July 25, 2012 • 23 mins
Where do our clothes end up when we donate them? (hint: Africa) In fact, donated and discarded clothing may be the #1 American export. Tune in to learn how donated clothes from the West are destroying local textile industries in developing countries
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve camera.
It's ready. Are you welcome to stuff Mom Never told you?
From House stuff Works dot Com. Hello, and welcome to
the podcast. I'm Caroline, and I'm Kristin Um Kristen. I
(00:22):
like to donate things to goodwill, not necessarily to help people,
although I'm glad that's a part of it, but mainly
because I have a tendency to love shopping women women
be shopping, Caroline b shopping, Caroline Bie shopping, and I
end up buying things that are maybe a little too
(00:43):
trendy for me, something that maybe doesn't fit right, and
I think it'll fit better later inexplicably, And so I
end up keeping a bag in my closet at all
times that I can just throw stuff into for goodwill,
And especially when I move, I end up taking like
sex and stuff over there, and probably while you're clearing
(01:03):
out closet space, you know, and it's more of like
an organizational thing at first. I'm sure there's a moment
when you drop those clothes off you're like patting yourself
on the back a little bit, being like, hey, off
to a better off, to a better place somebody's going
to enjoy this and Taylor skirt and where it's to
their job. Spoiler alert everybody, We shouldn't be patting ourselves
(01:25):
on the back so much because you might be surprised
about what happens to all of those clothes. In particular,
we're focusing on clothing donations that you might drop off
at your local thrift store. And what first caught our
attention was a June nineteenth article on Slate which was
(01:46):
an excerpt from Elizabeth Klein's book Overdressed, the Shockingly High
Cost of Cheap Fashion, And this excerpt was focusing on, uh,
this enormous salvation army in Brooklyn that processes five tons
of clothes thing every day and a ton more during
the holidays, because typically the holidays are when clothing donations
will spike. And in this salvation army, they choose eleven
(02:11):
two garments per day to divvy up among the eight
thrift stores they've served. And then if things sit on
the rack toolong once they're in the stores, they are
sent to the rag cut room, were closed or put
into a compressor that squeezes out half ton cubes. And
then these halfson cubes the way that that she describes it,
it sounds like the warehouse in Indiana Jones, you know
(02:34):
when they put the ark in that box and like
it pans back and there's just millions of boxes and
that tiny little thing. But they put out eighteen tons
worth of clothing bales every three days, which blows my mind.
How is it even possible that people are buying and
consequently subsequently therefore thus getting rid of that many clothes.
(02:57):
It boggles the mind because Americans be shopping. We'd be shopping, yeah,
and actually you're used clothes end up getting sold most
of the time, not given away to help people. This
is according to a December two thousand, sixth story on
ABC news dot com. Charitable organizations only keep about ten
percent of the donations, which is the best quality stuff,
(03:18):
the stuff that's not torn or soil, the vintage stuff,
the designer label stuff to sell to other Americans. Other
other people go into the thrift store or the consignment
shop to buy the stuff. The remaining is gets sold
by the charitable institution to places like textile recycling firms
for about five to seven cents per pound. Yeah. According
(03:39):
to members of the Secondary Recycled Textiles Association uh their industry,
the recycling. The textile recycling industry buys up hundreds of
millions of dollars worth of clothing every year, and then
the recyclers will turn the clothing into cleaning claws and
other industrial items so that they can reap a profit. Right,
(03:59):
And could think like, all right, well, so it's a
little bit wasteful to keep buying so many clothes and
then just ship them off to wherever. But you know
what all this recycling is it possibly helping the environment
um And the answer to that is, well, maybe a
little bit, a little bit. I mean, you know, we're
(04:20):
talking about textile recycling. Recycling is you know, a good word, right,
That's what we want to to do with our things.
We don't want to just throw them away. But according
to the Council for Textile Recycling, they estimate that two
point five billion pounds of post consumer textile waste is
collected and prevented from directly entering the wast stream. Two
point five billion pounds. That's a lot of pounds not
(04:42):
ending up in the waste stream. But bad news, folks,
that's only about fifteen percent of all of those pencil
skirts and jeans and vests and unfortunate sweaters that we're
dumping off. So it has to go somewhere, like they're
they're reaches a critical point and it has to pop
(05:02):
and go somewhere. So we've got all these clothes that's
sit in the thrift stores, but you know, like you said,
they only stay there for a certain amount of time.
Some of them end up recycled, some of them end
up as you know, like industrial whatever whatever. Where does
the rest of it go? Well, it's shipped overseas, which
isn't terribly surprising, but I was mind boggled to learn
(05:24):
that by one estimate, this is according to Elizabeth Klein
and her book Overdressed. By one estimate, use clothing is
the United States number one export by volume, and most
of it heads straight to Sub Saharan Africa. Yeah, that
is pretty mind boggling considering, I mean considering you just
think of industry, You think of manufacturing, You don't think
(05:47):
of bales of clothing. Yeah, going to people gap T
shirts and whatnot. Um Japan is actually the largest buyer
in terms of dollars of vintage or American high end fashion.
