At Goodfair (disclosure: I run Product & Eng), we are based out of the used clothing capital of America -- Port of Houston, TX. It's our mission to rescue these clothes from being sold to international distributors / before they leave our shores, and sell them in thrift/vintage bundles.
Our model is a bit unique. We purchase the same 100lb and 500lb bales the international distributors do. We have a team that processes the bales, categorizes the clothes, and then merch/list them in a marketable and fun way on the site.
Textile waste is the 2nd largest polluter behind oil & gas. If we can help create a culture of buying second-hand first, we think there's a massive opportunity to put a dent in climate change.
Do you have plans to address the criticisms you've had on Youtube and Reddit comments? It sounds like a lot of people have been unhappy with quality of service given the prices (esp. if you get low quantities), citing the dirtiness/wrinkles of clothes received (you don't wash them on purpose I guess), how there seems to be a lot of clothes that are beat up or faded compared to what you'd get at a thrift store, how you don't have controls over the brightness and vibrancy colors you get, and there seems to be little adherence to the requests customers put in text box.
It's hard to find the right words for this, but I would sincerely reevaluate your perspective.
A surprising number of people thrift / buy used clothes. Between thrift stores and consignment shops, more people shop there than Department stores (30% vs 21%).
It's currently popular among younger people as a push against "fast fashion". People want clothes that are unique and affordable, and their only options are thrift stores or color blocks from Uniqlo.
This is the "kind of person" who buys used clothes:
Fast fashion is likely undermining used clothes, since they degrade quickly to not being wearable, but still have the same landfill degradation problems as other textiles.
When people notice an influential employee that works at a company is active in a community, that presents them with an opportunity to talk to a living breathing person that might actually respond to questions that they feel have been ignored by official channels. People ask questions like this all the time. Unfortunately, sometimes its the only way to get someone at a company to actually help you.
Very interested in this company fyi in the "more to explore" section in https://goodfair.com/pages/about-us the three images are deceptively not linking to anything like the middle one says "our amazing blog" and is not a link. Not trying to nitpick but just something I noticed.
How much do these bales cost usually? How would an individual buy them? I've visited one of the "ropa" stores in south Texas, the ones where they have massive piles of clothes you literally climb over to dig through, it was a real surprise those exist!
There used to be a store like that in Cambridge next to MIT where real estate was essentially free. We used to go to one where you just filed a plastic bag; the bag was weighed and you paid $1/lb. Great for parties and amazing finds.
Basically yes. The very scungeiness and corruption of East Cambridge leant it charm. It wasn’t like Yale or Columbia, wealthy walled fortresses in poor neighborhoods. Nerds and blue collar folk lived tooth by jowl. And Kendall square was a wasteland of decaying industrial buildings and weed-filled concrete lots.
I went to high school in Boston (the city on other side of the river) which was much more dangerous. At MIT I never felt my life was in danger.
The big 500-2000lb bales of clothes will sell for 15 to 20 cents a pound, it varies some depending on the quality of the clothing and the transportation and storage costs. If it is really all undamaged high quality clothing it could be more than $1 a lb, but generally what is sold in these big bales is a combination of it not being worth the time to sort and sell, and being damaged and not desirable. What isn't sold is recycled into rags, or sometimes sent overseas where the labor costs and incentives are different.
This is a great idea! When I walk into goodwill it's a tsunami of clothing that I have to go through to look for a diamond. If there was an already curated site I would use that.
When they are sold to international distributors instead, do they still make it to end users? Or do they land in some sort of recycling process for feed stock back into raw materials for new clothing?
I ask because, as much as I think US consumers can benefit from them, my greater concern is that they simply don't go to waste.
Either way, it's the first I've heard of your service, and it sounds fantastic. How do I get you my old clothes? Or is it aggregated and sold on to you through the network of goodwill stores and other thrift shops?
This is the sort of problem I love to hear being solved by tech & advanced logistics, rather than the latest startup that hopes to catch a piece of the advertising pie.
some of them end here in thrift shops in Tunisia. they get extended life. and no they don't hurt local industry. in fact we have an important clothing industry and it's mostly targeted towards export. so the clothes get exported new and come back as used. it's not unusual to find clothes made in Tunisia in thrift shops. the funny thing is the clothes are sold in thrift shops the same price (converted to dollars) they were sold new when exported. i find this distortion illustrates accurately the injustice in the world
Or their ability to focus on other higher margin production than clothing may be a net gain. Or not, I don't know. But I don't think it's as simple as "local clothing production suffers".
Where does dumping start and comparative advantage start? Seems like the US has a high supply of cheap clothes, not unlike how new zealand has a high supply of cheep lamb.
Cost is the price for something of value. The two don't have to be correlated. I suppose where money is not involved, you might say the the costs are the repercussions.
By traditional usage of the word dumping, donating use items doesn't qualify. It's not being done to gain a non-competetive economic advantage. It's a semantic issue though: decide you want to construe the word a bit more abstractly and you can make it fit.
Lexical and semantic issue aside, freeing up local resources (people's time) to focus on education and learning higher level skills seems a reasonable plan. Not unlike what a family does when freeing up the time of it's youngest members to focus on learning. Of course in the context of foreign aid to a country, it presumes you don't just air drop in supplies for basic needs and leave it at that. If you're really interested in bootstrapping a population to a higher quality of life, you have to still ensure that learning etc. are available along with the capital infrastructure to create businesses and industries that utilize that learning. I'm not sure the developed world, when lending a hand to less developed countries, always gets that second part right.
It's not below cost if the goods don't have a resale value otherwise. Should they be destroyed so profits can be made by some other company selling clothes to the same population?
Developing countries, not third world, that term is offensive. Those clothes allow people to open their own small business fashion boutiques which creates jobs. They lower prices and give consumers more choice. They do take away business from giant clothing brand companies that exploit labor in developing countries. What local industries does it hurt?
Sorry, but 'third world' is really only offensive to people from first world countries who find the term 'third world' offensive. Oh, and it might also be offensive to people in developing countries who can afford developed countries' lifestyles.
I may not agree with the usage either, but that's what I see all around the third world countries that I've been to, and the one where I have lived since I was born. No one really cares, and no one is offended (except see previous paragraph).
“Third world” is a dumb term to use because it’s based on the Cold War where the USSR was the “second world” and that shit hasn’t existed for over 30 years. Developing / underdeveloped are better, far less amorphous terms. Agree it’s not really offensive, but it is a poor choice of words for reasons completely unrelated to political correctness.
Yep, all these workarounds get used because some people force their sensibilities on everybody else. Obviously, the real divide is between "rich" and "poor" countries, but it's too "cruel" or "crass" to call things what they are. It seems that the poor don't mind that much, but the term is especially offensive for the rich, as it induces guilt in some of them and a fear of retribution in others. Anyway, whatever else is used in place of rich/poor, is bound to comically fall flat on its face, i.e.:
- "third world" should include Switzerland and Austria, as they were neutral during the cold war
- "developing countries" should not include places in major wars or civil wars (such as for example not Yemen), as they're clearly not developing, but rather deteriorating.
