People keep giving me clothes as gifts. Out of the nearly 300 shirts that I own, I wear about six in summer and six others in winter. That leaves about 280 shirts that just take up space.
Have worked as a volunteer in a thrift-wellfare store. This was the amount of clothes donated in one year nót fitted for resell (dirty/torn etc.) which had to be destroyed. This pile was 100 by 30 by 10 feet. Total weight approximately 500.000 pounds.
The town in used to live in collected fabric of any type regardless of useable condition - clothes, drapes, bedroom stuff, etc - and it was recycled into new fabric.
How about they start giving bundles of clothes away to people who need them and can’t afford them because these charity and thrift stores are selling them at premium prices.
That is capitalism destroying itself by eliminating scarcity. Now shoot the CEO of the middleman company, reduce the trading and import companies profit margin to a minimum to remain operable and pay all the funds that became available all of a sudden to the workers making the clothes (also shoot the workers CEO and put that salaey into better materials), and we are done.
Cheap clothes for everyone.
Overproduction gets dumped and incinerated for decades by now across all types of industries.
Thrift shops raising prices to the point that it's cheaper to buy new doesn't help. I can buy a new shirt at Walmart for cheaper than I can at my local Goodwill or Salvation Army, the only 'thrift shops' within hours of me. And unlike the Goodwill/S.Army, the new shirt isn't likely to be ripped or stained when I get it (the 'sorting' done at GW & S. Army, at least here, is practically non-existent, half of the stuff they're selling is actual garbage).
I remember years ago I discovered this whole situation. I (like most people) thought Thrift Stores just sold the donations.At rear of the main building there were 6 large sheds that had the doors open. Dozens of huge pallets of compressed clothing. I asked and they said it was sent to an enormous facility in Oakland where it was sorted (cotton, poly, wool, etc.) and shipped to Asia and Africa if saleable and to rag recyclers if not. This was even before the "wear it twice" style prices appeared.
In my mother's time clothes were valuable. Even in my youth there were already too many. And now it's become ridiculous. It just keeps being made by the thousands every single day.
Give me the high concentration cotton products. Chop off the belt area where most metal from buttons & rivets / zippers are at. The rest is shredded to fibers & mulched to bare strands. Mix with water & borax, spray or air drop onto wildfires. Mix in wildflower & native grass seed .. rapid rebound.
"we've created such abundance that nobody can sell it, I even tried to give it to other places that sell it and they couldnt even" all these people can eat shit. If you just announced that it was there and giving it away people would come. people still need clothes somehow during all of this BECAUSE OF GATEKEEPERS LIKE THEM and they still cant imagine helping jesus fucking christ
"oh well they should stop making so much so theres scacity again and i can sell clothes again" I will personally sit you down in hell next to the DRAM CEO's doing the same thing. Eat unlimited shit.
Cost analysis: if we sell one used shirt at $15, can we do the same or better selling 7 or more shirts at $4 after expenses? I assume very few MBAs go into charity work, but that might be the community service they should be given: "Your sentence is 2 years in jail and 5 years of probation, but if you can find a charity shop in the next month where you can apply your abilities for a year to improve cash flow, we'll commute a year of jail to time served and probation to 3 years of working there.
But I would assume the amount of that staying approximately stable, no? They were able to deal with the dead people clothes, but something else is going on if all charities are suddenly drowning in stuff.
speaking as someone who lost someone back in 2019, for many of us, it can be HARD to remove said clothing in a timely manner. I still have my mom's clothes that need to be dealt with. For many, it's just something to put off until a point is reached, and then...they just dump it all. My guess is it's all come due.
That's not new behavior, though. Most people do that. Yet charities being overwhelmed by the volume of donated clothes is a relatively new problem - so the link there, if one even exists, is pretty weak.
"Line go... down? This doesn't make sense! Obviously we need plastic fabric and more factories that essentially use slave labor! Think of the profits!"
Why not just have a free rack. Like, take a couple zbars or something, put them outside with all the clothes that would have been thrown away. People who need them will take the clothes and there's no more waste. Capitalism is so stupid
Those racks are virtually worthless (you can buy them for dirt cheap, I got one off Amazon a couple years ago for $30, and they have no real resale value), but fine. Put them in a cardboard box labeled "free". It's better to give the clothing away than to just throw it in a dump
Maybe stop charging so much, and more people would buy it. Provide fitting rooms, too. I used to have a favorite thrift shop, but since they took out the fitting rooms, I pretty much only go there for books, and even those cost 30% more than they did a year ago.