That's according to a T Cousan seven Environmental Health Perspective study.
And I don't know, they're just like rating our closets
for for vintage stuff. I guess it's hot over there. Well,
(06:08):
And so much of the fashion also will end up
in Africa. But the used clothing market has become increasingly
demanding for higher quality and fashion forward styles. Yeah, Western
media has now infiltrated, and you know they want to
emulate the kinds of high end brands and looks that
(06:29):
we're wearing around right. Um, so okay, all right, So
we send a lot of clothes to Africa, a lot
of clothes end up over there in their markets and such,
Um is this a bad thing? Are we? Are we
helping people by giving those less fortunate clothing to wear? Right,
because it seems like it seems like a good cause.
A lot of charities focus around sending clothes specifically to Africa.
(06:55):
But the thing that we might not realize is that
while we might think that we are doing a good
thing by donating and that it's okay that all of
this used clothing is flooding African markets, it's actually undercutting
and even destroying local textile markets in Africa. Right, This
(07:15):
is coming from Mary and Nana Ama Donqua. In the
Route from two thousand nine, she said that it's the
whole old colonial mentality of ours is better than yours,
kind of a whole like hand me down from your
older sister to your younger sister, and that while we
may think we're helping, we're actually hurting a lot of
people who have ended up losing their jobs in the
(07:37):
local textile industries. She says that for instance, in Kenya,
used the used clothing industry is the country's seventh largest import,
and in Malawi, Mozambique and Uganda, large textile companies have
ended up either going into bankruptcy or just closing all together. Yeah,
this isn't some kind of philosophical debate over the developed
(07:57):
world infiltrating the developing world and ruining everything because America
is terrible. But I mean, it seems like if you
look at say Zambia, where textile workers have staged strikes
to promote awareness of them losing their jobs because of
all this used clothing and all of the demand for it.
And in Ghana, the government actually announced a program called
(08:20):
National Friday Wear, which encourages all citizens to dress in
traditional clothes as a way to honor their own local
customs but also reinvigorate textile trades there right. Neil Kearney,
who was the General Secretary of the International Textile Garment
and Leather Workers Federation, told ABC News basically he agrees
(08:42):
with Don Qua when he says that it is neo
colonialism in its purest form. It's exporting poverty to Africa,
a continent that is already exceedingly poor. And you definitely
have to look at attitudes toward both the imported used
clothing and the more traditional tire because, for instance, like
younger people are more drawn, like we talked about with
(09:04):
the media, younger people are more drawn to the Western clothes,
and they're not just going towards any Western clothes. I
mean they want to go to the market and pick
out the stuff that's you know, on trend. Yeah, And
these markets are actually referred to as bend over markets
because literally you go in there and bend down and
sift through piles and piles of all of these clothes.
(09:24):
And it's referred to often as dead white people's clothes
because culturally they feel like only death could separate white
people from such nice clothing. Yeah, in Togo it's called
dead Yovo clothing, dead white person clothing. In Ghana, I'm
not sure if I'm pronouncing this right. Brownie wah woh
white man has died. And so you have this sort
(09:47):
of losing, this getting out of touch with the traditional attire,
which is why I like in Ghana they had that
National Friday Wear event. But um, they point out that
traditional clothes do have meaning, like the same thing with
you know, Scottish tartan, you know, can symbolize your clan
or whatever. Um. Many designs have names, contained stories, document events.
(10:08):
They're even used as a part of dowry that a
male suitor presents to the woman's family and some are
handed down from one generation to another. Yeah, and just
to reiterate, um, how all of us use clothing and
it really it traces back to our consumer culture of
consuming cheap fashion that we don't necessarily need and discarding
a lot of it. Um. To understand just how much
(10:31):
this is having an effect on industry in Africa, a
two thousand eight University of Toronto study found that use
clothing exports have explained about fort of decline in apparel
production in Africa. And fifty percent of the decline and
employment in that same industry from to two thousand. Yeah,
(10:54):
so there's a lot of clothes. Those are some staggering stats. Yeah, well,
it's interesting that back to that environmental health perspective study
from two thousand seven, I didn't I guess I just
always thought of good will as existing and people have
always donated the same amount of clothes. But apparently since
two thousand one, good will industries have seen a sixty
seven increase in its sale of donated goods, most of
(11:15):
its clothing, And that probably has something to do with
like tax breaks well and also the recession. I'm sure
that people are shopping at thrift stores possibly more often
than they are. But also I'm one to shop for
shop at thrift stores as well for clothes. But I
will tell you what, Like I have to confess that
half the time I will buy up a bunch of stuff,
(11:38):
a lot of dresses and skirts and probably unfortunate vests,
and because it's so cheap at the thrift store, and
you can find like interesting kitchy stuff, but a lot
of times, like I'll end up redonating most of what
I get because it's that cheap fashion even still one
thing that I was thinking of this not not entirely
off topic, but it just made me think of buying
(12:00):
things at a thrift store and then bringing them back.
