In Ghana, they call them “obroni wawu” — dead white man’s clothes.
August 17, 2021 3:21 AM   Subscribe

Dead white man's clothes: How fast fashion is turning parts of Ghana into toxic landfill (ABC News) – For decades, the West's unwanted fashion has made its way to used-clothing markets in Africa. Now it's fuelling an environmental catastrophe.
It’s the dirty secret behind the world’s fashion addiction. Many of the clothes we donate to charity end up dumped in landfill, creating an environmental catastrophe on the other side of the world.

...Some 15 million used garments pour into Accra every week from the UK, Europe, North America and Australia, flooding the city’s sprawling clothing market. An estimated 40 per cent are of such poor quality they are deemed worthless on arrival and end up dumped in landfill. As global clothing consumption skyrockets, fed by ruthless “fast fashion” brands, it’s creating an environmental catastrophe.

...The trade in second-hand clothing has steadily grown in Accra, just as it has around the world. Every year as many as 4 million tonnes of used textiles are shipped across the planet in a trade estimated to be worth $4.6 billion.

...“In Europe, the UK and Australia, America, they think [that in] Africa here, sorry to say, we are not like human beings. Even if somebody knocked [on] your door [to beg], you cannot just … pick something from your dustbin. In this case … they’re doing this to us.”

The growing number of poor-quality clothes arriving at Kantamanto Market is a major driver of Ghana’s waste crisis. Another is the sheer volume of clothing being manufactured around the world.

Since 2000, global production of clothing has doubled. We’re buying 60 per cent more clothes now than we did 15 years ago. But we’re only keeping them for half as long. 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. An estimated 85 per cent of all textiles go to the dump every year, according to the World Economic Forum, enough to fill Sydney Harbour annually. Globally, that’s the equivalent of one garbage truck of textiles being burned or going into landfill every second.

These problems have only accelerated with the advent of so-called “fast fashion” — cheap, low-quality clothes produced quickly to respond to changing trends. Where brands once had two fashion seasons a year, many now produce 52 micro-seasons, flooding the market with new styles.

...With factories incentivised to maintain around-the-clock operations, the world’s major fashion houses factor into their budgets huge waste margins. In 2018, Burberry attracted a storm of criticism when it revealed it had destroyed $50 million of stock. The same year, H&M reported an unsold global inventory worth more than $5 billion.

...“Close to 40 per cent of whatever shipments that are coming on a daily basis ends up to be complete chaff of no value,” said Accra’s waste manager, Solomon Noi. “We have become the dumping ground for textile waste that is produced from Europe, from the Americas and [elsewhere].”
posted by bitteschoen (73 comments total) 40 users marked this as a favorite
 
Our society is like a party where the revellers know that dawn and the attendant hangover are almost here, so they double down and party even harder.

Aside from underwear, socks and footwear, I buy almost no non-used clothing (I got into thrifting in the '90s because I have other things I'd rather spend money on) and generally wear things until they fall apart or get a noticeable stain that can't be washed out, but I'm just one middle-aged dude who doesn't give a shit about being fashionable.
posted by The Card Cheat at 4:36 AM on August 17, 2021 [26 favorites]


One item I didn't see addressed in the article: have governments in the region considered denying entry to low-quality imports? What are the issues around policing the ability to admit or turn back these shipments?

(Acknowledging that unless the waste stream is reduced, turning these shipments away from one country would just direct the problem elsewhere.)
posted by gimonca at 4:49 AM on August 17, 2021 [4 favorites]


gimonca: I’m guessing that "denying entry to low-quality imports" is not very feasible because you only find out about the quality of clothing items after opening the bales – see this bit in the article:
It’s only once a bale has been opened that the quality of the clothing is discovered. If it’s in good condition, profits can tally quickly to as much as $14,000. But if the clothes are torn or stained, or long out of fashion, their importer may as well have put a torch to their money.
posted by bitteschoen at 4:53 AM on August 17, 2021 [4 favorites]


I am trying to be better about where I buy my clothes (admittedly I don't buy very often). A couple of years ago, Shepherd and I went to the Anthropocene exhibit in Ottawa and one of the giant blown-up photographs was just a mountain of colourful cheap clothes in someplace like West Africa, IIRC. The card explained how they got there and how fast fashion is/was responsible for mountains of cheap clothes in places where poverty reigns.

That photograph, plus all deaths of sweatshop employees, definitely changed how I look at clothing and how I buy clothing.
posted by Kitteh at 5:18 AM on August 17, 2021 [5 favorites]


but I'm just one middle-aged dude who doesn't give a shit about being fashionable.

The thing that's always struck me as strange about people feeling like they need to wear new clothing to be fashionable is that fashion is a circle.

Seriously. Right now clothing trends from the early 2000s is what is fashionable. Trends from the 90s were all the rage just a few years ago.

This has been going on in the world of fashion forever. For anyone who lived through the 1980s, remember how all the hip designers were remaking trends from the 1950s? Puffy sleeves, sweetheart necklines, I could go on.

All the people who want to be hip and trendy should really keep a closet full of thrifted clothing from the last 100 years and just rotate which decade you dress from depending on current trends.
posted by RobinofFrocksley at 5:27 AM on August 17, 2021 [19 favorites]


Denying entry to low-quality imports often brings difficult talks about your foreign aid to your doorstep.
posted by Ashenmote at 5:36 AM on August 17, 2021 [12 favorites]


I'll file this with my other “Totally Expected Stuff - CONFIRMED“.
posted by bonobothegreat at 5:51 AM on August 17, 2021 [2 favorites]


Ignoring the quality issue of fast fashion, this is just my own opinion, but at least for places like H&M or Forever21, etc., soooooo much of their inventory doesnt get sold because its horrific fashion! I guess they're like the Netflix of fashion in that they'll create any weird shaped, unwearable eyesore that someone created in their horrible fever dream or something. Some of that stuff might look good on maybe one person's body, but they still create 50 and then they end up with fucktons of waste. Even if it was quality shit, no one is going to buy something that is unwearable or looks terrible on a person.
posted by LizBoBiz at 6:12 AM on August 17, 2021 [18 favorites]


The article is interesting and the photos are particularly striking.
posted by Dip Flash at 6:22 AM on August 17, 2021 [1 favorite]


Denying entry to low-quality imports often brings difficult talks about your foreign aid to your doorstep.