Brilliant and funny and sad podcast on this subject. Traces fast fashion, buying psychology, thrift store donations to recycling and redistribution thru to how it ends up in a 7 year landfill fire in Africa. You will never buy a t shirt from a chain store again https://www.abc.net.au/listen/programs/threads/
I know this is about Canada but 1. Some of the shit they put out in goodwill is never going to sell, like t-shirts from random events or whatever that no one wants to be associated with and should be donated to the homeless and 2. They charge an exorbitant price for the clothes so people aren’t buying ten shirts but maybe 2 they really like. 3. This new tiered pricing they do so they can sell the bigger brands for more is garbage. Bring back the flat price and lower it back down to $2 a piece.
Part of the problem there is that Goodwill realized people were buying shit from their stores, then flipping it on eBay for profit. They realized if people could do that, they weren't charging enough--so they raised their prices to get a cut of the action.
If no one should be associated with the shirts and no one wants to wear them, then why do you believe that homeless people should have them? Homeless people also deserve the respect of having clothes that aren't garbage.
It’s because the thrift stores would rather throw away the clothes they got for free that they are struggling to sell than to offer them, wait for it, for free.
Thems rookie numbers. I still have a pullover from Old Navy that I've had for more than 25 years. I'm sure there's older still, like that one teacher who had the same outfit for every school year photo session for his whole career.
Have had the same LLBean parka since 2012, got it on sale as a "last year" model. I love that jacket and get sad if a winter isn't cold enough to use it
I have a Silent Hill 2 replica jacket i got from the official Konami store... some 20+ years ago. Ive only had to resew the patches cause the glue cracked and some odd buttons here and there. Thing is nuclear proof it feels cause back then clothes were made to last. I got a shirt at a concert a few weeks ago, the black already faded to a brown-black and the print is fading after a couple of washes...
Those are rookie numbers!! My current winter jacket is from 2003 and i still have reversible Nike jacket that i got as a "going to university" gift in 1996
TEVA sandals I wear every day: 15 years old. Basketball shorts I wear around the house every day: 12 years old. Levis stretch jeans: 8 years old. Geek t-shirts: all 6+ years old. Four pairs of cargo shorts I wear outside the house every day: 10+ years old. Hoodies: anywhere from 6-20 years old.
Fuck fast fashion. Fuck the "disposable everything" culture corporations are trying to create.
Same. Every year I say I should buy a new one... Never do. The buttons don't work anymore, and a small zipper keeps on getting caught in the fabric. Still...
I have t-shirts from there 00s that are still in decent shape though are now House shirts. This thin ass weave that wears out fast and is diaphanous in certain light is so grotesque. Hell the t-shirts from five years ago were actual quality compared to today’s shit. It’s wild.
Glad I'm not the only one. I have a sweater given to me from a family friend when I was 16 and I still have it 40+ years later. It was older than me when given. It's had a few stitches fixed here and there but it's my fav and still holding on.
I remember my dad finding it hilarious that young kids kept commenting on how cool his flannels were from the 70s when grunge was in peak swing. "The key is to never stop wearing it and eventually fashion will catch up to you"
No. No we all don’t. That’s ludicrous, lol! If I was your mother I’d buy you new underwear stat because I care about you people. You poor dudes. *hugs*
As a consumer, I actually see this happen in real time. Right now, it costs prob 30-35 bucks to wash a few loads of laundry, but I can buy 3-4 full outfits (cheap, but decent, fruit of the loom, wranglers, etc) for less than 100 bucks. So I can actually see people dropping a few extra bucks to NOT have to wash clothes if they do not have their own washer/dryer.
Umm... am I the only dumbass here that washes the new clothes before wearing them? Shit's covered in processing chemicals and dyes and whatever is in the factories where it's made and packaged plus the leftover lunch of the severely underpaid garment slave who had to make it. It might be 'clean' visually, but it's not 'let me put these panties right up against my snatch' clean.
...where is it $35 to wash a few loads of laundry? I can and have done an entire weeks worth of clothes for my family of 4 at our local laundromat for like $10 when our washing machine broke. Would have been maybe $6 if it were just me/mine.