But it seems like a good thing to do in
this case. Since African markets are flooded, you know, companies
aren't taking as many items to recycle and create new items.
I mean, maybe the best option is to just have
clothing swaps with your friends. Yeah. I really got thinking
about that because I have. I mean, when I moved
(12:23):
out of Augusta, I mean I've been there for four years.
I lived in a two bedroom apartment by myself. You
accumulate some stuff, and I mean I took sacks of
stuff to Goodwill, and I just wonder, you know, if
I had gotten people together and been like, okay, let's
hang up all the clothes according to size and put
all the kitschy whatever items together and just like swap
just take things. I feel like it's less wasteful. Yeah,
(12:45):
maybe thinking about reusing before recycling. Yeah. Um, And it's
great to get close from your friends because usually it's
you know, fun, and well it's free. So that's what
And I managed to give my toaster and a desk
to a friend of mine before I left to go stuff.
So see I didn't have to take everything to goodwill.
Good for you. Uh yeah, just reflecting how much, uh
(13:07):
we not only are buying more and more and more,
but the export of use clothing from the US has
nearly tripled between two three, and I have a feeling
that's according to the International Trade Commission that the number
has probably only gone up since then too. Yeah, well,
I thought it was interesting to Slate. The Elizabeth Klein
(13:30):
excerpt in Slate pointed out that charities do see a
ton of clothes donated with the tag still on. So
we're buying all these clothes and we're not actually using them,
wearing them, we're just getting rid of them. And you
know what, Caroline, we gotta talk straight to the ladies.
Right now, women will be shopping too much. Okay, when
it comes to who is buying up more clothes and
(13:53):
who's donating more of these clothes, it is above and
beyond women who are constant cleaning out their closets, right yeah,
Slate side of the shop Smart survey that one in
four American women owned seven pairs of jeans. I'm not
gonna say anything about that. From my closet seven pairs
(14:14):
of jeans, but we're only four regularly. And according to
that Environmental Health Perspective study, women in the West tend
to buy much more clothing and discard it more often
than men do, and the world supply of used women's
clothing is at least seven times that of men. Yeah,
because they just they're like, I'm gonna go to T
J max and buy some socks. And you know, it's
(14:35):
another unfortunate confession that I have to make. Not only
do I have those excess jeans sitting in my my bureau,
I've also got excess jeggings. It only gets worse. I well,
you know, I can't even tell you Kristen and I
are both sitting here in V neck T shirts. I
have an excess of V neck T shirts in my
(14:57):
closet too. It's little silly. Uh Yeah. Just to hammer
this home even more, we're gonna beat you over the
head with statistics. Clothing statistics Today environmental journalist Lucy Siegel,
who wrote to Die for his fashion wearing out the world,
and then you can probably guess through the answers. Yes,
she found that the average woman buys about sixty two
pounds of clothing each year. And and not only that,
(15:21):
the amount, the size of our closets has only grown
um and the the number of items clothing items that
women have today is four times that a woman in Yeah,
I have a huge closet. Do you ever go into
old houses or old apartments and see teeny tiny closets?
I'm like, how do these people live? I have an
incredibly small closet and it is, but it's bursting at
(15:44):
it seems from all those jeggings. Well. The according to
the Clothing and Textiles Research Journal in two thousand nine,
they were trying to answer the question of why people
doing and we kind of touched on this before you know,
you think you're helping people or you just need to
clean out your closet. They found that the primary motivation
(16:06):
for participants used clothing donation behavior is the need to
create space in the closet for something new, not to
help people necessarily, not to get a tax break or whatever,
but just to create space for more clothing. Well, and
then there's a whole do gooder aspect of it as well,
because a lot of times these are charities and this
is not us lambasting Goodwill or Salvation Army or thrift
(16:29):
stores in general. Um, but because it is seen as
a good thing to do. And hey, you're sending clothes
over to Africa, Like okay, that sounds like a good
thing to do as well. And when ABC News interviewed
people on the street who are donating clothes and said, hey,
did you know that this is actually where your clothes go,
They're like, well, I'm still I'm still going to donate.
(16:50):
Like what else do we do? Yeah, well, I mean
another option, I guess. And and this would definitely be
a question for our listeners to who might be involved
in charities or uh giving. I mean, maybe there are
other organizations more local to you know, maybe like women's shelters,
UM homeless shelters, homeless shelters. There's in Marietta, where I'm from,
(17:13):
there's a place called Must Ministries that doesn't actually charge
people to buy things. You know, you can kind of
just go in there and and shop if you don't
have the means to pay. Yeah. And I was rooting
around for any kinds of tips on responsible sustainable clothing donation,
and there really wasn't anything out there. Aside from try
(17:35):
to pass it off, put it in the hands of
somebody else, gets someone some more used out of it.