I'd go so far as to say that's a best-case scenario. Let's not pretend the same global powers that are currently using West Africa as a trash dump haven't been above participating in regime change in the region when a leader pushes back too hard on them. Especially when that pushback hits them in the wallet.
posted by solotoro at 6:22 AM on August 17, 2021 [9 favorites]


The frustrating thing is that solid waste disposal is more or less a solved problem in rich countries. It's not perfect, and there are a lot of recycling operations that also hurt people in other industries. But, finding a place to get rid of shitty T-shirts isn't going to have any impact on life in North America for millenia. We can throw away enough T-shirts that their creation makes life on Earth impossible long before finding places to throw them away will become a significant problem.

Libertarians should think carefully about why the invisible hand hasn't solved this when it comes to negotiations between exporters and importers
posted by eotvos at 6:32 AM on August 17, 2021 [6 favorites]


The thing that's always struck me as strange about people feeling like they need to wear new clothing to be fashionable is that fashion is a circle.
Seriously. Right now clothing trends from the early 2000s is what is fashionable. Trends from the 90s were all the rage just a few years ago.


This is generally true. My mother told me that I would feel old when I saw something I remember going out of style coming back in. The first thing I saw that with was pedal pushers. But it seems to me that when things come back, they are a little bit different, and I'm not sure if people who truly care about fashion would want to wear the older versions. For instance, I remember the tie dye that came back (90s? I'm not sure) having colors that weren't at all like the colors from the tie dye of the 60s and 70s. When I was in high school, there was an article in one of my fashion magazines about styles inspired by the 40s, and my mother scoffed at one outfit and said no one in the 40s would have ever mixed two prints.

I was never that great at knowing what was in style, and now that I'm in my 60s, I'm truly hopeless at it. I mostly don't care, but I do occasionally worry that I'll wear something that's so ridiculously out of style that it will be very noticeable. My weight fluctuates, and I don't follow the injunction to throw things out if I haven't worn them in a year, so lately I've been wearing some twenty-year-old shirts. The style seems timeless to me, but I could be very wrong. I do cut out shoulder pads.
posted by FencingGal at 6:46 AM on August 17, 2021 [13 favorites]


My mother would be horrified. She was a child of the Depression. Wearing something twice and discarding it because it was "out of fashion," as the article claims trendy Westerners do?
posted by kozad at 6:47 AM on August 17, 2021 [1 favorite]


I did not look at TFA because I already feel disgusted enough for today.
I ceased long since to give clothing to charity, unless I have something that's still in new or like-new condition that the charity can sell locally. Because it was probably 20 years ago that I learned about how American discard clothing was getting sold bulk by Goodwill to people who would bale it up and send it to Africa, where it was destroying the local textile industries. But then I'm not in the demographic that buys "fast fashion" anyway. I'm the kind of bad consumer who wears things until they're too ratty to use, and then throws them away (lacking any kind of option for textile recycling).
posted by Aardvark Cheeselog at 6:47 AM on August 17, 2021 [3 favorites]


The one thing that seems has not been mentioned in here - speculators in Accra are buying this stuff, and importing it. We are not forcing it on them. If they are getting too much crap they need to adjust pricing on imports, or find alternate imports, or whatever. These are local businessmen doign the dumping and littering.
posted by Meatbomb at 7:00 AM on August 17, 2021 [11 favorites]


Is this capitalism's version of having people dig holes and fill them in again?
posted by clawsoon at 7:05 AM on August 17, 2021


have governments in the region considered denying entry to low-quality imports? What are the issues around policing the ability to admit or turn back these shipments?

One factor. Cf above, local businessmen, and, I expect, non local as well.

Economics of plastic recycling makes for an interesting corollary, if you have a few minutes.
posted by BWA at 7:16 AM on August 17, 2021


A reason I did not see mentioned in the article is that these donations likely destroy any local tailor (or other cloth-making) industries as well. Disgusting in so many ways.
posted by DreamerFi at 7:19 AM on August 17, 2021 [1 favorite]


I think this problem is going to get much worse as companies try to copy Shein, fast fashion even faster, and with young consumers forming their shopping habits around cheap clothing hauls.
posted by betweenthebars at 7:20 AM on August 17, 2021 [3 favorites]


I don't think any of this is really about vanity or caring about fashion too much it's just that even if you only buy the same things you have to buy them more frequently as the fabric wears out faster. This isn't being driven by consumers but by manufacturers.
posted by bleep at 7:33 AM on August 17, 2021 [14 favorites]


these donations likely destroy any local tailor (or other cloth-making) industries as well

You mean in Ghana or the first world? There's some interesting stuff going on in Ghana, fabric and clothing-wise. (I like to see the glass half full side of things.)
posted by BWA at 7:34 AM on August 17, 2021 [2 favorites]


Also consider how many professions no longer pay decent life-sustaining wages anymore and we can't even raise the minimum wage to let people afford basic rent. Poor people buying poor clothes made by other poor people and then drowning other poor people in the leftovers.
posted by bleep at 7:39 AM on August 17, 2021 [11 favorites]


speculators in Accra are buying this stuff, and importing it. We are not forcing it on them.

The part that’s literally forced on them is that huge amount of low-quality clothing that is not good enough to resell and ends up in landfills... And that amount has been getting bigger because the quality of the clothing has been steadily diminishing over the years. It’s not me saying it, it’s all there in the article...
posted by bitteschoen at 7:58 AM on August 17, 2021 [7 favorites]


Speaking as an unapologetic lover of fashion (and an avid thrift shopper), I will tell you that I've mostly cut fast fashion out of my life (I still buy sportsbras etc at Old Navy), because among other things, fast fashion has ruined thrift stores. There is so much absolute garbage out there and the rise of Poshmark/DePop etc means that decent quality used clothing gets snatched up quickly and is often significantly more expensive than the new cheap stuff.