My stepfather would constantly do this. He wouldn't have time to wash so he'd go buy fresh underwear socks and tshirts all the time. He was also an asshole but for other reasons.
Ive been in that boat(the buying new to save time, not the asshole part. Well maybe I am an asshole idk lol) and it does suck, cuz now I got more clothing than I can use and I honestly would not want to throw it out(it is all still plenty good enough, I just have far more than I need... I am basic person only need like 4-5 outfits total) - annoys me that even someone as 'thrifty' as myself can do this and in the end, it actually DOES save money (due to time, costs, etc) and it should not.
They *are* being given. But it costs money to have employees sort through it all. So they would sell the excess to other organizations and use that money to pay for employees and space. Now they can't sell them and are getting overloaded. When everyone's overloaded, no one will take them even for free.
So I saw a documentary of some kind before (sorry, I don’t have any sauce otherwise I would link it) of how a lot of donate clothes ends up in “less developed” countries which because of that, it stifles their own local clothing and fashion design due to how cheap donated clothes are vs buying local.
On top of the insane amounts of extra clutter/garbage it’s been generating for these other countries. It’s very problematic. I saw a woman in Africa talking about it.
I’m living in the Philippines now and they have a used clothing store or two on every block on top of mobile venders with carts full of clothing.
The country has gone as far as banning imports of used clothing with the lone exception of disaster relief donations. Somehow these stores are always packed with goods.
I don’t know if the stores have a thing where if you brought something in, then you could get a discount on a purchase. I just know that they’re doing good business.
tinyfootprints
People keep giving me clothes as gifts. Out of the nearly 300 shirts that I own, I wear about six in summer and six others in winter. That leaves about 280 shirts that just take up space.
ufoara
Right to the Incinerator, to power the Data Centers
WishIveknownthisbefore
Have worked as a volunteer in a thrift-wellfare store. This was the amount of clothes donated in one year nót fitted for resell (dirty/torn etc.) which had to be destroyed. This pile was 100 by 30 by 10 feet. Total weight approximately 500.000 pounds.
FloatingOnACloudOfTitties
What waste: how sad!
gtotherizzle
Where did everyone think it went?
RetrogradeLlama
The town in used to live in collected fabric of any type regardless of useable condition - clothes, drapes, bedroom stuff, etc - and it was recycled into new fabric.
There’s far too little of that going on.
InkyBlinkyPinkyAndClyde
Exactly, it's a loop that needs to be closed as much as possible. And it could mean good local jobs, too.
johnvilnis
How about they start giving bundles of clothes away to people who need them and can’t afford them because these charity and thrift stores are selling them at premium prices.
Tolocamp
That is capitalism destroying itself by eliminating scarcity. Now shoot the CEO of the middleman company, reduce the trading and import companies profit margin to a minimum to remain operable and pay all the funds that became available all of a sudden to the workers making the clothes (also shoot the workers CEO and put that salaey into better materials), and we are done.
Cheap clothes for everyone.
Overproduction gets dumped and incinerated for decades by now across all types of industries.
VoidScreamer
Thrift shops raising prices to the point that it's cheaper to buy new doesn't help. I can buy a new shirt at Walmart for cheaper than I can at my local Goodwill or Salvation Army, the only 'thrift shops' within hours of me. And unlike the Goodwill/S.Army, the new shirt isn't likely to be ripped or stained when I get it (the 'sorting' done at GW & S. Army, at least here, is practically non-existent, half of the stuff they're selling is actual garbage).
DrNicholasRivierA
I've read that there are 6 lifetimes of clothing for all 8.6 billion people on Earth right now.
MrFancyPanzer
The clothing industry is so wasteful, and one of the most polluting, it goes under the radar when it comes to environmental issues.
smokinghashalg
Plastic is worse imo. You cant even recycle it
Plaird
Synthetic fabrics are just small strands of plastic perfect for polluting the world with micro plastics
BallsToYouMyGoodSir
cause the charity shops are selling things for FULL PRICE!!!!!! at least the last 6 ive been to have
Trimule
I remember years ago I discovered this whole situation. I (like most people) thought Thrift Stores just sold the donations.At rear of the main building there were 6 large sheds that had the doors open. Dozens of huge pallets of compressed clothing. I asked and they said it was sent to an enormous facility in Oakland where it was sorted (cotton, poly, wool, etc.) and shipped to Asia and Africa if saleable and to rag recyclers if not. This was even before the "wear it twice" style prices appeared.
