Posted on 05/11/2020 8:32:16 AM PDT by Diana in Wisconsin
A once-virtuous cycle is breaking down. What now?
For decades, the donation bin has offered consumers in rich countries a guilt-free way to unload their old clothing. In a virtuous and profitable cycle, a global network of traders would collect these garments, grade them, and transport them around the world to be recycled, worn again, or turned into rags and stuffing.
Now that cycle is breaking down. Fashion trends are accelerating, new clothes are becoming as cheap as used ones, and poor countries are turning their backs on the secondhand trade. Without significant changes in the way that clothes are made and marketed, this could add up to an environmental disaster in the making.
Nobody is more alert to this shift than the roughly 200 businesses devoted to recycling clothes into yarn and blankets in Panipat, India. Located 55 miles north of Delhi, the dusty city of 450,000 has served as the world's largest recycler of woolen garments for at least two decades, becoming a crucial outlet for the $4 billion used-clothing trade.
Panipat's mills specialize in a cloth known as shoddy, which is made from low-quality yarn recycled from woolen garments. Much of what they produce is used to make cheap blankets for disaster-relief operations. It's been a good business: At its peak in the early 2010s, Panipat's shoddy manufacturers could make 100,000 blankets a day, accounting for 90 percent of the relief-blanket market.
In the early 2000s, though, cash-flush Chinese manufacturers began using modern mills that could produce many times more blankets per day than Panipat's, and in a wider variety of colors. Ramesh Goyal, the general manager of Ramesh Woolen Mills, told me that Chinese manufacturing has become so efficient that a new polar fleece blanket costs a mere $2.50 retail -- compared to $2.00 for a recycled blanket. This has made China the preferred manufacturer of relief blankets worldwide, costing Panipat most of its export market.
So Panipat is changing. In 2013, nobody in town made new fleece blankets. Today, about 50 mills do. Ramesh Woolen Mills added a Chinese-built line in 2016, and thereby boosted its production from 7,000 kilograms a day to 12,000, two-thirds of which is polar fleece. Consumers appreciate the quality, variety and fast production times.
But what's good for Panipat and its customers is bad news for donors and the environment. Even if Panipat were producing shoddy at its peak, it probably couldn't manage the growing flood of used clothing entering the market in search of a second life. Between 2000 and 2015, global clothing production doubled, while the average number of times that a garment was worn before disposal declined by 36 percent. In China, it declined by 70 percent.
The rise of "fast fashion" is thus creating a bleak scenario: The tide of secondhand clothes keeps growing even as the markets to reuse them are disappearing. From an environmental standpoint, that's a big problem. Already, the textile industry accounts for more greenhouse-gas emissions than all international flights and maritime shipping combined; as recycling markets break down, its contribution could soar.
The good news is that nobody has a bigger incentive to address this problem than the industry itself. By raising temperatures and intensifying droughts, climate change could substantially reduce cotton yields and thus make garment production less predictable and far more expensive. Industry executives are clearly concerned.
The question is what to do about it. Some brands, such Hennes & Mauritz AB (better known as H&M) and Patagonia Inc., are experimenting with new fibers made from recycled material, which could help. But longer-term, the industry will have to try to refocus consumers on durability and quality -- and charge accordingly. Ways to do this include offering warranties on clothing and making tags that inform consumers of a product's expected lifespan. To satiate the hunger for fast fashion, meanwhile, brands might also explore subscription-based fashion rental businesses -- such as China's YCloset -- or other more sustainable models.
None of these options can replace Panipat and the other mill towns that once transformed rich people's rags into cheap clothes for the poor. But, like it or not, that era is coming to an end. Now the challenge is to stitch together a new set of solutions.
I thought when you donated, it was just bought by someone else locally....
i see.
some thrift stores put some of the specialized stuff online for sale
and
some thrift stores have long had a special section of clothing (and another for other stuff) that they think may be especially valuable or desirable... and they mark up THOSE prices, without jacking up the prices on the 90% of regular stuff
(I think both approaches make good sense for the thrift stores, without doing too much damage to regular store shoppers who just need regular things at economical prices)
Ways to do this include offering warranties on clothing and making tags that inform consumers of a product’s expected lifespan
There is a local fundraising group that makes the most fabulous mittens out of recycled wool items. They add embellishments to them and they’re usually a blend of interesting colors; fun to wear.