But really, at the end of the day, it boils
down to our consumer behavior and the way that the
cheap fashion industry especially has blown up. And it's so
easy to go and you buy a new top for
(17:55):
a little pick me up and it's only you know,
a few bucks really, and then when it gets about it, yeah,
well when it gets a tear in it a month later,
you're like, you don't feel guilty about either throwing it
in the good will pile or throwing it in the
trash can because it doesn't cost us a lot, you know,
but it's costing people elsewhere their livelihood. So things to
(18:16):
think about. And for this one, I really hope that
we can hear from some listeners who might have some
suggestions for things to do, creative ways and sustainable ways
to donate your clothes. But really we need to have
a little more willpower when it comes to all our shopping.
We don't need to be shopping so much. Yeah, and
I mean this, we could go on and on about
(18:37):
this topic. I mean, there are groups of women who
have you know, committed to not shopping for a year,
you know, not adding to their closets. There was some
woman I wish I could remember the specifics, some woman
profiled in a magazine. She was going to wear the
same dress every day for a year and just style
it differently. Well, and that's the thing too. It's also
we should probably change our approach to how we select clothes,
(18:59):
buying for quality that can last you for a long
time rather than trendy, cheap, gonna fall apart pretty soon
anyway kind of stuff. And that can be hard to remember,
especially when the better quality stuff is more expensive, you know,
and you want to buy out soda pop. Also when
you're at the mall, it's thorty, Yeah, how can you?
(19:19):
How can you buy a nice dress and a soda pop?
I'll tackle we'll tackle that burning question in another episode,
but in the meantime, listeners, please write in let us
know what you think and anyone out there who might
work for um a chair and associated with clothing donation
is just something that comes up. Let us know all
(19:40):
of your thoughts. Mom Stuff discovery dot com is where
you can email us if you like, and of course
you can always head over to Facebook and leave us
a comment there, And we've got a couple of listener emails,
one of which starts out from a long ago podcast
about whether or not you can marry your cousin. Right
this is for Shelley. She said that she had just
(20:02):
listened to that podcast and had avoided it for some
time as I was a bit uncertain what to expect.
I am the product of first cousin parents, as is
my sister. Neither of us are sickly, nor do we
have any genetic defects that I'm aware of. To be fair,
most of my family line is fairly healthy. But I
have had to endure entirely too much ridicule about being
inbred by people who I believe could have benefited from
(20:24):
more lessons in manners. Now I generally tell people if
it comes up, although I'm usually not want to raise
the topic, that if they value me as a friend,
they better not laugh, and if they are jerks, I
will punch them in the faith. So far, I've never
had to do this. I am glad that you took
an objective look at the issue. I personally have no
cousins I want to marry. Plus I'm already married but
(20:44):
do not see it as particularly aberrant. It does make
sense from an anthropological perspective. Before the world of online dating,
and even before license matchmakers to marry someone similar to
you culturally, my parents did consult doctors about the genetic
factors of having children, but so far my sister and
I seem as well adjusted as can be expected in
this economy. Well, I have one here from Wren, who
(21:07):
is a self professed manic pixie dream girl who loves flowers, kitties,
and fuzzy pink sweaters and does custom knitting and sewing,
which sounds very fun. She writes. The first few times
I saw mpdgs in movies and on TV, I was
charmed and amused, and I got pretty used to friends
calling me to tell me how much Natalie Portman or
Zoe Deschanel's character reminded them of me. At first, it
(21:30):
was flattering. Who wouldn't want people to equate them with
such talented, lovely ladies? But I would love to be
compared to these particular actresses for other reasons. How about
Portman's amazing scientific CV or Decchannell's success as a musician.
Over time, I've found that the stereotype has grown extremely stifling.
Mpdgs are so frequently portrayed as having such care free,
(21:50):
trouble free lives that people have started to get baffled
and recently even upset. When I have troubles in my life,
I'm expected to have no more urgent a crisis than
the crafts are having the exact right, fluffy, sparkly yarn,
or being stuck in another state without bus fare because
I planned an excursion poorly. When I have real troubles
with my family, my work life, my home life, or
really anything serious, people act put out as if it
(22:13):
were my responsibility to be always accessible and upbeat, ready
to cheer them up or shake them out of their ruts.
All in all, I don't think that the MPDG stereotype
is harmful per se, but the fact that she is
only ever shown as a care free accessory to a
male protagonist is leading to society making unfair judgments women
who espouse similar views on life or who hold overlapping interests. Really,
(22:36):
even when women who just like to be girly are
being held to unrealistic expectations of behavior. More disturbing is
that I think that as the trend progresses. Women who
don't have any genuine interests in certain hobbies or who
don't want such a whimsical lifestyle are being drawn into
falsely portraying themselves in such a manner to attract attention
and accolades. There's nothing wrong with doing what you love,
but I feel like it's extremely dangerous to society as
(22:58):
a whole if any segment of the population is expected
to fit such a mold. So thanks to Wren and
everybody else who has written in mom Stuff at Discovery
dot Com is where you can email us. You can
also find us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter
at mom Stuff Podcast, and you can read a blog
post I did called how to Recycle your Underwear Speaking
(23:21):
of clothing donations at how stuff works dot com for
more on this and thousands of other topics. Does it
how stuff works dot Com brought to you by the
reinvented two thousand twelve Camray. It's ready, are you
Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve camera.
