Second life thrift1/5/2024 landfill instead.Įven though exporting used clothes extends their life cycle, they still wind up in a landfill. Since these East African markets are worth over $43 million, the loss could mean a blow to the American secondhand clothing industry - and that the clothes get shipped to a U.S. Recently, three East African countries stood up to the industry and initiated a ban on secondhand clothing - and felt strong pushback from American businesses. “No one really wants to be another country’s dumping ground,” Baruchowitz says. has been criticized for the practice, which can erode local clothing markets and traditions. When clothes are in no condition to be worn again, they are shredded and put in insulation or furniture.Īnd while it’s good for the environment to reuse these clothes, it creates ethical quandries. Pakistan is currently the biggest importer of used clothes, with 11 percent of the market, followed by Malaysia, with 7.1 percent, according to M.I.T.’s Observatory of Economic Complexity. The nicest clothes are resold in local thrift stores, but the vast majority of items head overseas, wrapped into enormous plastic bundles. “A lot of people have a misconception that their donations are ending up on the back of someone in need in your community,” says Jessica Schrieber, FabScrap’s founder. Although donating your clothes does extend their lifespan, the issue is their eventual destinations. If you’ve ever dropped off a bag of last year’s clothes at Goodwill, you probably didn’t think you were contributing to waste. “We need to be getting people to think twice about how quickly they consume things.” “We have to educate consumers about the mindless consumption being forced down our throats,” says Adam Baruchowitz, the founder of Wearable Collections, a secondhand clothing retailer. Technology to transform the old clothes into new items isn’t ready yet, so many recyclers and designers are focusing on something else: getting consumers to buy less. ![]() Traditionally, unwanted secondhand clothes are sent abroad, but some countries have started to reject the goods. In New York City alone, this comes to about 400 million pounds thrown away annually - 6 percent of the city’s waste stream. As it stands, 84 percent of all unwanted clothes end up in landfills, according to Newsweek. They’re just one of many well-intentioned textile recycling companies that have bumped up against a painful reality: There is simply too much clothing to process. I was at the headquarters of FabScrap, a textile recycling company that processes material leftover from fashion production. I had signed up to sort through the material, but after working for three long hours alongside five other volunteers, we had barely made it through five bags. A mountain of trash bags blocked any view, each stuffed with thousands of tiny fabric scraps from fashion companies around New York City. ![]() My back was to the windows, but even if I wanted to look outside, I’d have a problem. Inside a large industrial building in Jamaica, Queens, I sighed, taking a quick break from ripping staples off of fabric. The fashonista physicist Rebecca Harrington
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