8 ms·

Fuck. This is such a waste to people who need clothes and of material. This reminds me of the recent ABC (US) investigation about bag recycling where most of th

Fuck. This is such a waste to people who need clothes and of material. This reminds me of the recent ABC (US) investigation about bag recycling where most of the bags were going to incinerators, landfills, or being covertly shipped to Indonesia and Malaysia for "recycling".

XorNot 2y ago
Is it though? People tend to overestimate the costs of production versus recycling. You could easily spend, in terms of CO2, vastly more resources trying to sort, clean and ship around this stuff, rather then just setting the pile on fire - particularly if it's principally organically-derived fibers (cotton) and not synthetics.
- banish-m4 2y ago
  Perhaps the economic calculus is to keep prices of existing clothing high by destroying excess inventory rather than selling at steep discounts to encourage purchase at a S&D intersection via sell-downs, selling this inventory to secondary markets like Ross, TJ Maxx, Salvation Army, and Goodwill, or giving it to charity. It seems like such a waste that could've been captured and used more efficiently. It was perhaps the most expedient action used by a small number of less than resourceful corporate employees trying to write-off excess inventory. The case of plastic bag recycling is outrageous deception.
  - bratwurst3000 2y ago
    The BASF in Germany burned 1 month of cerosine for Frankfurt airport because there were no flights while lockdown. Why didn’t they store it? Because storing is more expensive than burning it. Maybe the same happens to clothes.
  - o11c 2y ago
    Or in other words, the glassmaker's fallacy, and proof that the free market is evil. After all, it is clearly in the glassmaker's best interests to run around breaking windows.
    - banish-m4 2y ago
      ? I think it's just lazy corporate employees didn't know what else to do with large volumes of excess inventory.
      - beckingz 2y ago
        If the margins are high enough, then it's optimal to overproduce and then sell to everyone who will buy at a certain price point. If discounts will reduce your ability to sell the same brand in the future at that price point, it can be financially optimal to destroy it instead. THIS IS INTENTIONAL.
        lotsofpulp 2y ago
        And what about competing clothes sellers willing to sell at lower margins and hence lower prices to customers? The reason this works with clothing for some brands is that some utility of the clothing is in the signaling it provides to the humans wearing it, and the signaling comes from the scarcity of that type of clothing. A clothes seller selling clothing that signals the wearer is able to afford a more scarce type of clothing is thus ruining their own products’ value proposition by decreasing the scarcity of the clothes. That is why it might be better to destroy than see it on sale at TJ Maxx or Walmart or whatever cheap store. Bottom line is clothes sellers are catering to what clothes buyers want. They are not stupid about how to operate their business. And o11c’s comment about glass makers breaking windows is irrelevant since the glass maker does not own the window they are breaking, whereas a clothes seller owns the clothes they might be destroying.
  - II2II 2y ago
    Chances are that a good portion of that clothing was offered to or went to local secondary markets before being sent overseas. (That isn't to say that it was offered for sale. But there is too much for them to handle, particularly since they don't want to dilute their own prices.)
  - codersfocus 2y ago
    I walked by an HM that had trash bags filled with new condition shoes. I started looking through them before I realized they had stamp cut holes through the soles so people couldn’t use it.
duxup 2y ago
I think this situation also demonstrates how it isn't so simple as just getting it to people who might need / use this stuff. I did a big remodel recently, I had a bunch of perfectly good hardware, an entire kitchen of appliances, cabinets, etc, and such items. People told me all about "oh someone might use that", and I'd ask if they would use it, everyone said "no, not me". The local re-use non profits all had big lists of things they don't want, because nobody actually wants them.
- banish-m4 2y ago
  This is a human organization problem that could be mostly solved by technical means. For example, a way to notify big nonprofits that give things to the homeless and ask them to come to a specific location at a certain time to get whatever they want.
  - duxup 2y ago
    I think the re-use people were likely honest when they said nobody wanted that stuff. I don't think there's a magic technical solution. I suspect too that the needy and poor are really the last people with the room and time to stash away a bunch of things they're not using but maybe one day someone will show up and install them... and hopefully they still work.
    - kardos 2y ago
      I don't know. It's probably a problem of effort -- if you need a sink, do you buy a new one, or spend tons of time perusing various used-stuff markets looking for something suitable? There may be an opening there for technology to solve it.
      - mindslight 2y ago
        Sinks generally don't just break. If you're buying a new sink, it's likely to replace a perfectly good used one. So having an ability to easily find even more used sinks wouldn't really change much. Never mind if you're going to spend the effort/money on the work of swapping a sink, you might as well pay a little more for a new sink. ReStore has their niches, but overall there's a large feel good hopecycling dynamic as well. So many used furniture sets just sitting around indefinitely. Exceptions of used things people seek out basically prove the rule - things that you can't get any more (solidly built, repairable appliances, wide lumber, etc), or vintage styles coming back around into fashion.
BurningFrog 2y ago
My understanding is that these days clothing is so cheap that there really isn't a lot of people who lack clothing anymore. Even in the poorest corners of the world, people have a few sets of clothing and maybe even shoes. This is huge progress compared to the old days, when many people only had one set of clothes, and had to wash them naked. If the price for this is a lot of clothing trash, that seems a pretty great bargain to me.
- tomjen3 2y ago
  Truely yes, but I don't think it helps any more. The problem with most of the fast fashion is that the clothes don't last very long, at only a handful of uses, so its only cheaper if you need lots of different outfits. If you are hanging on by a thread, then you need cheap outfits that last for as long as possible.
  - the-grump 2y ago
    This claim is often repeated, but what I buy from H&M lasts years and years.
    - jshorty 2y ago
      Are you using them regularly in physical labor though?
      - peebeebee 2y ago
        I must say: things from H&M hm have regularly been holding up longer than other way more expensive brands. Sometimes they don’t really fit right anymore, but no holes or stitches that come loose.
    - usrusr 2y ago
      So many years in my case that I'm really not sure that the counter would still hold.
    - ZeroGravitas 2y ago
tgsovlerkhgsel 2y ago
If it was useful/needed, it wouldn't be laying in unguarded piles in the desert. What's left over is the stuff that's so useless that even the poorest scavengers aren't interested in it. Even if it might be useful elsewhere, it isn't in that other place because it's so worthless that transporting it isn't worth it. "Would be" useful elsewhere just means "useless where it is". Just like most of the stuff that Amazon gets criticized for throwing in the trash is likely either stuff that's unsafe or so worthless that the pallet-of-random-crap buyers don't want it.