And while it's easy to cast shade at the H&M/Target/Zara/Asos/etcs for fast fashion, Amazon alone provides an ever-increasing pile of worse quality cheap goods (that are often so poor quality as to be unwearable) to circulate. And that's not even getting into the whole world of scam fashion. Y'all there is so much scam fashion on the internet.
posted by thivaia at 8:00 AM on August 17, 2021 [24 favorites]


Yeah I mean like it's not like there's some ethical way to buy clothes that people just think they're too good for. The system is just bad.
posted by bleep at 8:03 AM on August 17, 2021 [13 favorites]


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

Do they still wear old clothes? They must, because... I mean... even cheap clothes... you'd be buying clothes all the time it would cost a fortune... and you'd be shopping for clothes all the time too which is even more horrifying to me.

It seems very hard to find good sturdy clothes (or anything) that'll last though, and price doesn't seem to correlate that much with quality.
posted by WaterAndPixels at 8:04 AM on August 17, 2021


There have been fantastic MeFi threads on techniques and strategies to minimize the need to purchase new clothing. My partner is getting into those mending communities (make a virtue of the flaw or whatever).. reduce the number of times you wash your garments, and reduce your use of mechanical dryers (use racks).. buy second-hand if you must.. or pay more, buy fewer items at higher cost, and try to support local tailors/garment makers using materials at hand.. plus there is a whole discussion on how outfits should be reduced to the few occasions, where the materials withstand repeated use (because quality).

We quickly arrive at a discussion resembling a healthy/ethical diet. Don't know about you, but whatever you can do to budge the needle is not nothing, and most people who post here are probably well into the choir by now (judging by the attitudes and beliefs on display).
posted by elkevelvet at 8:11 AM on August 17, 2021 [6 favorites]


If you want to learn more about fast fashion, The True Cost is a good documentary. It seems to be available on YouTube.

I'm just having some trouble figuring out what to do here. Obviously, decreasing consumption is the best option, but it doesn't work for everything. My grandmother made quilts from old clothes (and the fabric was high enough quality for that to make sense), but I'm not going to do that. I can only use so many rags. So is the Nordstrom dress I bought for my son's wedding OK to donate, or is there some reason it won't sell that I don't know about? Is the T shirt that's now too big for me too worn out or not? I would still wear it, but maybe it's bad for resale. I know this is a huge systemic problem that my individual actions aren't going to solve, but I still want to behave as ethically as I can, though maybe that's just another way of kidding myself.

Part of the problem is it does feel wrong to just throw things away if you think that someone somewhere could use it - but it's not always possible to ascertain whether someone else could use something or not.
posted by FencingGal at 8:13 AM on August 17, 2021 [3 favorites]


A lot of women's fast fashion really is old after a couple of wears because it is so poorly or cheaply made that that a few wears in ordinary conditions and one or two machine wash-dry cycles (no one is paying $8 to dry clean a $13 blouse) are going to leave the fabric, or at least the seams, starting to come apart, buttons and snaps having problems, and colors running or fading.
posted by MattD at 8:16 AM on August 17, 2021 [14 favorites]


Obviously, decreasing consumption is the best option, but it doesn't work for everything.

I don't want to abuse the edit window, but that's a bad sentence on my part. I should have said it's not in itself a complete solution - but maybe that's because I'm just so used to thinking I "need" something to wear that's appropriate for a given occasion even if I won't wear it again. This almost never happens, but it does happen. And then multiply by millions of people.
posted by FencingGal at 8:17 AM on August 17, 2021 [2 favorites]


A lot of women's fast fashion really is old after a couple of wears because it is so poorly or cheaply made that that a few wears in ordinary conditions and one or two machine wash-dry cycles (no one is paying $8 to dry clean a $13 blouse) are going to leave the fabric, or at least the seams, starting to come apart, buttons and snaps having problems, and colors running or fading.

I get this... but it seems unreasonable and way too expensive for all your clothes to be unwearable after wearing them two times.

But I'm not a fashionable person I hate buying new clothes and own mostly tshirts and a ton of jeans since I keep wearing out the crotch area on them super quickly.
posted by WaterAndPixels at 8:27 AM on August 17, 2021 [2 favorites]


Thanks for that bitteschoen, gorgeous pictures, shocking text. What the devil are the cows grazing on? I presume the trash heap is more than shoddy fabrics. Triggers a few random thoughts.
A decade+ ago a boomer palomino took her teenage daughter on a rite of passage trip to buy some fabric and a dress pattern and found that the material alone was substantively more expensive that the finished product from a high-street store. It wasn't like that in the 1970s.
I was visiting my old boss in the affluent Western 'burbs of Boston ten years ago. He was all excited about the annual sale of surplus stuff in the Elder Drop-in Centre [formerly the Library!]. From an embarrassment of choice he bought a winter top coat for $5. "that's great", I said "that will last a few years if you get it dry-cleaned once in a while". He replied "Are you crazy? It costs $10 to clean these things. I'll come back here next year and get another coat."
20 years ago, the IT manager for the hospital where I worked came from Uganda via Botswana. I was telling him about an Irish scheme for refurbishing old computers and shipping them to Africa. His response "Speaking for Africa, I can tell you that we don't want or need to cast-off under-powered hardware." Respeck!
If any government needs to act as a gate-keeper for the shipment of crud to Africa, it is better at the point of origin rather than destination. Have we no shame?
Finally, still waiting for my Loons to come back in fashion
posted by BobTheScientist at 8:37 AM on August 17, 2021 [7 favorites]


I was telling him about an Irish scheme for refurbishing old computers and shipping them to Africa.

Most assuredly this was a complex scheme to get rid of e-waste.
posted by geoff. at 8:44 AM on August 17, 2021 [4 favorites]


a ton of jeans since I keep wearing out the crotch area on them super quickly.

Do you? Or has the quality of jeans just declined so much that you can't get jeans that wear well in the crotch anymore?