It's ready. Are you welcome to stuff Mom Never told you?
From House stuff Works dot Com. Hello, and welcome to
the podcast. I'm Caroline, and I'm Kristin Um Kristen. I
(00:22):
like to donate things to goodwill, not necessarily to help people,
although I'm glad that's a part of it, but mainly
because I have a tendency to love shopping women women
be shopping, Caroline b shopping, Caroline Bie shopping, and I
end up buying things that are maybe a little too
(00:43):
trendy for me, something that maybe doesn't fit right, and
I think it'll fit better later inexplicably, And so I
end up keeping a bag in my closet at all
times that I can just throw stuff into for goodwill,
And especially when I move, I end up taking like
sex and stuff over there, and probably while you're clearing
(01:03):
out closet space, you know, and it's more of like
an organizational thing at first. I'm sure there's a moment
when you drop those clothes off you're like patting yourself
on the back a little bit, being like, hey, off
to a better off, to a better place somebody's going
to enjoy this and Taylor skirt and where it's to
their job. Spoiler alert everybody, We shouldn't be patting ourselves
(01:25):
on the back so much because you might be surprised
about what happens to all of those clothes. In particular,
we're focusing on clothing donations that you might drop off
at your local thrift store. And what first caught our
attention was a June nineteenth article on Slate which was
(01:46):
an excerpt from Elizabeth Klein's book Overdressed, the Shockingly High
Cost of Cheap Fashion, And this excerpt was focusing on, uh,
this enormous salvation army in Brooklyn that processes five tons
of clothes thing every day and a ton more during
the holidays, because typically the holidays are when clothing donations
will spike. And in this salvation army, they choose eleven
(02:11):
two garments per day to divvy up among the eight
thrift stores they've served. And then if things sit on
the rack toolong once they're in the stores, they are
sent to the rag cut room, were closed or put
into a compressor that squeezes out half ton cubes. And
then these halfson cubes the way that that she describes it,
it sounds like the warehouse in Indiana Jones, you know
(02:34):
when they put the ark in that box and like
it pans back and there's just millions of boxes and
that tiny little thing. But they put out eighteen tons
worth of clothing bales every three days, which blows my mind.
How is it even possible that people are buying and
consequently subsequently therefore thus getting rid of that many clothes.
(02:57):
It boggles the mind because Americans be shopping. We'd be shopping, yeah,
and actually you're used clothes end up getting sold most
of the time, not given away to help people. This
is according to a December two thousand, sixth story on
ABC news dot com. Charitable organizations only keep about ten
percent of the donations, which is the best quality stuff,
(03:18):
the stuff that's not torn or soil, the vintage stuff,
the designer label stuff to sell to other Americans. Other
other people go into the thrift store or the consignment
shop to buy the stuff. The remaining is gets sold
by the charitable institution to places like textile recycling firms
for about five to seven cents per pound. Yeah. According
(03:39):
to members of the Secondary Recycled Textiles Association uh their industry,
the recycling. The textile recycling industry buys up hundreds of
millions of dollars worth of clothing every year, and then
the recyclers will turn the clothing into cleaning claws and
other industrial items so that they can reap a profit. Right,
(03:59):
And could think like, all right, well, so it's a
little bit wasteful to keep buying so many clothes and
then just ship them off to wherever. But you know
what all this recycling is it possibly helping the environment
um And the answer to that is, well, maybe a
little bit, a little bit. I mean, you know, we're
(04:20):
talking about textile recycling. Recycling is you know, a good word, right,
That's what we want to to do with our things.
We don't want to just throw them away. But according
to the Council for Textile Recycling, they estimate that two
point five billion pounds of post consumer textile waste is
collected and prevented from directly entering the wast stream. Two
point five billion pounds. That's a lot of pounds not
(04:42):
ending up in the waste stream. But bad news, folks,
that's only about fifteen percent of all of those pencil
skirts and jeans and vests and unfortunate sweaters that we're
dumping off. So it has to go somewhere, like they're
they're reaches a critical point and it has to pop
(05:02):
and go somewhere. So we've got all these clothes that's
sit in the thrift stores, but you know, like you said,
they only stay there for a certain amount of time.
Some of them end up recycled, some of them end
up as you know, like industrial whatever whatever. Where does
the rest of it go? Well, it's shipped overseas, which
isn't terribly surprising, but I was mind boggled to learn
(05:24):
that by one estimate, this is according to Elizabeth Klein
and her book Overdressed. By one estimate, use clothing is
the United States number one export by volume, and most
of it heads straight to Sub Saharan Africa. Yeah, that
is pretty mind boggling considering, I mean considering you just
think of industry, You think of manufacturing, You don't think
(05:47):
of bales of clothing. Yeah, going to people gap T
shirts and whatnot. Um Japan is actually the largest buyer
in terms of dollars of vintage or American high end fashion.
