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https://theconversation.com/overwhelmed-by-ever-more-clothing-donations-charities-are-exporting-the-problem-local-governments-must-step-up-243709>
"What happens to your clothes after you don’t want them any more? Chances are,
you will donate them to op shops run by a charity organisation.
There are more and more clothes in circulation, and they are getting cheaper
and lower quality. That means the clothes you give away are worth less and
less. For charities, this means donated clothes are less gift, more rubbish.
Our new research explores what happens to clothes and other textiles after we
don’t want them across nine cities in Europe, North America and Australia. The
pattern was the same in most cities. The sheer volume is overwhelming many
shops. In Geneva, donations to charity shops have surged 1,200% in three
decades, from 250 tonnes in 1990 to 3,000 tonnes in 2021. Worldwide, we now
dump 92 million tonnes of clothes and textiles a year, double the figure of 20
years earlier.
There’s less and less value in managing these clothes locally. As a result,
charities are forced to send more clothes to landfill – or sell bale after bale
of clothing to resellers, who ship them to nations in the Global South.
Local governments usually handle other waste streams. But on clothes and
textiles, they often leave it to charitable organisations and commercial
resellers. This system is inherited from a time when used clothing was a more
valuable resource, but the rising quantity of clothing has pushed this system
towards collapse.
From January, all EU states have to begin rolling out collection services for
used textiles. But in Australia and the United States there are no moves to do
the same – even though these two countries consume the most textiles per
capita in the world. As we work towards creating circular economies, where
products are continually reused, this will have to change."
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
