Many of the clothes we donate to charity end up dumped in landfill • Hacker News Board

Re: Many of the clothes we donate to charity end up dumped in landfill

#181

Post by [deleted] » Tue, Aug 17, 2021, 8:00 PM UTC

ctdonath wrote: post #173

jnwatson wrote: post #48

It is articles like this that remind me that we so desperately need a carbon tax. Making a t-shirt in China, shipping to the US, wearing it for a few times, and then shipping it to Africa should not be economically viable.

Yet here we are, having achieved what so many claim to want yet fret when achieved: capitalism has increased productivity so high, and costs so low, that we can literally "clothe Africa for free". Why the imperative to take from the productive, when they will freely give generously from their surplus?

[deleted]

Re: Many of the clothes we donate to charity end up dumped in landfill

#182

Post by legerdemain » Tue, Aug 17, 2021, 8:10 PM UTC

Clubber wrote: post #180

handrous wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You also see this when people put greasy paper take-out food containers in the recycling. No, it's not recyclable, and worse, it might further contaminate other things and render them non-recyclable as well. But, when I ask houseguests not to put them in our recycle bin, they seem to be honestly startled by the request. Oftentimes they assume it's because I'm a lax recycler and would rather throw things away than s…

Plastic recycling is a sham. We were paying China to take it, and they were putting it in a landfill (probably). China won't take our trash, I mean recycling anymore, so now we're putting it in landfills. General rule of thumb is if you can get money for scrapping it, it's recyclable (aluminum, glass, steel, etc). Companies use plastic because it's cheap and the government won't regulate it. I remember when sodas use…

Glass is mostly "recycled" by crushing, mostly to reduce the hazard of broken glass littering the street. In many states, buying a drink in a glass container carries a nominal extra fee to cover the "recycling." No one actually wants to buy your used glass containers for their own sake.

Re: Many of the clothes we donate to charity end up dumped in landfill

#183

Post by soco » Tue, Aug 17, 2021, 8:12 PM UTC

jxramos wrote: post #162

rhino369 wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Recycling education is awful in America. I made it about 33 years without hearing that take out containers, etc. can’t be recycled.

the problem is the recycling triangle that's imprinted on the containers, the one's showing the material code on it. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Recycling_codes . Somewhere along the line the recycle triangle had become synonymous with recyclable, but what didn't get communicated is that only certain codes paired with that triangle are actually recyclable.

So they use the recycling logo to indicate the material, NOT that it's recyclable. I wonder which genius came up with this idea...

Re: Many of the clothes we donate to charity end up dumped in landfill

#184

Post by VLM » Tue, Aug 17, 2021, 8:12 PM UTC

prvc wrote: post #134

KillahBhyte wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If something ever seems like a popular but illogical set of actions by people, the best way to understand it is to look at the incentives that drive it (thanks Freakonomics). In this case I'd wager two things. As a kid I had family who worked a receiving center for Goodwill. Fairly affluent part of our town near the beach. I remember two distinct things being odd to me then. The items people would bring would sometim…

>I was told then when I asked this was an approximate value of their donation and it was used for tax purposes. So one is probably tax write offs. Anything preventing them from just making up that figure?

Hilariously there is a motivation to provide low value receipts for estate executors.

"That old bookcase? It was only worth a dollar so I sent it to Goodwill after his death, it wasn't in the will and nobody wanted it".

Now maybe an antique dealer could sell it for $400, meaning maybe the seller might have gotten $100, and now the estate executor is in trouble. But he died and there's three days to get all the stuff out of the apartment and nobody has set up an estate-paid-for storage unit (how long can you afford to store something only worth $100 anyway? If estate/probate process takes a year...) or prepared a deal with an antique dealer to immediately accept (and who's going to drive it over there, I don't have time?) and if its not disposed of in three days the building mgr will hire a very expensive per hour cleaning crew to toss it in the trash (at some expense) and deliver a hefty bill to the estate. And Goodwill gave him a receipt for a dollar so its documented at least. The Goodwill receipt at least proves the executor didn't steal from the estate by hiding the bookcase in her basement and selling it later on ebay for $400. As if she's young enough to know what ebay is.

Re: Many of the clothes we donate to charity end up dumped in landfill

#185

Post by VLM » Tue, Aug 17, 2021, 8:20 PM UTC

kipchak wrote: post #82

Causality1 wrote: post #4

We’re buying 60 per cent more clothes now than we did 15 years ago. This is something I find baffling. I have a clothes closet and a chest of drawers. They comfortably hold more than enough for me to go a week or two without doing laundry. When I've worn too many holes in something for me to patch and use as outdoor work wear it goes in the garbage. That people have such an addiction to buying new clothes they have t…

From the article, "A major survey in the UK six years ago found one in three young women considered garments “old” if they had been worn just twice." I'm like you, but I think there's a pretty big disconnect between us and the average person into fashion.