I sometimes have an idea that a clothing item won't be very lasting but I usually only have similar clothing items to compare it to and choose among. I found some nice, cotton pants that seemed fashionable enough and they were at a price point where I assumed they would last. I didn't see any obvious issues with them. They are all coming apart at the seams. But I've worn them for at least three years so... is that fast? It feels fast to me and I'm irritated to have to search for new cotton pants that are as comfortable. The cotton is wearing through as well so it's not just mending the seams.

I had a few items of GAP clothing from the early 90s that lasted well into the mid-2000s with good color and very little wear. But, you know, some items from that time did not last. I have no expectation that clothing at any price point will last these days.

T-shirts are pretty bad. About every third shirt I get will twist in the first wash. I had yet another tiresome conversation this weekend with a guy who was incredulous that women's pockets would be phased out for cost. Yes, sir, those pants are now $.03 less and women will still buy them. I *mostly* refuse to buy pants that don't have adequate pockets. But, I admit, I bought two pairs recently because I "grew out" of my jeans and needed some. I bought them from my favorite local boutique whose owners I don't want to go out of business. But the front pockets are only 3.5" deep. I have small hands so this is about fingers-deep. The back pockets are generous though. I just put one pair in the wash last night and I'm scared what will happen to them. I loathe shopping.

This has to get thrown back on manufacturers.
posted by amanda at 8:45 AM on August 17, 2021 [10 favorites]


And when I say that the world would be a better place if everyone just wore identical government-issued uniform coveralls, people call me crazy.
posted by Faint of Butt at 9:04 AM on August 17, 2021 [11 favorites]


Do you? Or has the quality of jeans just declined so much that you can't get jeans that wear well in the crotch anymore?

I don't know honestly, I can't appraise the quality of clothing by looking at it, other than expecting acid washed jeans to be less sturdy. I'm pretty sure that quality hasn't gone up though, so how much is it less quality vs me having big thighs? Don't know.

had yet another tiresome conversation this weekend with a guy who was incredulous that women's pockets would be phased out for cost. Yes, sir, those pants are now $.03 less and women will still buy them.

I joke once in a while that I'll start a clothing brand whose whole schtick is women's clothing WITH POCKETS... I always thought the lack of pockets was because designers of women clothes where in the "must show curves" mindset, the price argument really makes me speechless.
posted by WaterAndPixels at 9:04 AM on August 17, 2021 [2 favorites]


The one thing that seems has not been mentioned in here - speculators in Accra are buying this stuff, and importing it. We are not forcing it on them. If they are getting too much crap they need to adjust pricing on imports, or find alternate imports, or whatever. These are local businessmen doign the dumping and littering.

Someone should tell them about the cheap houses in South Peoria.
posted by jimw at 9:10 AM on August 17, 2021 [3 favorites]


I always thought the lack of pockets was because designers of women clothes where in the "must show curves" mindset, the price argument really makes me speechless.

There was an episode of Project Runway where one of the designers had put pockets in women's pants and Michael Kors said all of the women he knew cut the pockets out of their clothes because they ruined the lines. As a woman who will no longer buy pants, skirts, or dresses without pockets (which makes shopping very hard), I was dumbfounded.
posted by FencingGal at 9:12 AM on August 17, 2021 [16 favorites]


Michael Kors said all of the women he knew

That is kind of hilarious. "I, a fashion designer, know only women who all care more about the lines of their pants than if they can carry their keys." Ok great. Consider the spectrum of people buying clothing in a different line of work than you and whether a few of them might be interested in pockets MORE than lines.

Alternatively, the pockets were so pointless the women got just as much use out of pocketless pants as not.

Not the point of this article I realize, which was excellent.
posted by Emmy Rae at 9:16 AM on August 17, 2021 [23 favorites]


these donations likely destroy any local tailor (or other cloth-making) industries as well

You mean in Ghana or the first world? There's some interesting stuff going on in Ghana, fabric and clothing-wise. (I like to see the glass half full side of things.)


this is a now 6 years old article. Things may have changed for the better.

But as this recent article describes:
Only a couple of decades ago, Kenya had roughly half a million garment workers. The number is now a meager 20,000, a small fraction that once represented a thriving textile industry out of the country. This is a common story throughout the continent; once, domestic garment and textile industries thrived, especially in countries like Ghana, Kenya, and Malawi.
posted by DreamerFi at 9:17 AM on August 17, 2021 [3 favorites]


When you think of a place like H&M throwing 40% of their inventory - the cost of throwing things away needs to be way, way, way higher. And the cost of production (especially wages) should be higher as well.
posted by Emmy Rae at 9:18 AM on August 17, 2021 [15 favorites]


these donations likely destroy any local tailor (or other cloth-making) industries as well

Ever heard of the archaic occupation of rag-picker? The old, unused fabric they collected wasn't used for cloth-making (although I guess it could be used to make felt). Cotton and linen scraps can be recycled into paper. Since good paper can also be recycled into paper of lower quality, and we have so much of it, rags and the paper-making industry became disconnected, but they needn't be.

I wonder how difficult is it, sorting out the natural from the synthetic fabrics. Note that the latter is just another way of saying plastic.
posted by Rash at 9:45 AM on August 17, 2021 [2 favorites]


I increasingly think that we must force sellers of all types of items to include expected costs for a reasonable disposal (of both product and packing) in the price of whatever they sell. They could reduce their costs by using more environmentally friendly packaging or by making products that last longer and thus need to be disposed of less often or by accepting items back for disposal themselves and accepting responsibility for dealing with them. "Just ship all the crap to Africa" can't be considered a reasonable disposal method under such a system, either.

I'm sure there's a fundamental flaw in this plan, but I don't see another clear path to incentivizing corporations to sell better quality goods in less packaging.
posted by jacquilynne at 9:47 AM on August 17, 2021 [9 favorites]


I'd love to see more information on how those charity bins work. There's clearly some business model that suddenly made sense and took off, but it's not completely clear to me what it is.
posted by condour75 at 9:55 AM on August 17, 2021 [2 favorites]


There's probably a lot of synthetic fibers in the pile, but anything made of cotton can be beaten into a pulp by small machines made for that purpose, and screened and molded into strong paper based materials. The cotton paper pulp can be formed into all kinds of lightweight and durable items.
posted by StickyCarpet at 10:04 AM on August 17, 2021


I have pretty basic mending skills but it doesn’t help much, not when the fabric itself wears through. And not when the construction of the garment has changed to be unfixable.