- as you point out, "global south" should include the wealthy Australia.
It also expands into other examples of hypocrisy, such as the term "African-American", which is just an euphemism for black Americans (which itself suggest that being black is bad somehow), but due to its clumsiness also includes lots of non-black people, such as Tunesian-Americans (no black people there).
Everybody knows that history , terms change with time, as someone who has lived all his life in the 3rd world, I have never met even 1 person who is offended by the term (I have met online a lot of first-worlders offended though). We use the term as sarcastic self-mockery and as encompassing umbrella to identify ourselves with nations all over the world under the same predicaments. Proud tercermundista here.
> We use the term as sarcastic self-mockery and as encompassing umbrella to identify ourselves with nations all over the world under the same predicaments.
Indeed it is very dumb because it does not categorise countries by development, in actuality is it only about their political alignment - 'neutral' countries were third world.
There is one article talking about the effect on local industry. The gist of it is that you help people out by giving them free stuff, but you kill the local food/clothing/shoe industry and therefore trap the very communities you intend to help into a cycle where they can never start businesses and raise their standard of living because nobody will buy their stuff because they get it for free through aid.
Also, the term "third world" is not offensive and most people are tired of playing this game where some group declares some term offensive and we are all expected to stop using it. You don't get to dictate the language people use to talk and think about the world around them.
Do people really wear secondhand clothes and shoes if they care about appearance and can afford more fashionable, better fitting locally made stuff? This could be equally applicable to first-world countries, where most people don't wear cheap secondhand clothes although they're readily available
The average age of my clothing[1] is probably 5-10 years with some items well over 10 years old. Some of my clothes are legal to drink.
The idea of buying clothes then donate them after 6-12 months has always been broken. With growing kids (or if you gain/ lose a bunch of weight) you don't have a ton of choice. For most adults, the only way you can really ensure you have an environmentally friendly wardrobe is by purchasing carefully and keeping clothes until they genuinely wear out. For jeans and good quality jackets, that can be decades.
When you donate clothes to St Vinny's (Goodwill/ Salvation Army/ whatever), they keep the best/ resealable clothes and dispose of the rest. A bunch gets dumpstered. The only reason they accept used clothing is because of the small percentage they can actually resell.
I have old concert t-shirts that I'll never wear, but still want to keep even if they are taking up space. A friend of mine suggested having them made into a quilt. This would get them out of the closet/drawer/box, and actually visible.
I quilt and have made one t-shirt quilt. It's the last I will ever make. Not hard, but you need the proper tools. And not just a sewing machine. You need stabilizer for the t-shirts since they stretch.
If you want one made, there are companies and quilters everywhere that make them.
As for cost, the idea that they are expensive depends on how you view the work. I love quilting but understand that what I sell them for keeps me in fabric. I'm not earning a living from it.
My wife had a professional put together a T-shirt quilt. It is awesome.
It was made before we met, so I don't have a sense for the cost. As a functional swaddle of memories, it is worth far more than a blanket from the store.
One thought for those considering it -- the shirts can't be completely worn out. A threadbare shirt will make a threadbare quilt.
I have a bag full of "quilt t-shirts." One of the problems is that I don't actually want a t-shirt I like and is comfortable to wear and in reasonable condition to be converted like that. It's on my project list and should probably revisit this winter. (There are companies that do this but they aren't cheap.)
The long-arm sewing machines to do the actual quilting (where the top gets sewed to the backing over the whole face of the quilt) are pretty expensive and not really the domain of typical hobbyist, though. You'd have to find someone in your area who's willing to quilt it for you for a fee, which can be hard if you're a newcomer and not in any classes or forums. Or, you could hand quilt it, but that takes forever, especially for a beginner.
Let me introduce you to the needle and thread. People have been making quilts for a lot longer than this long-arm sewing machine you speak of. I mean, I guess my grandmother's arms were long, and she could reach all the way to the other side of the table she quilted from. Don't think she'd take too kindly to being referred to as the sewing machine though.
T-shirts already have a front and back. You just need some long running stitches to join two shirts together. Shove them with the amount of batting you want, and then another running stitch to seal them up.
Right, I think the alternatives are “I have made a quilt before and I’ll do it myself,” or “I’m just going to throw these away or keep them in storage.”
I find it's much easier to part with such shirts if I take a photo of each of them. The main reason for keeping them (after they're worn out, shrunk too much, stained, etc.) is really just to remind myself of the event or band. A photo takes no real space.
I know you probably have no interest in selling them but if anyone else has old band/concert shirts you should look them up on ebay first before getting rid of them. Some can be worth quite a lot.
I love this idea! I've kept around a lot of old sentimental value shirts with a similar, albeit more vague, idea of putting them together in some form that makes them visible. Keeps the memories and lets you actually look at/revisit them.
Just like with sports jerseys. The fun part is deciding do you show the front or the back? Maybe cut the shirt down the length of one side and display it in a butterfly cut? Get a frame that is glass encased on both sides, and then flip it over every week? I have seen actual framed butterflies with this kind of case so you can see both sides of the butterfly's markings.
I've found synthetic workout clothes last pretty much forever. I have a pair of 15 year old basketball shorts that look about the same as they did brand new whereas the cotton stuff I've bought all would have holes and have faded in color by now.
I've got a pair of Under Armor shirts I've had going on 14 years now. The branding has long since faded away but otherwise they're basically indistinguishable from the day I got them.
These are shirts I've worn for a week straight trekking through Central American rainforests.
Same. I have a workout shirt from when I was 15 (I'm in my 30s now) that has seen literally hundreds, even a thousand+ workouts.
However the cotton fabric used in most off the shelf clothing is also not what it used to be. My dad, who doesn't like to throw things away, still has his old clothes from when he was in his 30s (he is in his late 70s now). They've retained their shape far better than my 3 year old clothes.
Most modern clothes take all the possible shortcuts from material to assembly they possibly can to deliver a $30 sweater that holds up until you pay at the checkout.
If you want a long lasting one, they’re available from specialty manufacturers but the price will be over $200
Work clothes in general tend to be higher quality and last much longer than fast fashion. A pair of chinos or cotton twill pants from a respected workwear manufacturer is what I would recommend for daily wear.
Doesn't matter how much you sweat, it matters what you do with them after the workout. If you wash them or even just let them air out after use, it's not a problem. I have 15+ year old synthetic shirts which have been on dozens of 5+ hour mountain bike rides in 80-90 degree weather and they don't have any scent at all.
That's exactly what I do. Hang them up after riding (on a hanger in the garage) so they dry, then wash with normal detergent and sometimes maybe a bit of powdered OxyClean (sodium percarbonate).
I've had phenomenally gross post-ride jerseys (literally crusted with sweat), but doing this they don't get stinky. I agree that the key is to not let them stay wet and let bacteria grow in it. Get them dry fast, all is good.
In my experience, the charities usually don't throw those away.
Over here in the UK and much of Europe, the charities sell them by the ton to traders that ship them to Africa or other developing countries.