That's according to a T Cousan seven Environmental Health Perspective study.
And I don't know, they're just like rating our closets
for for vintage stuff. I guess it's hot over there. Well,
(06:08):
And so much of the fashion also will end up
in Africa. But the used clothing market has become increasingly
demanding for higher quality and fashion forward styles. Yeah, Western
media has now infiltrated, and you know they want to
emulate the kinds of high end brands and looks that
(06:29):
we're wearing around right. Um, so okay, all right, So
we send a lot of clothes to Africa, a lot
of clothes end up over there in their markets and such,
Um is this a bad thing? Are we? Are we
helping people by giving those less fortunate clothing to wear? Right,
because it seems like it seems like a good cause.
A lot of charities focus around sending clothes specifically to Africa.
(06:55):
But the thing that we might not realize is that
while we might think that we are doing a good
thing by donating and that it's okay that all of
this used clothing is flooding African markets, it's actually undercutting
and even destroying local textile markets in Africa. Right, This
(07:15):
is coming from Mary and Nana Ama Donqua. In the
Route from two thousand nine, she said that it's the
whole old colonial mentality of ours is better than yours,
kind of a whole like hand me down from your
older sister to your younger sister, and that while we
may think we're helping, we're actually hurting a lot of
people who have ended up losing their jobs in the
(07:37):
local textile industries. She says that for instance, in Kenya,
used the used clothing industry is the country's seventh largest import,
and in Malawi, Mozambique and Uganda, large textile companies have
ended up either going into bankruptcy or just closing all together. Yeah,
this isn't some kind of philosophical debate over the developed
(07:57):
world infiltrating the developing world and ruining everything because America
is terrible. But I mean, it seems like if you
look at say Zambia, where textile workers have staged strikes
to promote awareness of them losing their jobs because of
all this used clothing and all of the demand for it.
And in Ghana, the government actually announced a program called
(08:20):
National Friday Wear, which encourages all citizens to dress in
traditional clothes as a way to honor their own local
customs but also reinvigorate textile trades there right. Neil Kearney,
who was the General Secretary of the International Textile Garment
and Leather Workers Federation, told ABC News basically he agrees
(08:42):
with Don Qua when he says that it is neo
colonialism in its purest form. It's exporting poverty to Africa,
a continent that is already exceedingly poor. And you definitely
have to look at attitudes toward both the imported used
clothing and the more traditional tire because, for instance, like
younger people are more drawn, like we talked about with
(09:04):
the media, younger people are more drawn to the Western clothes,
and they're not just going towards any Western clothes. I
mean they want to go to the market and pick
out the stuff that's you know, on trend. Yeah, And
these markets are actually referred to as bend over markets
because literally you go in there and bend down and
sift through piles and piles of all of these clothes.
(09:24):
And it's referred to often as dead white people's clothes
because culturally they feel like only death could separate white
people from such nice clothing. Yeah, in Togo it's called
dead Yovo clothing, dead white person clothing. In Ghana, I'm
not sure if I'm pronouncing this right. Brownie wah woh
white man has died. And so you have this sort
(09:47):
of losing, this getting out of touch with the traditional attire,
which is why I like in Ghana they had that
National Friday Wear event. But um, they point out that
traditional clothes do have meaning, like the same thing with
you know, Scottish tartan, you know, can symbolize your clan
or whatever. Um. Many designs have names, contained stories, document events.
(10:08):
They're even used as a part of dowry that a
male suitor presents to the woman's family and some are
handed down from one generation to another. Yeah, and just
to reiterate, um, how all of us use clothing and
it really it traces back to our consumer culture of
consuming cheap fashion that we don't necessarily need and discarding
a lot of it. Um. To understand just how much
(10:31):
this is having an effect on industry in Africa, a
two thousand eight University of Toronto study found that use
clothing exports have explained about fort of decline in apparel
production in Africa. And fifty percent of the decline and
employment in that same industry from to two thousand. Yeah,
(10:54):
so there's a lot of clothes. Those are some staggering stats. Yeah, well,
it's interesting that back to that environmental health perspective study
from two thousand seven, I didn't I guess I just
always thought of good will as existing and people have
always donated the same amount of clothes. But apparently since
two thousand one, good will industries have seen a sixty
seven increase in its sale of donated goods, most of
(11:15):
its clothing, And that probably has something to do with
like tax breaks well and also the recession. I'm sure
that people are shopping at thrift stores possibly more often
than they are. But also I'm one to shop for
shop at thrift stores as well for clothes. But I
will tell you what, Like I have to confess that
half the time I will buy up a bunch of stuff,
(11:38):
a lot of dresses and skirts and probably unfortunate vests,
and because it's so cheap at the thrift store, and
you can find like interesting kitchy stuff, but a lot
of times, like I'll end up redonating most of what
I get because it's that cheap fashion even still one
thing that I was thinking of this not not entirely
off topic, but it just made me think of buying
(12:00):
things at a thrift store and then bringing them back.