Case in point: a skirt I had owned for 10 years started to lose its elastic waistband. No problem, I have extra elastic lying around and it’s a super quick fix, just rip the stitching holding in the old elastic, yank it out, and feed a new one in with a safety pin, and sew back up the few stitches.

Nope. See, it used to be that waistband elastic sat inside a tube of fabric that was turned over from the top of the garment itself, so just getting the tube open was enough. But this skirt (which was constructed sometime in the first decade of the millennium) didn’t have a tube. Instead it had a separate strip of fabric just sewn on to the elastic (it was a stretchy skirt too) and then that whole strip was just sewn directly on to the rest of the skirt. Result: ripping out all the stitching was going to take hours, not minutes, and would likely destroy the fabric anyhow; plus sewing it back up was going to be much harder too. So, instead I cut the skirt up and used its stretchy fabric for mask ear loops.

Upshot here: I have the tools and skills and a modicum of free time to do mending, but modern clothes aren’t made to be mended. Would I buy the heck out of a clothing brand that actually was mendable? Sure, but only once, that’s the whole point.
posted by nat at 10:08 AM on August 17, 2021 [27 favorites]


we must force sellers of all types of items to include expected costs for a reasonable disposal (of both product and packing) in the price of whatever they sell

The Product Stewardship Initiative has an interesting page on Extended Producer Responsibility for textiles. Apparently France is currently the only country with such a law on the books; there is a broader EU strategy in progress but it seems rather nebulous at this stage.

That wouldn't necessarily be enough to address the issues in the OP, though; that seems to be a variation on the same kind of "garbage laundering" that we've seen in (other types of) plastics recycling -- ship your mixed junk to another country to claim credit for "recycling" (or here "reuse") while it actually mostly ends up being landfilled under far more dangerous conditions than if it had simply been landfilled in the country of origin.
posted by Not A Thing at 10:10 AM on August 17, 2021 [6 favorites]


anytime you have a blend of synthetic fibers- so like cotton/spandex or whatever mystery fabric you are getting in a fast fashion piece- recycling is basically impossible due to the unknown chemical content & having to sort out different components of a garment (zippers, lining, etc). The part that really hurts is that it takes almost the same amount of human labor to sew a shirt out of quality materials as it does to sew one out of fabric that's trashed in two washes (and as has been mentioned above, that's by design- part of the business model is clothing that's done in a few wash cycles, sending you back to the store for more clothing). I love fashion & self expression & I used to love thrifting & I make most of all I wear but I don't think that's the way everyone needs to live. The machine of capitalism immiserates us all & it needs somehow to end. Everything else is just bandaids
posted by velebita at 11:06 AM on August 17, 2021 [8 favorites]


I recall reading an article about a surprising (to non-sports guy) me source of quickly disposable clothing: major sporting events. Not the big foam fingers and such, but clothing commemorating the winner of an event.

To give an example: two years ago the Super Bowl saw the New England Patriots beat the Los Angeles Rams 13-3. It had not occurred to me to sell a whole bunch of PATRIOTS SUPERB OWL LII CHAMPIONS T-shirts that the manufacturers would also have made just as many with the other team as the winner, so they can hedge their bets as to which ones to ship on Monday morning. All the rest are junked.

I hope and pray somewhere there is a hipster alt-history subculture that goes to the trouble to divert these things and wear them proudly.
posted by ricochet biscuit at 11:31 AM on August 17, 2021 [7 favorites]


I'm rockin' my HILLARY RODHAM SUPERB OWL CHAMPION shirt forever that's for sure.
posted by riverlife at 11:45 AM on August 17, 2021 [6 favorites]


Having a conversation with a work colleague about her back to school shopping for her daughter, she had bought 15 pairs of pants alone, from places like Target and H and M. I wonder if there’s a smallish percentage of people buying up the bulk of fast fashion?
posted by acantha at 11:49 AM on August 17, 2021


Thing is, all those old tshirts can be carefully sliced up and crocheted into rugs.
posted by TWinbrook8 at 12:46 PM on August 17, 2021 [3 favorites]


That wouldn't necessarily be enough to address the issues in the OP, though; that seems to be a variation on the same kind of "garbage laundering" that we've seen in (other types of) plastics recycling -- ship your mixed junk to another country to claim credit for "recycling" (or here "reuse") while it actually mostly ends up being landfilled under far more dangerous conditions than if it had simply been landfilled in the country of origin.

I didn't know the term garbage laundering, but that's clearly a huge element of this kind of problem -- and laundering of responsibility seems like an issue on both ends. Supply chains and disposal chains are both long and deliberately obscured to reduce costs and liabilities. In this day and age, it should be pretty possible (if expensive and annoying) to hold manufacturers responsible for every bit of material that goes into their products all the way back to primary resource extraction. Tracking post-consumer disposition seems like a harder problem to solve, which is why it seems necessary to extract that value at time of sale -- and if they have a useful program for reducing disposal costs or reclaiming items, then they can claim those dollars back.
posted by jacquilynne at 12:57 PM on August 17, 2021 [3 favorites]


Libertarians should think carefully

I have yet to meet one capable of doing so.
posted by flabdablet at 2:47 PM on August 17, 2021 [12 favorites]


I did a little web search to hunt up the Planet Money episode about used clothing in Africa. I seem to remember them saying that the clothes were a boon for local tailors but have clearly wiped out local clothing manufacturing. Sadly, the text of the article doesn't seem to be the complete version of the audio, and I don't feel like listening.

A couple other articles came up in the search that shed a little light on how complex the problem is.

NYT, July 9, 2020: Used Clothes Ban May Crimp Kenyan Style. It May Also Lift Local Design.
Kenya has halted imports of secondhand clothes to prevent the spread of the coronavirus. The move limits fashion selection, but opens doors for the country’s designers and manufacturers.