Some charities don't even handle them, they enter into a contract with a third party that specialises in the trade that collects the clothes and then pays the charity a fixed amount of money per ton. The whole service is branded, so you would think that you're donating to the charity directly when in fact they are paid by the trader by weight.
My partner is the manager of a red cross shop here in the UK, and it's exactly this - anything not of resale quality (or just too 'personal', like used underwear) goes for 'rag' and they get paid by weight by the rag company. The rag clothes are shredded, IIRC, not sure what for.
They also have a book company who have a similar arrangement, they pay a few pence per book, though IIRC they do make use of the books as-is rather than shredding.
Usually clothes don't get shipped to developing countries to be used as clothes. They get shredded and used as a source of cotton and other fibres after sorting, e.g. to create stuffing, insulation or paper.
Donated stuff is treated the same way, and just the proceeds used as a donation to help the third world. Read the fine print on the used-clothes-bin.
This article is basically about how that entire part of the recycling chain is shutting down because it's cheaper to just manufacture new.
Regardless, even when they were shipping them out, the environmental cost of shipping and repurposing was always higher than the cost of just using what you had.
Fun exercise - we look thru old photos (5yrs, 10yrs, 20yrs) and see if we can find any of the same clothing, then, do a new family photo. Same clothes, same pose, similar setting, different year.
I need to figure out where people buy jeans that last! I'm certainly hard on clothes, though jeans don't usually end up being part of cutting up trees and splitting firewood until after the knee holes form... but that still often happens within 2-3 years of purchase.
Japanese selvedge jeans are very durable but expensive. The fabric is made on traditional looms, sometimes the actual looms from 1950s and earlier (those are mostly wooden contraptions, which can be repaired and kept in working order indefinitely) and can be incredibly dense to the point when you can actually make new jeans stand on their own (only possible because jeans are starched during production, you are supposed to soak them before wearing). But even light-weight 10-12 oz selvedge denim is still on a different level from a department store jeans.
The problem with the most department store jeans, no matter the price, is that they use fabric made on high-speed wide looms. These looms use light and smooth thread so they can weave fast. The fabric comes out very light (because of the thin thread) and does not hold together quite well (because the fabric is held together by friction, reduced by the smoothness of the thread).
Of course, it makes no sense to buy expensive jeans for durability. $400 24oz jeans probably will last for 20-30 years but so will 10 pairs of $40 jeans from Target.
I wouldn't call myself a denimhead, but I have several pairs of selvedge denim jeans from good tailors, one with Japanese denim, one with Cone denim.
Thickness counts for durability, and you have choices. I'm not sure what durability is like for cotton blends (it's rarely more than 3-4% synthetic). I have doubts that mass-produced denim of similar weight is significantly more or less durable than denim from traditional looms. The only differences I can think of that would impact this would be staple length and chemicals used in processing. Pre-faded, bleached, or distressed denim will obviously be less durable.
20 years sounds high to me. I have jeans less than a year old already showing crotch wear. Granted, this is expected, and it can be repaired before it's an issue.
Of course, if a wide loom could weave the same thread a narrow loom could then the output would be the same. It does not happen for the reasons I explained above: you cannot really weave thick, neppy thread fast - the thread will break.
I love my raw denim jeans, and assume they're likely better at holding up - certainly moreso than general brands.
For work (if style is less of a concern), Duluth Trading makes pants that last an order of magnitude longer than carhartt.
A word to the wise though; while my raw denim jeans are several years old now and in good condition, you sounds like you're dramatically harder on your clothes than myself.
I've had pretty good luck with ll bean jeans after I got tired of buying levi's all the time. I recommend their regular line, the premium line has weird pockets and don't seem as durable. They also offer flannel lined jeans if you live somewhere with cold.
Same here, I used to be a big Levi's guy back in the day but they've destroyed one of the great American brands. Total garbage now. You can get much better jeans these days for a comparable price.
Knee holes are a nice failure mode. My last three pairs of jeans have split open completely in the back while I was in public. (And I'm neither overweight nor particularly large in that region.)
Surprised no-one has mentioned Vollebak. Their clothes are (claimed to be) pretty indestructible. Ceramic t-shirts, kevlar hoodies, dynema jackets, ...
Are you me? Every article of clothing that has persisted is still in pretty good shape, maybe a little faded at the worst. If anything, over the years I've started to pay more attention to what materials my clothes are made of so they do last. For example I stopped buying any kind of stretchy t-shirt as all of the necks become ribbons within a few months. I have cotton shirts that are 8 years old that look great. Everything wool looks just as good, too; if anything they're more comfortable.
I believe that front-loading, horizontal axis washing machines are quite a bit more gentle on clothing. When I switched 2 decades ago, the reduction in lint in the dryer catch was remarkable. They seem good for other reasons as well, but that I almost never wear out clothing is another $$ and ecological benefit.
Yeah, I discovered a while ago that spending more for good clothing that lasts a long time saves money over the long term versus buying cheaper clothes. I can get 10 years out of a nice Columbia or Carhart flannel, something I pick up on Amazon might be half the cost but it'll be less comfortable and last one season.
I keep roughly the same amount of clothes and get new articles if the existing ones get worn or no longer fits. Typically I'd purchase a few tshirts, socks and underwear at the half a year or a year mark to replace ones I've gotten rid of.
Lately though this hasn't been going as well. I think partly due to Covid lock downs I've gained some weight around the middle and some jeans no longer fit. I'm resisting buying replacement jeans hoping to lose the weight instead. Not going well so far.
This amazes me every time I think about it. I have a few t-shirts with prints that are 15 years old and are still okay-ish, at least for home use, and the prints are still almost undamaged. Or winter boots that just don't break in 10 years or so, I only replace shoelaces every few years. Or a winter jacket which is also good looking at 7 or 8 years old. All that is after daily use during season.
Every time I'm like "wow, it's possible to endure for so long".
All clothes will fall apart from wear, there really isn't a way around it. Some fabrics — such as tweed — are famously long-lasting, but they still wear out eventually.
The best thing you can do is buy quality clothing, take good care of it and repair it when necessary, before it wears out completely. That can extend the life of an item significantly, but not indefinitely.
Buy good quality wool, wool blends, thick cotton twill, heavy selvedge denim and similar fabrics. They're durable and take repairs well. I've never had much luck with hemp, and linen is too fussy for me, but I'm not ruling them out.
If you don't mind synthetic fibers, you can get some very light yet durable clothing. The drawback is that a lot of it will come from outdoor brands and look like it.
> When you donate clothes to St Vinny's (Goodwill/ Salvation Army/ whatever), they keep the best/ resealable clothes and dispose of the rest
By dispose, what you mean is send them to Africa or other undeveloped regions. In virtually all of the 35 African countries I spent time in I would see clothes for sale in local markets that still had (St Vinny's/Goodwill/ Salvation Army) tags on them.
It's funny to me that this is framed through such a negative lens, when they're basically just saying that ever more people are being lifted out of poverty, to the point where our trash is no longer of value to them. I struggle to believe that old clothes will ever be a top ten most important environmental issue.
