, but their prices are
| getting to high. Goodwill provides 1 year of employment to
| felons, which is great. They pay a unlivable salary though. The
| only people making a living salary are managers, and regional
| managers, and of course key members of the nonprofit. My
| Goodwill, in Marin County, had three managers in a row quietly
| fired fired theft.)
| wodenokoto wrote:
| My local charity/recycling bin for clothes/garment explicitly
| asks for permanently stained or ripped clothes as these can be
| used as cloth in factories.
|
| I'd be pretty pissed if they just ship it out to the third world
| and rip off some local business man.
|
| I could have thrown it out locally. No need to ship trash to
| Africa.
| skinkestek wrote:
| 10 years ago or so I saw plastic wapped bundles of shredded
| cottonwear in the shelves at a mechanic shop I frequented at
| the time so some of it clearly has taken that path.
| MisterTea wrote:
| Rags were and still are a useful item in industrial shops as
| they are stronger than paper towels, don't fall apart, and
| handle sharp metal edges and rough surfaces.
|
| In the old days a "ragman" would come by your shop and
| buy/sell scrap fabric for rag use. When I was a kid in the
| 80's I distinctly remember a man pulling up in an old truck
| and my father buying a few boxes of rags for his machine
| shop, rummaging through a few boxes looking for the ones with
| the larger sheets and heavier material.
|
| At home I have a bag in my basement full of old clothing I
| use for whatever. I even wash them if they're not covered in
| something which could foul the washing machine (e.g.
| automotive grease/oil/fuel).
| dhosek wrote:
| Until the late 19th century, paper was more frequently made
| from rags than wood pulp. The switch to wood pulp was
| because paper demand outstripped rag supply. Perhaps it's
| time for a return to increased rag content in paper.
| KozmoNau7 wrote:
| Only if you can get pure natural fibers like cotton.
| Having synthetic material woven in ruins the fabric for
| most reuse.
| _trampeltier wrote:
| We have 25kg boxes of old bathtowls in our factory for
| cleaning in our factory (heavy industry).
|
| https://www.texaid.ch/en/products-and-services/sorting.html
| rascul wrote:
| I've found that old clothes can often make excellent rags for
| when I'm working on vehicles or staining a wood project.
| retSava wrote:
| Yeah; from time to time we reuse old t-shirts or bed sheets
| and turn them into handkerchiefs. We do use a lot of
| handkerchiefs with a small child :). But also other things,
| eg my wife took a pair of old jeans and cut off all but the
| waist+pockets -> an extra pair of pockets while lab'ing at
| work.
| joshuaheard wrote:
| I'm surprised they just dump them into a land fill. It seems to
| me they could be used in something else. The clothing could be
| shredded and used in blanket filling or house insulation.
| diplodocusaur wrote:
| especially since synthetic fibers will probably end as
| microplastics. I have no source for this, just my opinion.
| pstuart wrote:
| There's an impressive system called Looop that takes old clothes
| and "decompiles" them to create new fabric:
| https://www2.hm.com/en_gb/life/culture/inside-h-m/meet-the-m...
| axus wrote:
| Isn't putting petroleum-based products into a landfill a type of
| carbon capture?
| aaron695 wrote:
| This racist stuff has been done before by the Australian's in
| Korle Lagoon, last time e-waste -
|
| https://africasacountry.com/2019/03/six-myths-about-electron...
|
| Leave the basement for a while and talk to garment factory
| workers in a developing country, then go down the road and talk
| to the hookers.
|
| You'll see no difference. The hookers are very practised at
| seeming happy to keep clients happy.
|
| But perhaps after going home you can think logically and see how
| teens doing fast fashion are better human beings than hippies
| eating local foods.
|
| Sure, recycling clothing, which is the case in this story makes
| my point worse. But that's how it all is. Complex.
|
| Rough guide, if people are doing it, it's the best they have on
| offer.
| the_third_wave wrote:
| Flagged because of the trendy racist title - would articles
| titled 'xxx black man's xxx xx xxxx distaster' be accepted? They
| would not, so neither should this pass the bill.
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