...
As the largest importer of used clothing in East Africa, Kenya, with its new ban, is expected to upend not just supply chains but also lead to a hemorrhage in jobs connected to the trade and the loss of millions of dollars from government coffers as tax revenue and import duties fall.

But where some see problems, others see opportunity.
...

BBC, May 28, 2018: How the US and Rwanda have fallen out over second-hand clothes
Says East African nations imposed new tariffs on imported clothes. The Trump administration retailiated with tariff threats, and all the nations except Rwanda backed down.


Whereas the OP is focused on the waste problem, none of these stories mention it that I saw. My read is that shows that waste is always the last thing people think of.
posted by polecat at 2:56 PM on August 17, 2021 [4 favorites]


fast fashiorn has ruined thrift stores.

QFT, although at least where I live there are still enough old people and rich people to make it interesting. You go 30 miles out of the Beltway and the thrift stores are full of things that were broken when they were made.
posted by aspersioncast at 3:47 PM on August 17, 2021 [5 favorites]


This issue has been on my mind a lot recently. I'm part of a plus size fashion group on Facebook which has been invaluable for finding local indie designers who design for my size but are too small and local to come up on a google search. That's my primary reason for being there. It's more expensive to shop small and local, obviously, because you're paying for quality fabric and proper wages and all the rest of it. But the payoff is that what you get is generally designed and made much more carefully and thoughtfully, and it lasts longer.

The fast fashion issue often comes up in discussion on this group - this story was posted there, for example - and every time it does, there are accusations of guilting and "poverty shaming" because poorer group members can't afford to buy expensive local stuff. Which I sympathise with, having spent my teens and twenties both poor and pre-Internet, when it was a lot harder to find cheap, attractive stuff because less choice and pre-globalisation.

But... some of those same people regularly order huge 'hauls' from Shein in China. They order a dozen things, keep the two or three things that fit or that they like, and send the rest back for a refund. This is their normal way of shopping. It blows my mind, I'm an old and although I get most of my stuff online, buying four or five times as many things as you end up with, and expecting to send the rest back to another hemisphere, postage free, and get a refund, is just... absolutely alien to me.

And of course Shein are well known for being dodgy; they rip off independent designers, things are badly made and use shit fabric, sometimes what you get is nothing like what you paid for and that's before we even think about the environmental and ethical issues with them. But any discussion about the ethics gets slammed down because by bringing those issues to people's attention, you're guilting them. There's a lot of "Where else am I supposed to get cute clothes in my size?" And I'm aware that I'm in a very privileged position of being able to spend $250 on a locally designed and made jacket. But most of the Shein "hauls" are acknowledged by the buyers as mostly shit that never gets worn. It all just seems like such a massive waste but it's somehow become normal.

The other advantage of spending a lot on a single item, especially as an ex-poor person, is that you spend so long angsting over the purchase that when you do click the "Confirm Order" button you're pretty damn sure that this thing is a thing you actually need and will wear. It probably also helps that I've spent the better part of the last 18 months in lockdown and it's amazing how much new clothing you don't need when you're hardly out of the house and most people only see you from the chest up...
posted by andraste at 4:01 PM on August 17, 2021 [6 favorites]


It had not occurred to me to sell a whole bunch of PATRIOTS SUPERB OWL LII CHAMPIONS T-shirts that the manufacturers would also have made just as many with the other team as the winner, so they can hedge their bets as to which ones to ship on Monday morning. All the rest are junked.

Interned once for major sports league, they couldn't give this stuff away fast enough.
posted by praemunire at 4:07 PM on August 17, 2021


Yeah my only real tip after many varied workplaces and expectations is buy the least you can.

For me when I was in media I had to do some fast fashion but I minimized it by keeping classic pants/shift dresses/etc. and then buying up to date tops or using accessories. Kind of a modified capsule wardrobe where all the base pieces were black. But I wasn't a real fashion editor, just fashion-adjacent.

My one pro tip was leave your good pieces at the office, like a good blazer, or take it off as you come home and then it won't get Juice Handed by the kids. Also, on me skirts outlast pants by a mile, although in winter there were the tights to consider too.

When I worked in business formal I really could get away with thrifted/second-hand classic formal suits and that was great; same with like, dresses for evening events, as long as I picked very classic ones.

Now I wear the company polo and pants and it's pretty freeing and I just wear them out. For my "me" clothes I'm still working through my old wardrobe but I also occasionally splurge on something local and artisan-y (the fabric and findings are of course still not ethical most likely). I think this makes me trend hippie but oh well.

My guilty fast fashion area is still pajamas. I am a sucker for a pajama sale. It's also really hard to source ethical underwear and only a little easier for socks, in Canada.
posted by warriorqueen at 4:21 PM on August 17, 2021 [4 favorites]


It probably also helps that I've spent the better part of the last 18 months in lockdown and it's amazing how much new clothing you don't need when you're hardly out of the house and most people only see you from the chest up...

Ha. I have bought a fair amount of clothes during lockdown, specifically exactly the kind of clothes I want, with zero regards to where I need/want to wear them. There's something very liberating about finally accepting that you're the sort of person that will absolutely sit on a Zoom call in an evening gown and metallic leather glam rock boots and statement earrings because wearing said evening gown and boots and earrings are just about the only thing that make you feel like any version of the human being you were and one day hope to be again in this apocalyptic hellscape we're living in.

I've really loved finding new designers. And t the risk of derailing, as a person who teeters on the edge of straight/plus, it is a real pleasure to live at a time when there are so many small designers producing beautiful, artiful and interesting size-inclusive collections. And it is my very definitive privilege to be able to spend a little money on things I know I will keep for a long, long time. *


*I still have every dress I ever wore to a formal event, y'all. Including proms.
posted by thivaia at 5:21 PM on August 17, 2021 [7 favorites]


Turn down that United Way tshirt, race shirt, etc. Goodwill and Salv. Army don't even put them on the rack, they go with stuff to get baled and sent to places like Ghana. I honestly agree that a lot of fast fashion is hella ugly, cheaply made, unflattering. I don't care if I'm wearing colors that were popular 6 years ago if they look good on me. I live near a major catalog retailer; their tshirts, even acquired at thrift shops, go on to live long lives.

