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Many clothing donations end up in African landfills

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Re: Many clothing donations end up in African landfills

#101

Post by paganel »

dexwiz wrote: post #49
deathanatos wrote: post #19

> Today, the average American buys 68 new items of clothing per year. > “You wonder, do people in America have so much money that they can just wear things once and then throw them away?” I uh… I too would like to know. What scares me is that the use of whatever demographic is causing that average has to be way higher than the actual average, but this feels like it has to be bimodal. And there are lots of these numbe…

Living with my girlfriend really opened my eyes to how many clothes women go through. She even tries to be responsible about it and sell items to second hand markets, but I still think it’s a bit crazy. - Women’s fashion cycles much faster then men’s. Office wear is a bit more stable but anything aimed as social settings like weddings may only provide a few opportunities to wear it before it’s out of style. Men can r…

> Guys can wear a shirt for years to the point it’s vintage. If a woman does that, she will very often get judged by her peers.

I'm a man, in my early 40s, got recently lauded by a total stranger (younger kid, mid-20s I'd say) for wearing a 15-year old t-shirt which had become vintage in the meantime (an Emerica t-shirt, bought when I was in my mid-20s and when I thought that wearing skate clothing even though I wasn't doing any skating at all was cool). My feminine SO probably wouldn't have received the same reaction had she worn a 15-year old piece of clothing.

That said, there are some vintage clothes that women can also wear without being judged, but we're not talking about clothes that are worn on a regular basis, I'm talking about "that blouse my mom used to wear in the late 1980s and which is cool to wear in more hippy-ish environments from time to time".

Re: Many clothing donations end up in African landfills

#102

Post by ht_th »

pkaye wrote: post #60
gexla wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Book this is extracted from and the passage is here... https://books.google.com.ph/books?id=-4ODDwAAQBAJ&pg=PA3&dq=... They don't seem to have a source. Not linked anyways. Sources might be listed at the end of the book. ETA: Ah, they have the "source" in "notes." They are quoting a CEO of a retailer, so I guess they wouldn't ask sources. You would need to "fact-check" the CEO. ;) I suppose you could just skip over a…

> According to Jennifer Hyman, the C.E.O. of Rent the Runway, I am not alone. “Every woman has the feeling of opening up her closet and seeing the dozens of dead dresses that she’s worn only once,” she told me recently. Each year, as Hyman is fond of pointing out, the average American buys sixty-eight items of clothing, eighty per cent of which are seldom worn; twenty per cent of what the $2.4-trillion global fashion…

On the other hand, if this number also includes socks, underwear, rain wear, winter wear, sports clothing, swim clothing, etc., it might be less absurd. And don't get me started on clothing for young children, of course.

Still, when you say "68 items of clothing", most people think pants, blouses, dresses, costumes, and the like. But that's the fun with statistics :-(

Re: Many clothing donations end up in African landfills

#103

Post by beebeepka »

faangiq wrote: post #88

Why not just burn them?

Seriously? Some of the poorest people around here do that sort of thing in the winter. The fumes are horrible and include all rainbow colours.

This entire thread is horrible. Not many other topics bring out the worst of people. Disgust is what I feel reading many of the comments here. Apparently waste is good and even if it were bad, what can you do, heh?

Re: Many clothing donations end up in African landfills

#105

Post by vidarh »

MattGaiser wrote: post #62
deathanatos wrote: post #19

> Today, the average American buys 68 new items of clothing per year. > “You wonder, do people in America have so much money that they can just wear things once and then throw them away?” I uh… I too would like to know. What scares me is that the use of whatever demographic is causing that average has to be way higher than the actual average, but this feels like it has to be bimodal. And there are lots of these numbe…

Some of my female relatives truly believe that no outfit should be worn twice, even for men. A piece might be worn a few times with different things, but never the same thing twice. They have even criticized me for wearing the same tie two says in a row or not refreshing my t-shirt colours regularly. And I should have two suits in case I go to a two day event.

Meanwhile my most recent clothes purchase was 6 identical plain black t-shirts.

I'd drive your relatives crazy.

Re: Many clothing donations end up in African landfills

#106

Post by vasco »

sangnoir wrote: post #92
AussieWog93 wrote: post #69

I'm in e-commerce, and reading through this thread I think many people have the misconception that people make purchases to solve problems and want that solution to last as long as possible. In reality, and this is something I spent a long time coming to terms with, much shopping is done because it's fun. Spending money isn't a cost - it's the whole point of the exercise.