But it seems like a good thing to do in
this case. Since African markets are flooded, you know, companies
aren't taking as many items to recycle and create new items.
I mean, maybe the best option is to just have
clothing swaps with your friends. Yeah. I really got thinking
about that because I have. I mean, when I moved
(12:23):
out of Augusta, I mean I've been there for four years.
I lived in a two bedroom apartment by myself. You
accumulate some stuff, and I mean I took sacks of
stuff to Goodwill, and I just wonder, you know, if
I had gotten people together and been like, okay, let's
hang up all the clothes according to size and put
all the kitschy whatever items together and just like swap
just take things. I feel like it's less wasteful. Yeah,
(12:45):
maybe thinking about reusing before recycling. Yeah. Um, And it's
great to get close from your friends because usually it's
you know, fun, and well it's free. So that's what
And I managed to give my toaster and a desk
to a friend of mine before I left to go stuff.
So see I didn't have to take everything to goodwill.
Good for you. Uh yeah, just reflecting how much, uh
(13:07):
we not only are buying more and more and more,
but the export of use clothing from the US has
nearly tripled between two three, and I have a feeling
that's according to the International Trade Commission that the number
has probably only gone up since then too. Yeah, well,
I thought it was interesting to Slate. The Elizabeth Klein
(13:30):
excerpt in Slate pointed out that charities do see a
ton of clothes donated with the tag still on. So
we're buying all these clothes and we're not actually using them,
wearing them, we're just getting rid of them. And you
know what, Caroline, we gotta talk straight to the ladies.
Right now, women will be shopping too much. Okay, when
it comes to who is buying up more clothes and
(13:53):
who's donating more of these clothes, it is above and
beyond women who are constant cleaning out their closets, right yeah,
Slate side of the shop Smart survey that one in
four American women owned seven pairs of jeans. I'm not
gonna say anything about that. From my closet seven pairs
(14:14):
of jeans, but we're only four regularly. And according to
that Environmental Health Perspective study, women in the West tend
to buy much more clothing and discard it more often
than men do, and the world supply of used women's
clothing is at least seven times that of men. Yeah,
because they just they're like, I'm gonna go to T
J max and buy some socks. And you know, it's
(14:35):
another unfortunate confession that I have to make. Not only
do I have those excess jeans sitting in my my bureau,
I've also got excess jeggings. It only gets worse. I well,
you know, I can't even tell you Kristen and I
are both sitting here in V neck T shirts. I
have an excess of V neck T shirts in my
(14:57):
closet too. It's little silly. Uh Yeah. Just to hammer
this home even more, we're gonna beat you over the
head with statistics. Clothing statistics Today environmental journalist Lucy Siegel,
who wrote to Die for his fashion wearing out the world,
and then you can probably guess through the answers. Yes,
she found that the average woman buys about sixty two
pounds of clothing each year. And and not only that,
(15:21):
the amount, the size of our closets has only grown
um and the the number of items clothing items that
women have today is four times that a woman in Yeah,
I have a huge closet. Do you ever go into
old houses or old apartments and see teeny tiny closets?
I'm like, how do these people live? I have an
incredibly small closet and it is, but it's bursting at
(15:44):
it seems from all those jeggings. Well. The according to
the Clothing and Textiles Research Journal in two thousand nine,
they were trying to answer the question of why people
doing and we kind of touched on this before you know,
you think you're helping people or you just need to
clean out your closet. They found that the primary motivation
(16:06):
for participants used clothing donation behavior is the need to
create space in the closet for something new, not to
help people necessarily, not to get a tax break or whatever,
but just to create space for more clothing. Well, and
then there's a whole do gooder aspect of it as well,
because a lot of times these are charities and this
is not us lambasting Goodwill or Salvation Army or thrift
(16:29):
stores in general. Um, but because it is seen as
a good thing to do. And hey, you're sending clothes
over to Africa, Like okay, that sounds like a good
thing to do as well. And when ABC News interviewed
people on the street who are donating clothes and said, hey,
did you know that this is actually where your clothes go,
They're like, well, I'm still I'm still going to donate.
(16:50):
Like what else do we do? Yeah, well, I mean
another option, I guess. And and this would definitely be
a question for our listeners to who might be involved
in charities or uh giving. I mean, maybe there are
other organizations more local to you know, maybe like women's shelters,
UM homeless shelters, homeless shelters. There's in Marietta, where I'm from,
(17:13):
there's a place called Must Ministries that doesn't actually charge
people to buy things. You know, you can kind of
just go in there and and shop if you don't
have the means to pay. Yeah. And I was rooting
around for any kinds of tips on responsible sustainable clothing donation,
and there really wasn't anything out there. Aside from try
(17:35):
to pass it off, put it in the hands of
somebody else, gets someone some more used out of it.