Much to the surprise of many, clothing doesn't have to be washed every time you wear it; many things can be worn several times. Washing is hard on clothing, so is drying. I dry most clothing either outdoors or on a rack in the furnace room. Anything with elastic, like (expensive) bras and underwear will last 3 - 4x longer if it doesn't go in the dryer. I probably spend an extra 15 minutes a week doing this. We didn't have a dryer when we had an infant/ toddler, that was harder, but we managed.

Throwaway consumerism is part of peak capitalism. Spend more, consume more, throw away more. The cost of disposal, and plans for end-of-life disposal or recycling should be required when stuff is made and sold. My family rolls their eyes when I delightedly not that my outfit is thrifted, but we have a massive oversupply of consumer goods causing all manner of trouble. Buy Less Stuff.
posted by theora55 at 5:45 PM on August 17, 2021 [1 favorite]


It's also really hard to source ethical underwear and only a little easier for socks, in Canada.

There's a company here in Vancouver, Blue Sky, that makes underwear and socks. The undies are bamboo and their thing is ethical manufacturing. Their sizes run quite large, so if you are a very small person, they might not get down to your size, but worth taking a look.
posted by jacquilynne at 5:46 PM on August 17, 2021 [2 favorites]


This issue is something that gives me pointless anxiety. As velebita said above, individual choices won't make much difference here, it has to come from the top and I don't see how we can get manufacturers to stop churning out endless junk. It's exasperating seeing online clothing stores with a banner that reads "New arrivals every day". Christ, how is that even possible? Look at this "ethical, cruelty-free" sandal brand; 117 colour/pattern options for adult's slides, 10 sizes listed. What's the minimum order quantity they have to produce of each colour/size combo, and how many of those will even be purchased? I can not buy all of those sandals but they're still going to be sitting there, or somewhere else, for a very long time.
posted by Rora at 5:55 PM on August 17, 2021 [2 favorites]


I have a really hard time getting rid of old clothes, and I can't buy new stuff because my place is small and there's no room. I enjoy the feeling of fine garments but the prices of the good stuff goes up and up, and the reasonably prices stuff is not high quality anymore. Everything is a scam!

Change can only come from legislation of some sort, I don't think individual choices will ever be enough to roll back the scamification of everything.
posted by chaz at 7:48 PM on August 17, 2021 [1 favorite]


The part that’s literally forced on them is that huge amount of low-quality clothing that is not good enough to resell and ends up in landfills... And that amount has been getting bigger because the quality of the clothing has been steadily diminishing over the years. It’s not me saying it, it’s all there in the article...

Yeah, no. This clothing isn't literally forced on them. The article does not say that. They buy it, sight unseen, gambling that they will recover their investment and then some. That is in the article. In addition to the substantial number of people who make up this segment of the Ghanaian economy. There is one reason our clothes are sent there. Someone in Ghana is buying them.

This article is pretty bullshitty, a combination of white guilt (with a slew of responses here showing that it's working), and a dash of white savior in the form of an American woman there to raise awareness. Because they couldn't really profile a Ghanaian who's concerned about this stuff. There's a good seed of info on where your stuff end up. But most of it is really misplaced moralizing.

A reason I did not see mentioned in the article is that these donations likely destroy any local tailor (or other cloth-making) industries as well.

I dunno... Suppose you're some Ghanaian guy like The Card Cheat, who buys almost nothing new and doesn't give a shit about being fashionable. Does he owe the local tailor his patronage, even if he doesn't want it? Or can't afford it? What does he owe the local manufacturer?


I increasingly think that we must force sellers of all types of items to include expected costs for a reasonable disposal (of both product and packing) in the price of whatever they sell.

I find this generally not necessary, since disposal usually isn't free. You have to pay for everything you dispose of, unless you've got property to use as a landfill, or you're dumping illegally. Whether you put the onus directly on the manufacturer up front, or dispose of it yourself, you will pay.

However this is clearly a differenc case from what's being described in the article. You may have thrown away those old jeans. But someone in Ghana paid to have them shipped there.
posted by 2N2222 at 8:00 PM on August 17, 2021 [2 favorites]


- The part that’s literally forced on them is that huge amount of low-quality clothing that is not good enough to resell and ends up in landfills... And that amount has been getting bigger because the quality of the clothing has been steadily diminishing over the years. It’s not me saying it, it’s all there in the article...

- Yeah, no. This clothing isn't literally forced on them. The article does not say that.


You quoted my comment but then misleadingly rewrote it – it wasn’t "this clothing" as whole, it was "the part that’s literally forced on them is that huge amount of low-quality clothing"...

Yes, indeed, "they buy it, sight unseen, gambling that they will recover their investment and then some". The problem there is, as several local people quoted in the article say, that the quality has been steadily decreasing so the investments are riskier and the gamble often doesn’t pay off! These are local people in Ghana quoted as saying this is the fault of people "in Europe, the UK and Australia, America" who are sending lower and lower quality items in bales sight unseen, indeed.... That’s not some bullshitty appeal to "white guilt", that’s a fact, that problem of crap clothing taking up more and more of the space is the literal fault of people in those areas of the world. It’s people in Ghana saying it. I’m not sure what you don’t like about that?
posted by bitteschoen at 3:23 AM on August 18, 2021 [2 favorites]


This is closely related to the "right to repair" issue. In both cases the capitalistic profit imperative leads to global scale waste. When smart phone manufactures make it impossible to replace the battery they apply identical logic: we can make more money by decreasing the longevity of our product.
The right to repair is not enough, there should be a mandate to repair. Products with long achievable life will always be more sustainable then product recycling. The same idea should apply when the product end of life is reached. How it is recycled should be designed in before it is built.
Phones and clothing should be held to the same standard: make it last and make it recyclable.
posted by Metacircular at 3:43 AM on August 18, 2021 [6 favorites]


The same idea should apply when the product end of life is reached. How it is recycled should be designed in before it is built.