CedricDur
In my mother's time clothes were valuable. Even in my youth there were already too many. And now it's become ridiculous. It just keeps being made by the thousands every single day.
InspectorA5
Give me the high concentration cotton products. Chop off the belt area where most metal from buttons & rivets / zippers are at. The rest is shredded to fibers & mulched to bare strands. Mix with water & borax, spray or air drop onto wildfires. Mix in wildflower & native grass seed .. rapid rebound.
unluckyandbored
We as a society need to stop making shit we don't need.
bekkayya
"we've created such abundance that nobody can sell it, I even tried to give it to other places that sell it and they couldnt even" all these people can eat shit. If you just announced that it was there and giving it away people would come. people still need clothes somehow during all of this BECAUSE OF GATEKEEPERS LIKE THEM and they still cant imagine helping jesus fucking christ
bekkayya
"oh well they should stop making so much so theres scacity again and i can sell clothes again" I will personally sit you down in hell next to the DRAM CEO's doing the same thing. Eat unlimited shit.
KitteyWolf
As a canadian... maybe the thrift stores dont try and sell shit at almost full price and they'll exchange their stock more often.
DWolf
Cost analysis: if we sell one used shirt at $15, can we do the same or better selling 7 or more shirts at $4 after expenses?
I assume very few MBAs go into charity work, but that might be the community service they should be given: "Your sentence is 2 years in jail and 5 years of probation, but if you can find a charity shop in the next month where you can apply your abilities for a year to improve cash flow, we'll commute a year of jail to time served and probation to 3 years of working there.
Slimewire
Prices at thrift stores have really gone crazy lately. Why is a second hand cardigan $30?!
kurvarVillain
^This
friendsofsandwiches
Lot of that is dead family member clothing.
PupuBlue
But I would assume the amount of that staying approximately stable, no? They were able to deal with the dead people clothes, but something else is going on if all charities are suddenly drowning in stuff.
friendsofsandwiches
speaking as someone who lost someone back in 2019, for many of us, it can be HARD to remove said clothing in a timely manner. I still have my mom's clothes that need to be dealt with. For many, it's just something to put off until a point is reached, and then...they just dump it all. My guess is it's all come due.
Einbrecher
That's not new behavior, though. Most people do that. Yet charities being overwhelmed by the volume of donated clothes is a relatively new problem - so the link there, if one even exists, is pretty weak.
AnonOmis1000
Oh boy the universe wants my miserable today.
ToSisPoS
My clothes are worn until they fall apart. I’m not thrifty or particularly good.
Even secondhand clothes are expensive and I hate shopping.
RetrogradeLlama
This doesn’t include all the NEW clothing that is landfilled after it fails to sell at the first and second tier stores.
Ritawho
Or burned just for 'brand protection'.
Like Nike does.
IMakeLotsOfReferencesAndRemakes
Yep. Climate Town has a wonderful video on how fast fashion is a global ill.
reineseele
If only we could tell people they could get their cloth 80% cheaper if production happens on realistic demand.
IMakeLotsOfReferencesAndRemakes
"Line go... down? This doesn't make sense! Obviously we need plastic fabric and more factories that essentially use slave labor! Think of the profits!"
notreallyaclevername
Why not just have a free rack. Like, take a couple zbars or something, put them outside with all the clothes that would have been thrown away. People who need them will take the clothes and there's no more waste. Capitalism is so stupid
IlluminaBlade
Someone would steal the rack in the US.
notreallyaclevername
Those racks are virtually worthless (you can buy them for dirt cheap, I got one off Amazon a couple years ago for $30, and they have no real resale value), but fine. Put them in a cardboard box labeled "free". It's better to give the clothing away than to just throw it in a dump
georgejimmydoodle
Maybe stop charging so much, and more people would buy it. Provide fitting rooms, too. I used to have a favorite thrift shop, but since they took out the fitting rooms, I pretty much only go there for books, and even those cost 30% more than they did a year ago.
DarnThisStuff
Exactly! "Thrift" places charge what "vintage" markets charge.