You can manipulate surveys to generate any requested outrage. Generally you can assume any mention of a survey is propaganda and can be ignored.

Its pretty trivial to imagine how this desired result was produced:

"Would you be angry if you paid a falsely advertised full 'new' price for a garment actually worn by others at least three or more times?"

I know I'd be pretty annoyed if I paid full "new" price for shoes and they arrived and someone else has been wearing the tread off of them for the last six months, LOL.

Re: Many of the clothes we donate to charity end up dumped in landfill

#186

Post by handrous » Tue, Aug 17, 2021, 8:23 PM UTC

legerdemain wrote: post #182

Clubber wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Plastic recycling is a sham. We were paying China to take it, and they were putting it in a landfill (probably). China won't take our trash, I mean recycling anymore, so now we're putting it in landfills. General rule of thumb is if you can get money for scrapping it, it's recyclable (aluminum, glass, steel, etc). Companies use plastic because it's cheap and the government won't regulate it. I remember when sodas use…

Glass is mostly "recycled" by crushing, mostly to reduce the hazard of broken glass littering the street. In many states, buying a drink in a glass container carries a nominal extra fee to cover the "recycling." No one actually wants to buy your used glass containers for their own sake.

As recently as the early 90s there were still grocery stores that'd take back glass soda bottles to refill them, but the only places I know that still do anything like that are some fancy dairies (via the grocery stores that distribute their product).

Re: Many of the clothes we donate to charity end up dumped in landfill

#187

Post by AngryData » Tue, Aug 17, 2021, 8:24 PM UTC

erfgh wrote: post #62

atlasunshrugged wrote: post #29

Really interesting having just come back from a project in Kenya (and a vacation in Uganda) and one of the really striking things was how many older American/EU clothes were on the street (e.g. sweaters from smaller colleges, shirts referencing mid-sized sporting events for american football). I asked a few of the people I was working with about it and they were quite negative, along with cheap Chinese imports, it ha…

Do you mean that if people there only had access to more expensive clothing they would be better off?

Yes, because it builds local industry, and textiles is often a key industry in industrialization. It is "easy" automation, builds local tooling and machining demands, and still requires significant further labor to finish which is cheap in that area.

It certainly isn't the only way, but textile production often one of the first industries to get build in industrialization.

Re: Many of the clothes we donate to charity end up dumped in landfill

#188

Post by legerdemain » Tue, Aug 17, 2021, 8:25 PM UTC

handrous wrote: post #186

legerdemain wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Glass is mostly "recycled" by crushing, mostly to reduce the hazard of broken glass littering the street. In many states, buying a drink in a glass container carries a nominal extra fee to cover the "recycling." No one actually wants to buy your used glass containers for their own sake.

As recently as the early 90s there were still grocery stores that'd take back glass soda bottles to refill them, but the only places I know that still do anything like that are some fancy dairies (via the grocery stores that distribute their product).

Yeah, and I remember beer in iron cans... and that's about as relevant to the majority of consumers.

Re: Many of the clothes we donate to charity end up dumped in landfill

#189

Post by AngryData » Tue, Aug 17, 2021, 8:29 PM UTC

the_gipsy wrote: post #171

boringg wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Um not to be crass but like most of the work everyone does on this form is probably close meaningless and often times redundant. I don't mean it in a derogatory way. And the adjective you should have used is redundant work. Clearly the work has meaning if it keeps people employed and building skills.

But you are advocating against sending free clothes with the goal of creating a scarcity so that people work to produce clothing, which they’ll essentially buy back. This is macabre.

They are advocating not crashing a local industry. How would you fair if your own industry or other local businesses was suddenly destroyed because China decided to give your work away for free in massive overabundance? With zero guarantees that they wont randomly stop supplying on an irregular schedule.

Re: Many of the clothes we donate to charity end up dumped in landfill

#190

Post by handrous » Tue, Aug 17, 2021, 8:33 PM UTC

legerdemain wrote: post #188

handrous wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As recently as the early 90s there were still grocery stores that'd take back glass soda bottles to refill them, but the only places I know that still do anything like that are some fancy dairies (via the grocery stores that distribute their product).

Yeah, and I remember beer in iron cans... and that's about as relevant to the majority of consumers.

Sure, it's just that not that long ago, it was economically feasible, so it's not like it's some kind of unattainable fantasy. A couple laws, and a 5-10% hike on the costs of drinks distributed in bottles (thanks to the added costs of handling & recycling glass), and we'd be back there. It's something we definitely could do.

But yes, right now the main glass recycler in our area just crushes everything up and turns it into fiber glass. Only an irrelevantly-small fraction of bottles are re-used. I expect we'll switch to some kind of plant-based plastics before we bring back glass recycling for drink containers, though I wouldn't wholly rule out the possibility of a shift back to glass.