There are other issues, for instance: child labor makes most clothes in Asian countries. The labor is hidden behind opaque international sub-contracting agreements, making it impossible to audit the supply chain.
Ethical clothes are expensive to make. Go to US Target store and you can buy a three-pack of "Fruit of the Loom" T-Shirts for about $10, go do Everlane, who explicitly states their profit, cost, and logistics chain, and T-shirts are $20/each.
> child labor makes most clothes in Asian countries.
Reminds me of a Jack quote from 30 Rock:
> It's not "handmade in USA," it's pronounced "hahnd-made in Oosa." The Hand people are a Vietnamese slave tribe, and USA is their island prison. THEY made your jeans. Do you know how they get the stitching so small? [whispers] Orphans.
Child labor is probably not caused by the demand for clothes, though. On the contrary, without those jobs, the situation of those families would be even more perilous.
> Child labor is probably not caused by the demand for clothes, though. On the contrary, without those jobs, the situation of those families would be even more perilous.
Well maybe if the parents would be paid a bit more these kids would be given a chance to fair better in life by going to school. What is that comment? demand for lower priced clothes, "infinite growth" and investors always demanding higher returns absolutely causes all that child exploitation.
Your comment is either ignorant or downright dismissive of a problem directly caused by us, western consumers.
It's akin to saying "at least the slave is fed", exact same puritan mindset.
People in rich countries are (mostly) very nativist, so I doubt this kind of think would be popular. For whatever reason, people tend to value the lives of those in their country many times more than those in other countries.
So unfortunately, buying their labor at cheap rates seems to be the best way to transfer wealth right now, at least a big scale [0].
[0] - On a smaller scale individuals can donate to charities like Against Malaria Foundation or GiveDirectly, which I highly recommend everyone does if they have excess wealth.
You are already doing that to some extent and in my opinion it has the reverse effect. That money will go to the government which is quite corrupt in these countries and will stronghold more authoritarian regimes. Child-labor is bad but it helps some families make money, and many of them break the poverty chain this way. It's not the best/most ethical way to do it, but let's not pretend that a few random folks on HN have the solutions for these third-world countries.
> in my opinion it has the reverse effect. That money will go to the government which is quite corrupt in these countries and will stronghold more authoritarian regimes.
This is not the only option, and this defeatist attitude is dangerous. There are many charities operating in third-world countries that are incredibly efficient and are delivering real impact right now. Here’s a few: https://www.givewell.org/charities/top-charities
Now, obviously scaling it up will be difficult, but all these charities are currently cash constrained, so there’s still some room to grow, and after that point, I’m sure it’s not an intractable problem to figure out a working model.
The “corrupt government” excuse is common one to justify inaction, but given the existence of so many organizations doing good work, I don’t it’s applicable anymore.
> That would be idiotic. We are well off because we can make cheap things (including food). To make things arbitrarily more expensive would make everybody worse off.
It would make the ultra rich a tiny less richer, but hey you can't have that. There is wealth in this world so that every single kid on that planet can go to school instead of working at the factory, it's just insanely badly distributed.
Their point is, we (western countries as a whole) have the following options:
- Buy clothes made using child labour, the children and their families get a bit of additional income.
- Don't buy clothes made using child labour, the children and their families don't get a bit of additional income.
Most likely, these children are working because without this income, it's difficult for them to meet their needs for survival. Given that, the choosing option 2 will clearly leave this children and their families worse off. I'm not sure how that's a controversial statement, it's simply describing the situation as it is. Denying harsh realities doesn't make things better for those children.
Now, the ideal situation is just a direct wealth transfer from rich countries to poor countries, and I would be in favor of that. But people in rich countries value the lives of people in their countries many times more than those in poor countries, so I doubt this will happen anytime soon.
That's a false dichotomy used to justify child and slave labor as well as absolve yourself of responsibility.
Here's a few options:
1. buy second hand
Cheapest and best for the environment
2. buy local
stimulates local economy, doesn't give money to another big corporation ready to exploit another country
3. buy fair trade
4. stop buying so many things
It really isn't that difficult.
------------
The harsh reality is that we all are to blame for the predicament of those countries and we try to brush it off, just like you just did. We choose to buy cheap without checking where things are from. We choose not to support local industries. We choose politicians that choose not to prosecute companies for crimes in other countries. We choose to give big companies money which they then use to corrupt foreign countries in order to exploit them. We choose to justify our consumerism with "at least I'm giving them a job".
You really think that those countries would be in such disarray without our involvement? Do you think if multi-nationals had less power, the support of their western politicians and populace, that they'd be able to mess around in foreign countries and take away opportunities for the foreign populace?
> That's a false dichotomy used to justify child and slave labor as well as absolve yourself of responsibility.
It's clearly not a false dichotomy, since 3 of those options will leave those in the working in the global poor worse off. Buying fair trade will help those in the global poor, so that's a good option.
Note that I did not use this to justify slave labour. That's obviously bad, and they will be better off not working under slave labour. We should refuse to buy goods produced from slave labour. I am specifically focusing on those who work "voluntarily"[0] in exchange for pay.
> we try to brush it off, just like you just did.
Did you read my comment? I said, "Now, the ideal situation is just a direct wealth transfer from rich countries to poor countries, and I would be in favor of that." How is that brushing it off? I advocated for giving them money/aid/etc. directly (and is something I do on a small scale personally, by donating to charities that help people in the global poor).
What it comes down to at the end is that these people are working these jobs because the alternative is starvation or the like. If you're saying we should stop buying from them (indirectly, through a large company), you need to pair that with a direct transfer of some form of aid to make up for the lost income. Otherwise, you are directly making them worse off. Before, they earned some money for their labour, now they don't.
> The harsh reality is that we all are to blame for the predicament of those countries
If we're to blame, we can't just tell them "Sorry, I know you need this income to sustain yourself, but I'm not comfortable with those working conditions, so I'm going to give my money to someone in a first world country instead."
[0] - Ie. They decided they are better off working this job, than not working this job.
> Is HN being invaded by trolls? I see more comments like the above than I used to.
No HN has always been extremely classist like that, it's the startup world where "we're just an app" and humans that aren't engineers or entrepreneurs are seen as yet another disposable resource to be exploited in order to fake it till you IPO...
This is not the worst dehumanizing comment I've seen on this website, unfortunately.
> It's probably true though? Refusing to use child labor is not going to help those kids.
the "at least the slaves aren't starving" argument. Maybe if westerners paid them a bit more, which they can afford, their parents would send these kids to school instead.
"low wage" is meaningless. Parents need to be able make a living wage so that they don't have to send their young kids to the factory instead of school.
Have you accounted to imoact on theur future earnings from missing on education, from work-related accidents and injuries, trapping them in an eternal cycle if poverty?
I live in a poor country like this -- it's odd to me that there is a huge stigma against giving even a few dollars directly to beggar children, but if it's a factory paying them the same amount for a day's work then it's ok for you as the consumer to indirectly pay that wage through your purchase.
I have had good luck buying jeans and t-shirts made domestically. Does anyone know of a brand that makes socks in the US? I can’t seem to find any that are less than 20 a pair.