TheFunGuyinOz
Brilliant and funny and sad podcast on this subject.
Traces fast fashion, buying psychology, thrift store donations to recycling and redistribution thru to how it ends up in a 7 year landfill fire in Africa.
You will never buy a t shirt from a chain store again
https://www.abc.net.au/listen/programs/threads/
tidepool
I know this is about Canada but 1. Some of the shit they put out in goodwill is never going to sell, like t-shirts from random events or whatever that no one wants to be associated with and should be donated to the homeless and 2. They charge an exorbitant price for the clothes so people aren’t buying ten shirts but maybe 2 they really like. 3. This new tiered pricing they do so they can sell the bigger brands for more is garbage. Bring back the flat price and lower it back down to $2 a piece.
Tenzil
Goodwill is for-profit. They don't care.
unluckyandbored
Part of the problem there is that Goodwill realized people were buying shit from their stores, then flipping it on eBay for profit. They realized if people could do that, they weren't charging enough--so they raised their prices to get a cut of the action.
LizLemonDifficult
If no one should be associated with the shirts and no one wants to wear them, then why do you believe that homeless people should have them? Homeless people also deserve the respect of having clothes that aren't garbage.
zsefvgb
Many could be used as stuffing for mattresses or insulation mats that could alleviate a small portion of the struggles of homelessness
WorstCommentEver
It’s because the thrift stores would rather throw away the clothes they got for free that they are struggling to sell than to offer them, wait for it, for free.
thrashingcows
I just grabbed a pair of shorts today I hadn’t worn in a long time…receipt in pocket from 2019!
Have other shorts that are over 20 years old. And I usually buy my stuff from thrift stores as well.
PhloydPhan
Still wearing a winter coat that I got ~15 years ago.
CommodusLeitdorf
I still have a sweater I bought with the paycheck from my first job 25 years ago. Still going strong.
SarcasticComment
Yup. I basically buy clothes and wear them until they are dead. Haven't donated clothes in years because by the time it's retired it is falling apart
gonzar09
Thems rookie numbers. I still have a pullover from Old Navy that I've had for more than 25 years. I'm sure there's older still, like that one teacher who had the same outfit for every school year photo session for his whole career.
Llamabuster
Have had the same LLBean parka since 2012, got it on sale as a "last year" model. I love that jacket and get sad if a winter isn't cold enough to use it
GemsAreOutrageousTrulyTrulyTrulyOutrageous
Me and my 19+ year old clothes from High School chiming in.
Clayman8
I have a Silent Hill 2 replica jacket i got from the official Konami store... some 20+ years ago. Ive only had to resew the patches cause the glue cracked and some odd buttons here and there. Thing is nuclear proof it feels cause back then clothes were made to last. I got a shirt at a concert a few weeks ago, the black already faded to a brown-black and the print is fading after a couple of washes...
The fuck...?
Fizzypeach
Those are rookie numbers!! My current winter jacket is from 2003 and i still have reversible Nike jacket that i got as a "going to university" gift in 1996
CallMeCourierSix
TEVA sandals I wear every day: 15 years old. Basketball shorts I wear around the house every day: 12 years old. Levis stretch jeans: 8 years old. Geek t-shirts: all 6+ years old. Four pairs of cargo shorts I wear outside the house every day: 10+ years old. Hoodies: anywhere from 6-20 years old.
Fuck fast fashion. Fuck the "disposable everything" culture corporations are trying to create.
INeedMoreGifMeMoreJustOneMore
Same. Every year I say I should buy a new one... Never do. The buttons don't work anymore, and a small zipper keeps on getting caught in the fabric. Still...
J3lek
I replaced my favorite coat 15 years ago. It had tons of pockets and the main pockets could fit a few dvd or video game cases.
tidepool
I have t-shirts from there 00s that are still in decent shape though are now House shirts. This thin ass weave that wears out fast and is diaphanous in certain light is so grotesque. Hell the t-shirts from five years ago were actual quality compared to today’s shit. It’s wild.
CallMeCourierSix
Hanes Beefy T-shirts. Those things are indestructible. Love em. And they come in Tall sizes, which rocks when you're 6'4" like me.
arikelrecords2000
I have 4 winter coats all from thrift stores
(I live in Canada. Layering and separating by wet vs. dry cold is important)
IMakeLotsOfReferencesAndRemakes
I wear it til it rots off me.
nitaroyal
My favorite sweater is 39 years old. Been washed a couple of hundred times and still looks new (though dated, lol).