But really, at the end of the day, it boils
down to our consumer behavior and the way that the
cheap fashion industry especially has blown up. And it's so
easy to go and you buy a new top for
(17:55):
a little pick me up and it's only you know,
a few bucks really, and then when it gets about it, yeah,
well when it gets a tear in it a month later,
you're like, you don't feel guilty about either throwing it
in the good will pile or throwing it in the
trash can because it doesn't cost us a lot, you know,
but it's costing people elsewhere their livelihood. So things to
(18:16):
think about. And for this one, I really hope that
we can hear from some listeners who might have some
suggestions for things to do, creative ways and sustainable ways
to donate your clothes. But really we need to have
a little more willpower when it comes to all our shopping.
We don't need to be shopping so much. Yeah, and
I mean this, we could go on and on about
(18:37):
this topic. I mean, there are groups of women who
have you know, committed to not shopping for a year,
you know, not adding to their closets. There was some
woman I wish I could remember the specifics, some woman
profiled in a magazine. She was going to wear the
same dress every day for a year and just style
it differently. Well, and that's the thing too. It's also
we should probably change our approach to how we select clothes,
(18:59):
buying for quality that can last you for a long
time rather than trendy, cheap, gonna fall apart pretty soon
anyway kind of stuff. And that can be hard to remember,
especially when the better quality stuff is more expensive, you know,
and you want to buy out soda pop. Also when
you're at the mall, it's thorty, Yeah, how can you?
(19:19):
How can you buy a nice dress and a soda pop?
I'll tackle we'll tackle that burning question in another episode,
but in the meantime, listeners, please write in let us
know what you think and anyone out there who might
work for um a chair and associated with clothing donation
is just something that comes up. Let us know all
(19:40):
of your thoughts. Mom Stuff discovery dot com is where
you can email us if you like, and of course
you can always head over to Facebook and leave us
a comment there, And we've got a couple of listener emails,
one of which starts out from a long ago podcast
about whether or not you can marry your cousin. Right
this is for Shelley. She said that she had just
(20:02):
listened to that podcast and had avoided it for some
time as I was a bit uncertain what to expect.
I am the product of first cousin parents, as is
my sister. Neither of us are sickly, nor do we
have any genetic defects that I'm aware of. To be fair,
most of my family line is fairly healthy. But I
have had to endure entirely too much ridicule about being
inbred by people who I believe could have benefited from
(20:24):
more lessons in manners. Now I generally tell people if
it comes up, although I'm usually not want to raise
the topic, that if they value me as a friend,
they better not laugh, and if they are jerks, I
will punch them in the faith. So far, I've never
had to do this. I am glad that you took
an objective look at the issue. I personally have no
cousins I want to marry. Plus I'm already married but
(20:44):
do not see it as particularly aberrant. It does make
sense from an anthropological perspective. Before the world of online dating,
and even before license matchmakers to marry someone similar to
you culturally, my parents did consult doctors about the genetic
factors of having children, but so far my sister and
I seem as well adjusted as can be expected in
this economy. Well, I have one here from Wren, who
(21:07):
is a self professed manic pixie dream girl who loves flowers, kitties,
and fuzzy pink sweaters and does custom knitting and sewing,
which sounds very fun. She writes. The first few times
I saw mpdgs in movies and on TV, I was
charmed and amused, and I got pretty used to friends
calling me to tell me how much Natalie Portman or
Zoe Deschanel's character reminded them of me. At first, it
(21:30):
was flattering. Who wouldn't want people to equate them with
such talented, lovely ladies? But I would love to be
compared to these particular actresses for other reasons. How about
Portman's amazing scientific CV or Decchannell's success as a musician.
Over time, I've found that the stereotype has grown extremely stifling.
Mpdgs are so frequently portrayed as having such care free,
(21:50):
trouble free lives that people have started to get baffled
and recently even upset. When I have troubles in my life,
I'm expected to have no more urgent a crisis than
the crafts are having the exact right, fluffy, sparkly yarn,
or being stuck in another state without bus fare because
I planned an excursion poorly. When I have real troubles
with my family, my work life, my home life, or
really anything serious, people act put out as if it
(22:13):
were my responsibility to be always accessible and upbeat, ready
to cheer them up or shake them out of their ruts.
All in all, I don't think that the MPDG stereotype
is harmful per se, but the fact that she is
only ever shown as a care free accessory to a
male protagonist is leading to society making unfair judgments women
who espouse similar views on life or who hold overlapping interests. Really,
(22:36):
even when women who just like to be girly are
being held to unrealistic expectations of behavior. More disturbing is
that I think that as the trend progresses. Women who
don't have any genuine interests in certain hobbies or who
don't want such a whimsical lifestyle are being drawn into
falsely portraying themselves in such a manner to attract attention
and accolades. There's nothing wrong with doing what you love,
but I feel like it's extremely dangerous to society as
(22:58):
a whole if any segment of the population is expected
to fit such a mold. So thanks to Wren and
everybody else who has written in mom Stuff at Discovery
dot Com is where you can email us. You can
also find us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter
at mom Stuff Podcast, and you can read a blog
post I did called how to Recycle your Underwear Speaking
(23:21):
of clothing donations at how stuff works dot com for
more on this and thousands of other topics. Does it
how stuff works dot Com brought to you by the
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