I'm in the same boat. The only US-made I found were by Gustin, but they were expensive and the elastic was meh. Everlane has yet to offer socks (non-US but very accountable). Allbirds has cheap(er) eco-groovy socks, but I don't know where they're made. Lemme know if you ever crack that nut, I'm glad I'm not the only person obsessed with trying to ethically source every item of clothing.
What's more environmentally friendly: clear cutting land and irrigating it to growing cotton, spooling it and making it into textile, dying it, screen printing it cheaply with underpaid labor, and shipping it across the ocean, or buying that $5 shirt in your size that already exists in that goodwill in your neighborhood?
This is a reason to challenge the value of jobs, not a reason to materially damage our irreplaceable environment. Social constructions must yield to material reality.
If you ate gonna waste money to create jobs you could habe a public works programm for planting trees, or have mandatory conscription and bigger military, or have government paid for education, or infrastructure, or any number of other things
Reminds of brave new world. The world government has to encourage consumption so that everyone has a job. People without jobs get restless, even if their needs are met.
Are you really thinking this through? You are justifying child and slave labor and exploiting other countries right now because of "Arbeit macht frei".
> 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 article actually says that the price of new articles is approaching the price of recycled articles -- so it's not necessarily that more people are being lifted out of poverty -- but that we are producing more stuff for cheaper.
I mean, we run a medium sized(100+ employees) second hand clothes business in Poland, with few stores bigger than most local supermarkets. Covid hit us hard, but I wouldn't say that "no one wants used clothes anymore". Quite the contrary - in recessions, like the one we're about to enter, second hand clothes are usually booming.
If you don't mind me asking, what is the name of this second hand clothing business? I will likely be in Poland next year and wouldn't mind checking it out.
In the distant past, old clothes used to be gathered and turned into rag paper [1]. It's a shame that we use so many synthetics now as that probably drastically reduces the re-usability.
Perhaps we could add the funguses that decompose plastics into the mix and create a full-circle clothing-to-paper or fabric process.
This makes the song[1] by the White stripes make so much more sense. I didn't realize rag and bone man was a particular thing, I thought it was just something similar to what was called a gypsie lifestyle or similar in the past.
I believe this is also the real reason why newspapers are sometimes called "rags" - although now it's been retconned into a a derogatory term. Cotton paper was way more expensive than pure wood-pulp paper, and far superior to it in terms of clarity, resolution of printed material, and durability.
As far as I’ve seen thriftstores and vintage boutiques are actually thriving. My naive theory is that clothes are designed to break faster and faster and some older clothes have a quality you can’t find anymore, hence vintage has an aura of good quality old stuff. The other end of the theory is that the increasing povery forced people to rummage through thriftstores.
Yes. Vintage clothing (and even more current but high quality clothing) does well in thrift stores. But most of the clothes people are junking is low quality and doesn't actually stand up well enough to being reused OR it's got some sort of gimmick or pattern that falls out of fashion too quickly rather than seeming timeless. Some of it might be cool again in 20 or 30 years, but probably not and that's longer than the cycle time for people to dispose of clothes besides.
But the article isn't really about that. The article is about how making stuff new nowadays is so cheap that there is barely any cost savings over making stuff out of recycled material. This is partly because our standards for new stuff have slipped to where good quality fabrics and material are no longer valued. But it's also because a lot of the costs of making stuff new are so externalized that nobody's paying them. Also, people are so accustomed to the cheap stuff that most people wouldn't even know how to differentiate between good quality and bad. They've outsourced that discrimination to brands but the brands have wised up and there isn't as much of a relationship between the brand equity/prestige of a luxury brand and quality as there used to be.
> This is partly because our standards for new stuff have slipped to where good quality fabrics and material are no longer valued.
Because, for the most part, our clothing doesn't serve any purpose besides signaling, in the west. Most fast fashion is about looks - not function.
If you do serious physical work, the cheap stuff will fall apart and right quick. If you travel a lot and wear a suit 5+ days a week, cheap suits will constantly fail you. But most people don't have that issue - so they just go with what they can afford and gets the job done.
But doesn’t that imply that more cheaper clothes would eventually end up filling thrifstores? The reality is that not everyone can afford to buy new and that segment of the popularion is unfortunately growing. Also, even if clothes cost little to make does not mean that retailers don’t add a mark up that renders them unaffordable to many. My main point is that poverty will make these thifstores more frequented by many, until things get better poverywise.
At least where I've lived the trend for thrifting has mostly made thrift stores just as expensive, if not more, than going to your local fast fashion store and buying a $5-10 thing that will disintegrate after a year of laundry. In the same way that quinoa used to be a very cheap staple food but has been gentrified into an expensive health food.
There is also a floor for how cheap thrift stores can sell things, because it requires labor to sort through clothing donations and figure out what is actually still in resalable condition, and stores need staff as well.
> But doesn’t that imply that more cheaper clothes would eventually end up filling thrifstores?
Not really because the fast fashion types of clothes don't hold up well over time.
> The reality is that not everyone can afford to buy new and that segment of the popularion is unfortunately growing.
The trends leading to this are because people can afford to buy new. The clothes are cheaper and don't last as long. They're so cheap that it ends up being cheaper to buy new ones and throw them away than to bother trying to recycle them (because thrifting and recycling have their own supply chain costs).
> My naive theory is that clothes are designed to break faster and faster and some older clothes have a quality you can’t find anymore, hence vintage has an aura of good quality old stuff.
Two things going on here. First just the general race to lower prices means you have less material used in most brand's items and it's designed to be manufactured cheaply not to last. Which is different than designing it to break fast. Breaking faster is a side effect of saving money during manufacturing, not the goal.
Second is survivorship bias. There were plenty of junk products in the past but those are already at dumps. The vintage items you see in stores were either high quality in their day or were not used before sitting on a shelf for a very long time.
I think there’s some truth to older clothes being higher quality, there was a point where almost all clothing was made here. In the ‘60s, 95% of clothing was made in the US and that has been on a gradual decline since then. Even in the ‘90s it was 50%. Now it’s just 2%...
It's true, I heard this from multiple people who stopped buying new. Most stores dropped the quality of stock, even the "high end" ones, while others went out of business.
> My naive theory is that clothes are designed to break faster
Yup. I've long suspected that tee-shirt manufacturers do extensive research to find the cotton-blend that goes from crisp white to dull yellow after just one wear and stays yellow no matter what amount of bleach/detergent is applied.
While designed obsolesce is probably a thing, don't forget the main thing about vintage clothing is the style is what people are looking for when specifically shopping vintage. Thrift stores are different than vintage.
Thrifstores are different nowadays, I agree. People who owned vintage stores used to run through thrifstores and buy whatever was better quality, I know some cases like that in NYC. Now they have a separate triage process so no better quality item can end up in thrifstores.
>> Now they have a separate triage process so no better quality item can end up in thrifstores
I know people who run a vintage store, and they still hit the thrift stores. Along with garage sales and estate sales. They can go through racks in a thrift store and find items they can get for $5 and turn around and sell the next day for $200. I love the smell of arbitrage in the morning.