They’re getting $25 a pair for them!
I’m sure you’re familiar with this gal? Crispina Ffrench:
https://www.etsy.com/shop/Crispinaffrench
I think she has an actual shop somewhere, or mail order as well?
I love shopping Goodwill, etc....I have found some great items, one being an original painting by a woman known as the "grandma moses of California" and I know she exhibited at the SF Museum of art, and this particular painting hung at the Nixon west coast home...someday you'll see me on Antique Roadshow...:)
This isn’t new and there are many reasons beside the cost. In the Philippines I seen boxes of 2nd hand clothes not given away or sold for the simple reason Americans are larger than Filipino’s. If clothes were given away on Indian reservation they would find the clothes dumped in the countryside so missions would sale the clothes the dumping deminished.
I use ‘Goodwill’ as a verb - but I never shop there.
The guy who started it is a money-grubbing douche with a bad reputation. And they take as much as they can out of the company in salaries and perks.
The Capitalist in me says, ‘Fine. Your idea, your fortune.’
The Humanist in me thinks you should give BACK more than you TAKE in a case like this that brings you tax breaks and FREE merchandise to resell for profit.
Do posters realize Goodwill only gifts one eighth of its profits
It’s executive compensation for national management last year was nearly 60 million
It pays workers below minimum wage
It receives huge tax and charity subsidies
It’s not what folks think
My kids always had designer duds on the cheap, too. They never knew. They just saw ‘new’ clothes on their beds to try on and everyone was happy. When they were teens, I introduced them to the Wonderful world of Thrift. :)
And it was a regular ‘thing’ for me to show up in the rooms with an empty box and instructions to fill it with clothes that no longer fit and toys they had tired of or books we’d all read 100x over.
It's just that wool is easily twice and perhaps four times as warming as fleece, at the same shipping weight and volume.
Good point.
ONE post ahead of you, Wardaddy! :)
That’s a good idea, making blankets out of quilting squares cut from sweaters.
The people I’m familiar with are all local. Knitters, braided rug makers, quilters, jewelry makers, wedding planners, etc.
——I think the pickings at Goodwill, etc. will be FABULOUS later this summer once it’s all sorted and put back up for sale. ;)-——
Maybe but I just saw a GW Eemployee at at drop off box going through the donations. He was picking out all the good stuff. I guess to sell or keep for himself.
You are correct. You are much better giving your clothes to Share, Salvation Army. They are much better “charities”.
Obviously, the article is more about the lack of market for used clothing. This is the clothing that places in the US collect and can not sell. Now they do not want it in third world countries even for free.
Keep in mind, all of those 2020 Super Bowl Champions LA Rams hats and T shirts have to go somewhere. They make thousands of both Super Bowl teams, just so when the clock runs out and your team won, you can buy an Officially Licensed NFL product. All the other losing team shirts got to go somewhere.
Yes I upthread I wrote how my ships used to carry pepe to the third world
pepe is slang for used clothing bales
I wish my mother would have donated old clothing. I had to wear hand me down for 11 yrs AND I have 7 older sisters and I’m a guy!
It’s pretty much across the board, here.
The “VIP” stuff is still separate from the regular clothes but overall, prices went up.
$4 jeans are now $8.
Even t shirts are up 50 cents and even then some are $3 and up depending on what’s on them.
Used to go to a couple of Goodwills in a nice part of town. That’s where a guy like me could find some really nice clothes that some fellow’s ex-wife disposed of. Polo shirts, some even never worn for $2.75. Well, that is until GCF got a little to big for it’s britches and started charging way more...
But I did stumble across a Matchbox carrying case loaded with ‘60s and early ‘70s Matchbox and Redline Hot Wheels cars (about 30 in all) for $15. Score! Haha, probably belonged to the ex-husband as well.
Funny story though.... Was going through the Goodwill store once and a couple of high school aged girls were looking through clothes and were a little flustered. I was nearby and one girl was nudging the other and saying, “Go ahead, ask him.”
So this teenage girl turns to me and says. “Excuse me? Sir? What kind of clothes did they wear in the ‘80s?”
Haha, I laughed and gave my best model pose, sweeping my hand down and across my body, “You’re looking at it, kid...” :-)
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