XorNot 2y ago

Is it though? People tend to overestimate the costs of production versus recycling. You could easily spend, in terms of CO2, vastly more resources trying to sort, clean and ship around this stuff, rather then just setting the pile on fire - particularly if it's principally organically-derived fibers (cotton) and not synthetics.

banish-m4 2y ago
Perhaps the economic calculus is to keep prices of existing clothing high by destroying excess inventory rather than selling at steep discounts to encourage purchase at a S&D intersection via sell-downs, selling this inventory to secondary markets like Ross, TJ Maxx, Salvation Army, and Goodwill, or giving it to charity. It seems like such a waste that could've been captured and used more efficiently. It was perhaps the most expedient action used by a small number of less than resourceful corporate employees trying to write-off excess inventory. The case of plastic bag recycling is outrageous deception.
- bratwurst3000 2y ago
  The BASF in Germany burned 1 month of cerosine for Frankfurt airport because there were no flights while lockdown. Why didn’t they store it? Because storing is more expensive than burning it. Maybe the same happens to clothes.
- o11c 2y ago
  Or in other words, the glassmaker's fallacy, and proof that the free market is evil. After all, it is clearly in the glassmaker's best interests to run around breaking windows.
  - banish-m4 2y ago
    ? I think it's just lazy corporate employees didn't know what else to do with large volumes of excess inventory.
    - beckingz 2y ago
      If the margins are high enough, then it's optimal to overproduce and then sell to everyone who will buy at a certain price point. If discounts will reduce your ability to sell the same brand in the future at that price point, it can be financially optimal to destroy it instead. THIS IS INTENTIONAL.
      - lotsofpulp 2y ago
        And what about competing clothes sellers willing to sell at lower margins and hence lower prices to customers? The reason this works with clothing for some brands is that some utility of the clothing is in the signaling it provides to the humans wearing it, and the signaling comes from the scarcity of that type of clothing. A clothes seller selling clothing that signals the wearer is able to afford a more scarce type of clothing is thus ruining their own products’ value proposition by decreasing the scarcity of the clothes. That is why it might be better to destroy than see it on sale at TJ Maxx or Walmart or whatever cheap store. Bottom line is clothes sellers are catering to what clothes buyers want. They are not stupid about how to operate their business. And o11c’s comment about glass makers breaking windows is irrelevant since the glass maker does not own the window they are breaking, whereas a clothes seller owns the clothes they might be destroying.
- II2II 2y ago
  Chances are that a good portion of that clothing was offered to or went to local secondary markets before being sent overseas. (That isn't to say that it was offered for sale. But there is too much for them to handle, particularly since they don't want to dilute their own prices.)
- codersfocus 2y ago
  I walked by an HM that had trash bags filled with new condition shoes. I started looking through them before I realized they had stamp cut holes through the soles so people couldn’t use it.