Although now that they're established, they've got other people doing the digging and bringing stuff straight to them.
On of my friends hunts for vintage Levis. The new ones are not built nearly as well as even the ones 10 years ago which were commonly selvedge denim too (now levis wants >$100 for that).
That is true but now even more expensive clothes are designed to break faster, back in the day expensive stuff was good durable stuff. For example theres a new trend for shoes in which soles wear out faster because of the material used. I’ve seen myself throwing out shoes that were in perfect condition or still very wearable if it wasnt for the hole in the heel. A lot of classic shoes that one used to be able to take to a shoe repair shop are now unfixable for this reason
When these discussions come up, there often tend to be suggestions durable brands for "big ticket" items like shoes, boots and outerwear (as other comments have suggested).
Does anyone have recommendations for longer lasting every day clothes? I feel like I often have dress shirts and pants/jeans that wear out more quickly than they should. Dress shirts tend to have holes wear in the elbow area and pants tend to wear in the pockets where I have phone/keys.
If it's just the inside pocket that wears, and not the pant leg itself, that's pretty easy to fix with scrap of fabric, plus needle and thread. I've done that myself with plenty of pants, even sewn a completely new replacement pocket for one pair.
For the shirts, you could sew patches on the elbows, but the would probably be at-home/casual shirts at that point.
The skill of mending clothes is one I think many people don't think about, out maybe they just don't think it's something they want to do. It's not rocket science at all, and there are tons of guides and videos or there to show the various stitches and techniques.
I mend all of my clothes when they start to wear, fix and replace buttons, even slight alterations to fit. When a piece of clothing finally becomes overall too threadbare, I harvest buttons and sometimes zippers, as well as scraps of remaining good quality fabric, all for future repairs.
My current pants are all from the Finnish store Varusteleka. Their ordinary jeans are good, their tactical jeans are amazing, and their worker pants are a breath of fresh old-fashioned air, with high waists, pleats and buttons for proper suspenders.
The materials chosen are solid, as is the workmanship, although you wouldn't call it superlative. Like the style, it's practical, not flashy.
For dress shoes, the top of the line Allen Edmonds are a great investment. High quality stitched leather uppers and soles. If you clean them, polish them, and store them in cedar shoe trees, they might just last a lifetime with resoling.
Buy a tube of Shoe-Goo. Inspect your shoes for wear and build up the areas that need it. You can keep a set of soles forever if you do this periodically before holes grow too big.
Don’t worry, I don’t. Maybe when I was younger Id make that mistake but luckily never bought expensive clothes in label only. If I had the money to throw around I’d have probably fallen into that trap.
But Im having more and more difficulty finding that real good classic shor that is well made and is maintainable/fixable and which is a good fit and could be happy with for a couple of years. I live in NYC and the market here is innundated in low quality crap. Even an expensive brand such as Prada doesn’t have well made shoes, they’re made to not last very long
https://builder.wescoboots.com. I still have a pair that I bought 20 years ago that I have worn for a large part of that time (with yearly resoling). They have a deal where you can return a pair of boots and they will rebuild them (keeping only the uppers) for half the cost of new.
they are not stylish. they will last forever. you send them your measurements and they make a form (last) which they keep and you can order against again. that first pair had some minor fit issues, I sent corrections and the second pair was a perfect fit.
It might be a cultural thing or lack a wealth thing but I've never fully understood the concept of second hand clothes. I mean, who gives away used clothes that are still in good conditions?
And I'm not passing judgement. I just don't get it.
I wear my nicer clothes to go out.
When they're no longer nice I wear them around the house.
When they get holes or stains in them I wear them to do yard work.
After that they either become rags or they go into the garbage.
At no point have I ever said "I no longer want to wear this, I'll sell it for a buck and buy something new".
At no point have I ever said "I no longer want to wear this, I'll sell it for a buck and buy something new".
Me either, but I do get to the point where my closet and dresser are full, and I have clothes in them that I haven't worn in years. The pipeline starts to get clogged right after the "nice enough for going out and/or work" stage, because everything lasts so much longer in the "comfy in the house" stage than it does in the "nice" stage. Plus things change from year to year: how nicely I dress at work, how often I go out, where I go when I go out. Some people have changes in location and climate or in their body size. And sometimes you just look at something and realize it isn't you anymore. Am I ever again going to wear the barn jacket my parents bought me twenty years ago? Maybe, under circumstances I can't foresee right now, but in the meantime it's warm and has a ton of life left in it, so why not pass it on?
People use fashion as a means of expression and art. They might only want to wear an expensive piece my Prada a handful of times before they have gotten all of their enjoyment out of it. Or they may not be able to afford all the types of clothes they want to try and so they sell their nice pieces so they can wear others. It's not about having nice, presentable clothing. It's about experimenting, having fun and expressing yourself. I feel like most of the stuff that goes up on depop is sold by teenagers for whom the 5 euro they get or whatever is a significant amount but lots of adults use trailed because they tried out the Haider Ackerman jacket and it was fine but it costs hundreds and now they want to try something else.
> who gives away used clothes that are still in good conditions
In North America I think most people do. Charity/Thrift shops are packed to the brim with used clothing not to mention organizations that very specifically bring used clothing items to those in need.
I believe most people do not keep all their clothing items until they are entirely worn out. Changes in taste, body changes, getting rid of unused items, moving to a location with a different climate etc.
In most cases people are donating the clothes not reselling them. You put it in a bag and drop it off.
I'd guess the simplest reason for most people is losing/gaining weight.
If stuff doesn't fit anymore, but it's in good condition then it's nice to donate.
The other reason I could think of would be fashion, but I'm not particularly fashionable so that doesn't affect me. I could imagine it being a reason for people though.
I still have one sweater that I wore in high school. That was 1964-1968 (the sweater is probably from near the end of that span).
Recently my wife complemented me on another sweater she didn't remember seeing (we've been married about seven years). I told her I bought it in 1976. It's a bit odd looking (and I think she was being polite), but warm.
Otoh, I have worn through the knee of a number of jeans, and they either get turned into shorts or donated (and probably turned into rags). Recently I was quickly wearing out the left elbow of long sleeve shirts, but this stopped with covid. Either I was wearing it out on my office desk (it's L-shaped, with the arm part of the L on my left) or on my car door (as in most of the world, the driver's side of my car is on the left).
>It might be a cultural thing or lack a wealth thing but I've never fully understood the concept of second hand clothes. I mean, who gives away used clothes that are still in good conditions?
Well, if you have a "lack of wealth thing", then you should immediately be able to grasp some advantages of this:
(1) second hand clothes are cheaper to buy (or free in some cases).
(2) second hand clothes means you make some money selling your old clothes, instead of throwing them away.
If what's alien to you is how would anyone "throw clothes away", that still seems like a strange question.
Unless we're talking about some developing country, tons of people in the West and elsewhere get new clothes and stop wearing old ones, which can then give away. Women sterotypically (and statistically) more so, following seasonal fashion, but also tons of men.