SarcasticComment
At 39 years it has gone in and out of fashion 2 or 3 times. If it is out now, it will be back in in 7 or so years
StunttheRunt
Glad I'm not the only one. I have a sweater given to me from a family friend when I was 16 and I still have it 40+ years later. It was older than me when given. It's had a few stitches fixed here and there but it's my fav and still holding on.
SarcasticComment
I remember my dad finding it hilarious that young kids kept commenting on how cool his flannels were from the 70s when grunge was in peak swing. "The key is to never stop wearing it and eventually fashion will catch up to you"
Heavenissize17socks
Ive had 3 button downs bought before the Millinium lost to wear and tear this year. Still in mourning.
FormerlySable
I’m still wearing 3 skirts that I thrifted in the early 2000s. One of my T-shirts was bought in 1987.
cryborg
I have a pair of boxer briefs that are now crotchless.
HighLordRegentofChaos
whoatherebigfella
Don’t we all.
KellyCrazyCatLadyinTraining
No. No we all don’t. That’s ludicrous, lol! If I was your mother I’d buy you new underwear stat because I care about you people. You poor dudes. *hugs*
whoatherebigfella
Thank you!
AtmaDarkwolf
As a consumer, I actually see this happen in real time. Right now, it costs prob 30-35 bucks to wash a few loads of laundry, but I can buy 3-4 full outfits (cheap, but decent, fruit of the loom, wranglers, etc) for less than 100 bucks. So I can actually see people dropping a few extra bucks to NOT have to wash clothes if they do not have their own washer/dryer.
IHaveGreatKittenRecipes
Umm... am I the only dumbass here that washes the new clothes before wearing them? Shit's covered in processing chemicals and dyes and whatever is in the factories where it's made and packaged plus the leftover lunch of the severely underpaid garment slave who had to make it. It might be 'clean' visually, but it's not 'let me put these panties right up against my snatch' clean.
Einbrecher
...where is it $35 to wash a few loads of laundry? I can and have done an entire weeks worth of clothes for my family of 4 at our local laundromat for like $10 when our washing machine broke. Would have been maybe $6 if it were just me/mine.
cuckatruck
My stepfather would constantly do this. He wouldn't have time to wash so he'd go buy fresh underwear socks and tshirts all the time.
He was also an asshole but for other reasons.
AtmaDarkwolf
Ive been in that boat(the buying new to save time, not the asshole part. Well maybe I am an asshole idk lol) and it does suck, cuz now I got more clothing than I can use and I honestly would not want to throw it out(it is all still plenty good enough, I just have far more than I need... I am basic person only need like 4-5 outfits total) - annoys me that even someone as 'thrifty' as myself can do this and in the end, it actually DOES save money (due to time, costs, etc) and it should not.
MiserableBustard
Maybe GIVE the clothes to the charities instead of selling the clothes to them?
darthnerdus6236
Even charities and developing countries are over loaded. There's so much clothing it can't even be given away anymore.
InkyBlinkyPinkyAndClyde
They *are* being given. But it costs money to have employees sort through it all. So they would sell the excess to other organizations and use that money to pay for employees and space. Now they can't sell them and are getting overloaded. When everyone's overloaded, no one will take them even for free.
stayingalive4life
So I saw a documentary of some kind before (sorry, I don’t have any sauce otherwise I would link it) of how a lot of donate clothes ends up in “less developed” countries which because of that, it stifles their own local clothing and fashion design due to how cheap donated clothes are vs buying local.
inthenameofthemoooon
On top of the insane amounts of extra clutter/garbage it’s been generating for these other countries. It’s very problematic. I saw a woman in Africa talking about it.
whoatherebigfella
I’m living in the Philippines now and they have a used clothing store or two on every block on top of mobile venders with carts full of clothing.
The country has gone as far as banning imports of used clothing with the lone exception of disaster relief donations. Somehow these stores are always packed with goods.
I don’t know if the stores have a thing where if you brought something in, then you could get a discount on a purchase. I just know that they’re doing good business.
AtmaDarkwolf
A good sign a business is NOT Moving product, is when they are overly stocked.