What happens to old shirts

[yendi]

I've raved before about how much I adore The Week, which is probably the best weekly newsmag in existence. Aside from their summaries of news and reviews, they publish one feature story each week. This week's feature (by George Packer, from the upcoming The Best American Nonrequired Reading 2003, edited by Dave Eggars, but likely to be good anyway) is on what happens to clothing that gets donated to thrift shops and the Salvation Army. It's not pretty. Basically, anything they don't have a use for (most pre-worn stuff, t-shirts, etc) is turned around and sold to companies that buy used clothing in bulk. They then ship it off to Asia/Latin America (if it's mostly clean), the more prosperous regions of Africa (if it's faded), or the less prosperous regions (if there are holes or stains). Buyers there purchase the lots in bulk, and resell it (often as "new"). The UPenn shirt that the story follows eventually ends up in a stall in Uganda, where it is sold to a 71-year-old man for $1.20.

When I first started reading the article, I assumed the point was going to be that the clothes ended up being donated to Africa, certainly something I have no problem with. But I'm not sure how comfortable I am at the idea of the donations getting turned around right away into a commercial product. If the unusable shirts were given to homeless or poor folks (here or abroad), I'd see that as being a lot more in line with the intent of donating them. Then again, I also realize that most charities are in a major cash crunch, and this is, essentially, a bulk version of what they do anyway (sell the items to raise money for their goals). I don't know. But I'm glad I'm more aware of the process than I was (although it might have been nice to know about this before donating nine bags of clothes this week).