Make the manufacturer responsible for the recycling of their product. This is a concept which is gaining steam, called Extended Producer Responsibility, or EPR.
posted by condour75 at 4:12 AM on August 18, 2021 [7 favorites]


Cradle to Cradle is a good example of extended producer responsibility.
posted by hydropsyche at 9:10 AM on August 18, 2021


I can't be the only one who wants in on thivavia's zoom calls.
posted by theora55 at 10:09 AM on August 18, 2021 [4 favorites]


modern clothes aren’t made to be mended. Would I buy the heck out of a clothing brand that actually was mendable? Sure, but only once, that’s the whole point

This is really the deep issue. I'm older, so I remember when I was a kid, that clothing came far better made. Just regular clothing that you would buy at a department store. Kid's clothing came with extra fabric in the hem so you could let it down. Shirts came with extra buttons so that you could sew one back on if you lost it. And actually if I recall correctly sweaters also often came with extra threading for darning. I darned a partner's clothing a couple months ago and it blew his fucking mind - rescued a really expensive shirt from being toast.

But:
1) most people don't know how to do it and
2) most clothing today is just. not. mendable, and it's built as cheaply as possible and breaks really fucking fast. It's shitty fabrics that fall apart, buttons that are poorly sewn on with just a few threads. The clothing I got when I was a teenager has lasted to give to my own kid. The clothing I bought two years ago is gracing the trash.

And I craft! The problem is deeper than just shitty stitching - the cloth itself is good for nothing, not quilting or ragbraiding or dollmaking. I used to save clothes so that I could quilt with the fabric, and then when I dug them out and tried it was flimsy and not enough actual cloth material to hold the stitches without ripping out. It's loose woven stuff with a lot of plastics in to make it cheaper.

this is the fault of people "in Europe, the UK and Australia, America" who are sending lower and lower quality items in bales sight unseen

This part however is only partially due to the low quality of shitty clothing.

First: there is so much otherizing of the developing world that people do not - and haven't for a long time - understand that there's actually not an enormous clothing need in the world in the same way that there used to be centuries ago. Even one century ago, people were in so much need of clothing that you'd see even people in the US making clothing out of flour sacks. That's just no longer the case. Even deeply impoverished people can usually get clothing. Which means that most people's vision of clothing donation just isn't happening. The way clothing donation used to work a very long time ago, as I understand it, is you would donate clothing, the charitable institutions would sort it out, like "ah, women's clothing, children's clothing for these ages, different piles" and when they were giving to people, they would be given a bundle of clothing, "here's your clothing dole for you and your family to have clothes for the year".

That stopped for a lot of reasons; it was somewhat degrading, the clothes often sucked even then, it was inconvenient, what if people needed clothes at other times, there was no choice, etc. So you had places like Goodwill/the Salvation Army, that would sell clothes at pretty cheap prices so that people who were poor could afford to buy nice clothes. And there were nice clothes there. I remember as a poor kid going there and getting nice wool coats, prom dresses, whatever you needed could be bought for just a few dollars. And there were shitty clothes too, but they were ridiculously cheap, like I remember buying things for a quarter.

And then ebay, and poshmark, and all the online resellers started happening for used clothes. And people found out that if clothing was name brand, or a particular type, or what have you, they could go pick over the thrift stores and resell them online. And so thrift stores, in response, started pricing their goods up according to what the resale value was, and the mission became about turning a profit in the stores so that they could donate to charity, and the shops became utterly useless at the previous mission, and just about making a profit on clothes. And so doing that, they started reselling the things that didn't sell themselves to clothing resellers. Who started the chain of supply to places like this.

And it's worth noting, again, that they're not donating these clothes, even though these clothes were once donated to them and the donors presumably would want them to be donated on. No, they're selling them. Which means they're only useful to people who can resell them for a profit. Which means that like the original thrift stores, they're looking through for the good stuff and tossing the rest.

People are donating things because they don't want to be wasteful: they want them to be used. Charities lie to them about how their goods are used, because they're competing to be the primary donation place, so they can hope for the five really profitable items in a host of 35. And so donation points don't say "look, we don't need anymore fucking heavy cotton t-shirts" or "we absolutely, positively can't take sweatpants". Because they know that people just want to donate all of their stuff at the same location, and they want to catch that market.

tl;dr: capitalism ruins everything part one thousand.
posted by corb at 12:25 PM on August 18, 2021 [15 favorites]


I find this generally not necessary, since disposal usually isn't free. You have to pay for everything you dispose of, unless you've got property to use as a landfill, or you're dumping illegally. Whether you put the onus directly on the manufacturer up front, or dispose of it yourself, you will pay.

In most places where I've lived, disposal has been included in property taxes and is thus effectively free. It's not free, but it's not paid for directly so people can't directly affect what it costs them, and it's certainly not an incentive to manufacturers to create better systems when the costs of disposal are born by customers through property taxes.
posted by jacquilynne at 12:30 PM on August 18, 2021 [1 favorite]


In design school we were graded on something that loosely translates as “product lifecycle and social responsibility”. If we used plastics in our designs, for example, we had to account for all the social and environmental costs from oil extraction to 100 years in a landfill after the product was discarded.

First time I brought this up in a real world job I was laughed down.

But yeah, the quality of clothes discarded by rich countries has been going down. Twenty something years ago when I was heavily into climbing and camping the smart way to get good gear on a budget in Mexico was to get it from recently illuminated Americans and Europeans.

We would got to psychedelic pilgrimage sites like Huautla and Mazunte in Oaxaca, Palenque in Chiapas, Real de Catorce and Wadley in San Luis Potosí, etc. And we would trade with the wide eyed and probably still tripping first world tourist. Cheap Mexican hippy clothes, like car tire huaraches and palm frond hats, for brand name gear. I still have a bunch of old stuff from Columbia, North Face, Asolo, Patagonia, Black Diamond, and other name brands.

By the mid 2000s one was lucky to score a pair of stinky Teca sandals. Most of the tourists were wearing cheap ready to wear ‘spiritual’ fashion stuff.
posted by Dr. Curare at 1:28 PM on August 18, 2021 [2 favorites]


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