You don't need to have "wealth" to do so. Even people living with average wages do stop wearing old clothes all the time.
And of course some do so by necessitity too, because their kids outgrow their clothes sizes, or because they themselves got fatter/skinner and their old clothes wont do them anymore.
>At no point have I ever said "I no longer want to wear this, I'll sell it for a buck and buy something new".
Well, did you ever consider that you're in the minority here? I've myself never considered to do some things millions of people do, but I do know that most others do them....
> It might be a cultural thing or lack a wealth thing but I've never fully understood the concept of second hand clothes. I mean, who gives away used clothes that are still in good conditions?
> When they're no longer nice I wear them around the house.
> When they get holes or stains in them I wear them to do yard work.
Well that's if you have a yard and have space to store old clothes. I think most people (at least young people) live in small apartments and can't afford that.
They become "yard work" clothes when they're too bad to give away, with holes and stains like I mentioned above.
And I used "yard work" as code for "any kind of work that would ruin nice clothes" but I think that you can visualize non wealthy people who live in semi rural or rural areas.
Also, if I didn't have the space to store old clothes, which can be a $5 plastic box in a closet, they would go in the garbage bin, not to the goodwill, because like I said before I stop wearing my clothes when they've become too worn to give away.
You're still assuming that all the clothes you own are clothes you can or would wear in the first place.
There's all the t-shirts that get handed out at work or volunteering that are required to wear at a specific event. College students at some universities get a lot of these, but don't have much space to store them.
There's gifts from well-meaning family members that don't fit or are totally inappropriate (clothes for the wrong gender, fancy clothes that have to be dry-cleaned and don't follow the work dress code).
There's clothes that used to fit but don't any more (again, basically everything teenagers and young adults own). There's clothes that were required for one job and aren't for a new one, especially clothes that would have to be dry-cleaned.
Some things aren't useful for gardening though. I'm not going to garden in a tuxedo that has become a bit scruffy but someone else could make use of, for example.
I used to need a number of pairs of "nice" shorts to bike to work in. Then I switched jobs and there was a shower at work, so most of those shorts no longer had a role. I could have put them in storage in case I end up biking to a workplace without a shower again, but I figured they would do more good at the Goodwill.
Neckties used to be a thing. I haven't worn any of mine for about ten years. Since retiring I haven't worn most of my collared shirts or smart trousers. None of those things are remotely wearable in my new volunteering role which involves physical work outdoors in the cold and rain. Those things would be recycled tomorrow if COVID hadn't made my local recycling facility inaccessible.
Secondhand clothes are not good for the development of African countries. There were strong industries in many African countries before globalization kicked in.
You have this strange situation where Westerners donate free clothes which are sold in Africa and undermine development of local industries. So called NGOs simply do the dirty work of Western corporate interests.
The article mostly doesn't talk about this; according to this, the price of new clothing has dropped so substantially that even reprocessing secondhand clothes into new textiles is largely a dying business. With all the environmental issues that entails.
There is at least one viable alternative for some second-hand fabrics, insulation. I wouldn't use fabric insulation for all applications, but its noise dampening properties make it well suited for interior wall use.
Charity always creates such vicious circles. While donating for desaster relief is usually good and well, charity needs to be viewed with a lot more suspicion.
Teach a man to fish, he will build an economy. Give him his daily free fish, he will be your dependent forever.
This is a fallacy. Most people enjoy creating/building/earning if they are given a path to doing so. Helping unfortunate, poor, disabled, and even the occasional lazy person is no vice.
That's kind of the issue though. At a large enough scale, donations can undermine the value of creation / earning. A new show shop might not have much value in an economy that has a large enough supply of donated shoes constantly thrown into it. Since it's not valuable to build these shoe suppliers, they do not get built. The population becomes dependent on the donations, as existing infrastructure does not exist to support them if the donations suddenly stopped.
I believe this is why the original comment separated disaster relief from charity. Giving people their first pair of shoes for free from an external economy may not be necessarily bad, but subsequent pairs hinders growth of a local shoe economy.
DISCLAIMER: Shoes are pure example. If you disagree with the idea of this comment, please do not focus on the shoes.
I guess it's not quite obvious to me what is wrong with this. as long as people are giving stuff away, why not take it and focus on producing things you can't get for free? it's hard to imagine how the supply of second-hand shoes/tshirts/whatever could crash overnight. if people in rich countries stopped replacing perfectly serviceable goods, they would probably do it slowly enough for the former beneficiaries to start domestic production.
purely monetary aid seems like a substantially greater risk. politics could turn off that faucet in an instant.
So far, the countries with advanced manufacturing got there by learning the ropes on less sophisticated product. Before China, Hong Kong, Japan, and South Korea had large service sectors and advanced manufacturing, they had to develop a large working class of manufacturing workers to provide demand for goods, and develop the sophistication to at least make things like toys and clothes reliably first before they jumped into semiconductors and phones and LCDs.
When a country is dominated by donated or secondhand goods, the need to develop the knowhow and ability to manufacture anything reliably and cost-effectively isn't needed for entry-level goods (since those are all available secondhand for cheap) but you can't bootstrap any manufacturing as a result.
True. Giving for-profit organisations charitable donations however, is a bad idea, unless those organisations are the intended recipients of the charity.
It's not about "enjoyment", it's about charity undercutting local economies and preventing the development of local business and industry to service local needs. "Charity" can play a part in keeping communities in poverty because accepting the handouts kills the business opportunities which would allow for local economic development.
That can be just as bad, but for different reasons. It distorts the economy, in potentially very harmful ways, because it can induce some really perverse incentives. Real situation: in India, Western companies paid so much above the local rates that qualified doctors were working in call centres because it paid many times more than working in a hospital or clinic. When my friend visited, he was told not to tip anyone. Because what might be a casual £1 tip to you, might be a months wages to someone else. So to answer your question, giving people "free money" without any reciprocal commitments can be extraordinarily harmful.
> Real situation: in India, Western companies paid so much above the local rates that qualified doctors were working in call centres because it paid many times more than working in a hospital or clinic
I'm gonna call BS on this one. Do you have a source?
> Because what might be a casual £1 tip to you, might be a months wages to someone else.
I'm not seeing a problem with that. Why is it bad if someone gets a random bonus; an occasional lucky windfall? Where's the harm?
> Why is it bad if someone gets a random bonus; an occasional lucky windfall? Where's the harm?
Because soon everyone and their dog will be looking for jobs that provide the opportunity of such an occasional lucky windfall. They will be crowding around the rich westerners, neglecting all the jobs that would actually be important for the local community.
Gotcha. So your boss also shouldn't be giving out spot bonuses to employees, because "everyone and their dog" will start applying for your job. Do you not see the fallacy of your logic?
If the supply of labor into Western tourist-oriented industries increases, the odds of getting a big tip reduce, and average wages remain the same. This restores the equilibrium.
> neglecting all the jobs that would actually be important for the local community.
Waiting tables, cooking, cleaning, and driving taxis and buses aren't important jobs for the local community? How do you define "important"? If these people had skills that paid more and/or led to higher prestige opportunities, don't you think they would take those jobs instead?