duxup 2y ago

I think this situation also demonstrates how it isn't so simple as just getting it to people who might need / use this stuff. I did a big remodel recently, I had a bunch of perfectly good hardware, an entire kitchen of appliances, cabinets, etc, and such items. People told me all about "oh someone might use that", and I'd ask if they would use it, everyone said "no, not me". The local re-use non profits all had big lists of things they don't want, because nobody actually wants them.

banish-m4 2y ago
This is a human organization problem that could be mostly solved by technical means. For example, a way to notify big nonprofits that give things to the homeless and ask them to come to a specific location at a certain time to get whatever they want.
- duxup 2y ago
  I think the re-use people were likely honest when they said nobody wanted that stuff. I don't think there's a magic technical solution. I suspect too that the needy and poor are really the last people with the room and time to stash away a bunch of things they're not using but maybe one day someone will show up and install them... and hopefully they still work.
  - kardos 2y ago
    I don't know. It's probably a problem of effort -- if you need a sink, do you buy a new one, or spend tons of time perusing various used-stuff markets looking for something suitable? There may be an opening there for technology to solve it.
    - mindslight 2y ago
      Sinks generally don't just break. If you're buying a new sink, it's likely to replace a perfectly good used one. So having an ability to easily find even more used sinks wouldn't really change much. Never mind if you're going to spend the effort/money on the work of swapping a sink, you might as well pay a little more for a new sink. ReStore has their niches, but overall there's a large feel good hopecycling dynamic as well. So many used furniture sets just sitting around indefinitely. Exceptions of used things people seek out basically prove the rule - things that you can't get any more (solidly built, repairable appliances, wide lumber, etc), or vintage styles coming back around into fashion.

BurningFrog 2y ago

My understanding is that these days clothing is so cheap that there really isn't a lot of people who lack clothing anymore. Even in the poorest corners of the world, people have a few sets of clothing and maybe even shoes. This is huge progress compared to the old days, when many people only had one set of clothes, and had to wash them naked. If the price for this is a lot of clothing trash, that seems a pretty great bargain to me.

tomjen3 2y ago
Truely yes, but I don't think it helps any more. The problem with most of the fast fashion is that the clothes don't last very long, at only a handful of uses, so its only cheaper if you need lots of different outfits. If you are hanging on by a thread, then you need cheap outfits that last for as long as possible.
- the-grump 2y ago
  This claim is often repeated, but what I buy from H&M lasts years and years.
  - jshorty 2y ago
    Are you using them regularly in physical labor though?
    - peebeebee 2y ago
      I must say: things from H&M hm have regularly been holding up longer than other way more expensive brands. Sometimes they don’t really fit right anymore, but no holes or stitches that come loose.
  - usrusr 2y ago
    So many years in my case that I'm really not sure that the counter would still hold.
  - ZeroGravitas 2y ago

tgsovlerkhgsel 2y ago

If it was useful/needed, it wouldn't be laying in unguarded piles in the desert. What's left over is the stuff that's so useless that even the poorest scavengers aren't interested in it. Even if it might be useful elsewhere, it isn't in that other place because it's so worthless that transporting it isn't worth it. "Would be" useful elsewhere just means "useless where it is". Just like most of the stuff that Amazon gets criticized for throwing in the trash is likely either stuff that's unsafe or so worthless that the pallet-of-random-crap buyers don't want it.