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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
by starfallg 6y ago
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.
- corty 6y agoUsually 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.
- Nursie 6y agoMy 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.
- fakedang 6y agoRags can be used to make paper or some forms of packaging.
- convolvatron 6y agoalot of workshops (metal, wood) buy rags for finishing work, etc. At $2/lb it adds up pretty fast.
- ogre_codes 6y agoThis 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.