Did shopping become fun because fast-fashion clothes were cheap, or did clothes become cheap because shopping is fun? I'm also e-commerce-adjacent, but I believe fast-fashion (especially synthetics) is bad for humanity. Sure, people are making loads of money[1], but it's an ecological disaster in the making. 1. Me included, but only getting a little. Shein is getting ALL the money.

Fast fashion only opens the door for "fun" to be had be normal people. Rich people going on a buying spree has generally always been a thing.

Re: Many clothing donations end up in African landfills

#107

Post by gexla »

dehrmann wrote: post #82
gexla wrote: post #31

Hopefully the climate change issue could motivate to change this. Even if this stuff is piling up in a place sight unseen from the origin, it's still coming back to that origin in ways which we don't well understand. Just as the pandemic accelerated global cooperation and change, so could the climate issue. If the US wanted to shut down this problem, regulators could find the key spot to put a bullet into. Ideally th…

Clothes are a small source of CO2 emissions compared to transportation and electricity. > Just as the pandemic accelerated global cooperation and change No, cooperation has gotten worse . Look at how many countries want to repatriate industries so they're not dependent on others. > Today I do all my shopping considering what it would be like to burn it. Car shopping would be so much fun. I'll just leave that one ther…

Haha, the trash issue actually did help my consumption. I didn't have much of a choice at the time, so I lived like I was camping and did manage to keep my trash down to almost nothing. I had a laptop, clothes and some gadgets. Many drinks come in bottles which really do get re-used. I can get meat and veggies at the market with no packaging. Certainly, burning trash isn't good for the environment though.

As for cheap trash, I don't do research into that. It's not expensive to get rid of trash, but it must come with significant enough expenses that it can be shipped via container to another country. Though maybe we're not using the correct terms. This article is talking about clothes. The origin countries may have logistical difficulties with certain types of things which would otherwise go into a landfill. Throw one shirt into the landfill? Fine. Bring dump-trucks of clothes? Maybe now we have a problem. Same for E-waste (also an issue here in the form of used computers which are barely usable.) I could see shipping this stuff overseas as taking a major problem off someone's hands. I imagine it's massively expensive to clean up for plants which deal with large volumes of the worst chemicals, but they deal with high enough margins to pay for the clean-up and some things you can't pawn off on someone else without moving industries (exporting waste and pollution creating manufacturing to China.)

ETA: Recyclable materials is another "trash-like" item which gets shipped. I believe China has since blocked this?

Re: Many clothing donations end up in African landfills

#108

Post by robin_reala »

null_deref wrote: post #97
x3iv130f wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I buy mostly luxury brands however there are quite a few tricks with it. Buying luxury off the rack at a well known store is almost always a bad financial decision. I stick primarily to lesser known brands that still maintain good quality. I almost always buy used with just a few exceptions. For some reason it is hard for me to find good pants used or with any sort of discount.

Where do you find second hand clothing? I use Facebook Marketplace for furniture and electronics, but I find it uncomfortable to buy second hand clothing from there

Sellpy in Sweden: https://www.sellpy.se/

Re: Many clothing donations end up in African landfills

#109

Post by vasco »

dustymcp wrote: post #95
Aerroon wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The answer is "yes". This is part of what makes America (and the rest of the world) so rich compared to the past. A while ago I was looking to buy a small knife for the kitchen and I found a whole pack of them. The average cost of each knife was 60 cents. The meal you prepare with that knife is going to cost more than the knife itself. That just blew me away. Imagine showing this kind of wealth to somebody from the m…

Well the issue with that is overproduction and saturation of the soils its grown in, to the massive amount of nutrients going into the groundwater except for those things over production is good /s

What is your argument? The person you replied to explained why this is necessary while we don't have more sophisticated supply chains to prevent hunger. Would you prefer more people die of hunger to not saturate some grounds?

Re: Many clothing donations end up in African landfills

#110

Post by vasco »

chii wrote: post #81
colechristensen wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A lot of food waste happens in the supply chain before you ever get the chance to buy it which then gets attributed to the whole population. I think there are quite a lot larger sources of waste than food or clothing in our economy where things could be engineered to last a lot longer and be more repairable but aren't so they will be purchased more often. (think heavy things: appliances, vehicles, tools, etc) The mos…

I think individual action like not buying a new car doesn't really save much in the production process (it saves only on the consumption side, like less gas being used in driving). A car's required raw material is not going to be mined less because a few people decides not to buy a car - the iron ore and plastics are all going to have been mined at scale (thus, the marginal cost of a few more kgs of material is not a…

A lot of people are made of individual people.
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