And what do you think they do with the occasional big tip they earn? They spend it on local goods and services, stimulating the local economy and providing opportunities to local entrepreneurs. They spend it on educating their children so they have better opportunities than waiting on wealthy tourists. They pay direct and indirect taxes (even unreported cash tips are spent on taxed goods) that allow their governments to fund infrastructure improvements (more opportunities for local entrepreneurs) and social services.
If you're too stingy to tip 15-20% when you go to poorer countries, just say that. I hate tipping culture in the US. But don't say you're doing it for their good, because that's just not true.
This is why I try my best to wear organic fibers. If I can't donate them at least they'll quickly decay in a landfill. A quick google search revealed that synthetic fibers, polyester, spandex, nylon, take 20 to 200 years to decompose.
Synthetic clothes shed microplastic particles in the wash. It's actually a significant source of plastic pollution. Cotton is kind of crap fabric and takes enormous amounts of water to grow, but wool and linen are both much more durable.
Among many other things, COVID is changing this industry rapidly. Fashion brands have been pummeled and are looking for looking for alternative revenue sources.
A friend of mine started ReCircled (https://recircled.com) to offer a 360-degree solution to fashion brands to help them get a garment recommerce solution implemented quickly.
As an anecdote, here in a building of 400 residences the monthly used clothes donation could fill a large van twice.
The clothes used to be donated to local services who distributed them to those in need but starting two years ago those organizations no longer took used clothes. Many of them are so awash in money from rich donors that they buy new clothes and their clients no longer will accept used.
The only choice left was to donate to organizations who took the clothes and sold them to a local business who then either sell them locally at a high price (often higher than new) or ship them overseas.
Lately even that market has dried up and now used clothes go into the dumpster.
This isn't just clothes, but everything from housewares to high end electronics.
I'm thinking with covid restrictions--and the probable continuation of work from home much of the time even post-covid--that there will be less reason to buy fancy new clothes, and used clothes will be just fine for those of us lucky enough not to have to go in to work all the time. Last summer, I was wearing ragged shorts in my home office much of the time, which I wouldn't dream of doing in the real office. I just have to remember to turn off video if I'm in a zoom and have to get up.
A couple of East African countries resolved to stop importing used clothes, one of the reasons being to boost their own local textile industries.
They were almost all pressured out of their resolve (except Rwanda IIRC). Modern Opium Wars. So you see it doesn't matter that they don't want used clothes, they will bend to the might of America.
No One Wants _The Inconvenience of Shopping for_ Used Clothes Anymore
Put another way, selling used clothing online is difficult; the overhead significantly more than new clothes. For example, every used item is unique, a one-off. Therefore, all the work that goes into bringing it to market (e.g., photos, description, getting it on the website) must be baked into the margin of that single item.
In other words, it doesn't scale. The key would be to find something that does scale, and pairs well with the used clothing.
I can't throw a rock without hitting a vintage clothing store. Jeans, concert T-shirts, hipster-ish stuff is like gold. No One Wants SOME Used Clothes Anymore, at least in 2018, I think.
My wife and I have decided buying used clothes when we cannot afford sustainable, ethical clothing sources, is the best way to boycott unethical clothing sources.
> 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.
New clothing isn't cheap, there's an appreciable gap between new and used prices that allows an intermediary market to thrive. A t-shirt that's $35 new could be found at Goodwill for $5.
I have a winter coat from when I was 16 that still works great. Ditto for a leather jacket. These are both 25 years old. I even have some old leather hiking boots from that era too that are still in decent shape. I pretty much wear jeans until they disintegrate and they probably only do that due to washing.. the Levi guy said to not wash your jeans ever...
Jeans will wear out from never being washed, too. Dirt, grime and dust collects between the fibers and abrade them.
Obviously don't wash your jeans every time you wear them, but once a month if you wear them all the time is fine. Low temperature, gentle cycle, never tumble dry because that really wears out fabrics fast. Consider using liquid wool detergent, since it's more gentle and doesn't have abrasive particles.
Another good tip is to wear clothes on alternate days, and let them hang to air out between wears. Give them a good shake before putting them on, that takes care of a lot of dry dirt and dust, reducing abrasion.
Steaming works really well for wool and wool blends, for freshening up items that are nominally dry clean only. A clothes brush and a steamer can put off the need for dry cleaning for a long time. Spot cleaning takes care of actual stains and steaming loosens the fibers so they release a lot of the dirt stuck to them. Plus it should kill off most of any bacteria, too.
And don't buy Levi's, their quality is mediocre now.
ThredUp had some juice in the media. Heard about them on Marketplace. Checked it out: they give you as low as 3% for the value of your stuff. https://www.thredup.com/cleanout/payouts
My wife gets most of her clothes on threadup. It’s great. Menswear and boys clothes are much harder to find used. My guess (based on my kids) is that boys are just so rough on their clothes that they are only good for rags when they’re done.
I saw an ad for a pair of generic, gray college pants, costing 80 bucks new. What kind of a person pays 80 bucks for a shitty pair of pants for lounging at home, when second hand markets have a huge selection for a fraction of the price?
In part this is because of fast fashion (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fast_fashion), which is the industry practice of marketing trendy, cheap, poorly-made clothing at low prices. Brands like H&M are exemplars of this subindustry.
These clothes wear out quick, are not timeless in design, and are not suitable for second-hand use. There's also a growing aversion to wearing someone else's clothing due to it feeling 'yucky'.
> "Natural fibers go through a lot of unnatural processes on their way to becoming clothing," says Jason Kibbey, CEO of the Sustainable Apparel Coalition. "They've been bleached, dyed, printed on, scoured in chemical baths." Those chemicals can leach from the textiles and—in improperly sealed landfills—into groundwater. Burning the items in incinerators can release those toxins into the air.
It seems the corrective trend in fashion is towards closed loop sourcing, where we are in effect wearing "second hand" clothes that have been remade from old fibers. Right now, it is expensive. But while we wait for technological advances, maybe we just need a shift in mindset - towards buying things that last longer, that degrade more easily, and that cost more (to accommodate recycling). It means we can afford less of other pleasures, but it might be the only way around the problem.
> Ways to [support a market for longer-lasting clothing] include offering warranties on clothing and making tags that inform consumers of a product's expected lifespan.
Quite the opposite. Your sizes are more popular so they fly off the thrift racks. This leaves the unpopular stuff on the racks and many thrift stores don't do a great job of cycling out old product.
If you want to find great second hand clothes, figure out when the shops put out new product and shop on those days.
Our model is a bit unique. We purchase the same 100lb and 500lb bales the international distributors do. We have a team that processes the bales, categorizes the clothes, and then merch/list them in a marketable and fun way on the site.
Textile waste is the 2nd largest polluter behind oil & gas. If we can help create a culture of buying second-hand first, we think there's a massive opportunity to put a dent in climate change.
We just got some of our first press yesterday. :) https://www.houstonchronicle.com/techburger/amp/Houston-dres...
tl;dr WE WILL TAKE ALL YOUR CLOTHES. :)