I wrote this blog in 2013, and I never published it. I have a hard time putting my feelings about this issue into words. I hope I am not offending anyone with this. It's just my opinion.
Obviously, I like to buy stuff second-hand. And also obviously, this saves my family a lot of money. But I wanted to share my reasons, which are a lot deeper than just the dollars, for wanting to promote buying "used".
The first part of the story is about the United States. We have a lot of stuff. We have a lot of clothes. Items are produced cheaply and are fairly cheap to buy. So we do buy. I spent 6 months working at Super WalMart in Ames. There was a whole section in the front of the store that is for "seasonal" items. There you would find plastic dishes and beach toys in the spring, or Halloween costumes, fall decor and trinkets in the fall. Every few weeks the shelves would be clearanced and new items brought in. And the truth is that these items, once purchased, are used for a few months and then disposed of. It started to really bother me to see such a huge volume of stuff sold- in just one store, in one town.
The same is true for clothing. How many items of clothing did an average person own in 1960? I tried to find some statistics and had no luck, but I know it was a lot less than is common now. Closets were even made smaller back then. Clothing also cost more in 1960, but that is in large part due to the cost of manufacturing. Clothing used to be really well-made, and most of it was produced in the USA. You spent more but wore it more often and longer. It was made of higher quality fabric and sewn more carefully.
So these days we spend less on our clothes and are more likely to think of them as disposable. But you don't throw them away when you don't want them anymore, right? You donate them. Charities like Goodwill and the Salvation Army take them and re-sell them. Disabled people get jobs, poor people buy clothes they can afford, charities earn money. Yea! Everybody wins, right?
This is the second part of the story. It is about third-world countries where a lot of our unwanted clothes end up. Charity organizations like Goodwill sell bales of clothing which make their way around the world to countries in Africa and elsewhere, where they are sold on the street. So some man in Ghana could be wearing the pair of Dockers and the old basketball shirt you donated! Which is not bad. I don't mind that either. Not that part. The part I do mind is that it has driven the local fabric manufacturing and garmet construction industries out of buisness in those places. So our donated clothing is actually getting in the way of local industry and economy in third-world countries.
I want to be clear that I do not think badly of Goodwill or any other organization for doing this. They have extra clothes and they have found a solution for them. I still donate all our old clothes and I encourage you to also. The problem is the volume of donated clothing is so huge that charities don't even have the time to sort through it all, let alone sell it all.
My small way of helping with this problem is to buy used clothing. And pre-owned dishes. And books, and toys, and jewelry...... Every time I am re-using someone else's discarded item, I think to myself, "that is one less." One less item from an unethical factory. One less piece of plastic headed to the landfill. And hopefully, one more seamstress, cotton farmer, factory worker or sales clerk with a job in Africa.
It's Ok to buy new clothes, too. I do that sometimes =) Just try and be more mindful about it: Do I need this? Is it well-made? Will it be out of style next season? Where was it produced?
If you would like to read more about this, here are some articles by people who know more about it than me:
your-donated-clothes-may-be-killing-africas-fashion-industry/
The Salvation Army and Goodwill: Inside the places your clothes go when you donate them_.html
The Truth About Where Your Donated Clothes End Up
Happy Thrifting!
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