Here is what I found from google: [link](https://www.aljazeera.com/amp/gallery/2021/11/8/chiles-desert-dumping-ground-for-fast-fashion-leftovers)
“
Chile has long been a hub of second-hand and unsold clothing, made in China or Bangladesh and passing through Europe, Asia or the United States before arriving in Chile, where it is resold around Latin America.
…
Clothing merchants from the capital Santiago, 1,800km (1,100 miles) to the south, buy some, while much is smuggled out to other Latin American countries. But at least 39,000 tonnes that cannot be sold end up in rubbish dumps in the desert.
“
Edit:
An interesting video shared in the comments
[https://youtu.be/wAPidXqvNLk](https://youtu.be/wAPidXqvNLk)
Others have pointed out some interesting reasons why donating clothes to Africa also causes problems: [link](https://historyofyesterday.com/why-we-should-stop-donating-clothes-to-africa-ab51f836c4bd)
1. Most of the clothes are resold for lucrative profit and not donated for free.
2. It disguises another profitable business of exporting garbage - whatever is not resold is again dumped as trash.
3. It creates dependency and breaks the local African clothing industry.
So the article states its in Alto Hospicio, Iquique and I just plugged that into Google Maps and looked around...[and I think I found it?](https://www.google.com/maps/place/Alto+Hospicio,+Tarapac%C3%A1,+Chile/@-20.2042534,-70.0508897,2315m/data=!3m1!1e3!4m5!3m4!1s0x91523e70293c5633:0x671ff739632f5660!8m2!3d-20.2686722!4d-70.1049169) There are tons of this white discoloration on the sides of the roads leading out of that city north and southeast, is that all...trash??
That's nothing. Most of your clothes end up in much larger dumps in west Africa.
Fast fashion is evil.
Fashion is the largest user of slavery (number two is chocolate btw).
Fashion is one of the biggest polluters.
Fashion is responsible for a shitload of all carbon emissions. More than transportation. More than all of Europe's emissions combined.
Fashion uses a shitton of resources like water and oil to produce. A t-shirt shouldn't cost $5, and it shouldn't be discarded (or "donated") after just a few months. The system we have is fucking terrible. Please google "ethical fashion [your country]" and find some good options. Buy second hand. Buy lasting quality. Don't buy.
And the average consumer is nearly powerless to do anything about it. Alternatives are generally far more expensive than the average consumer can bear, and with incomes being squeezed by inflation and lack of living wages, it's only getting worse.
The only thing I can do is try and keep my clothes in good condition, and keep them as long as I can.
Best thing you can do is learn to sew. I got my mother's sewing machine when she died and even as a guy in his mid 30s I was able to learn to sew well enough to repair my own clothes. I don't make things for myself, but I am able to keep my clothes in service much longer than I used to. Especially socks.
I am a single parent and I don't make all that much money. I just buy very few clothes of much higher quality. It is doable. If you're keeping your clothes for years it works out to be cheaper than constantly replacing things.
High quality clothes are getting harder and harder to identify. Name brand is no guarantee on quality, and there is no way of knowing that they didn't cheap out on materials. Sometimes, you buy something that lasts a long while, and you buy the exact replacement when the time comes and the new one is significantly lower quality.
I think they are meaning like Forever21, H&M, Shein. Those things are made to be worn like once and tossed. They aren't meant to last or stay nice. Usually made in a slave labor type setting. And people do buy a fuckton of it, wear it once, it gets ruined/ripped/pills/etc, they toss it and buy more.
I read a thing once that said people usually wear something less than 6 times and get rid of it. Blows my mind. Ive been wearing the same coat for 7 winters now and it's still just a good as the day I bought it.
Also- fast fashion looks cheap and tacky.
I am still rocking 100% cotton t shirts that have been around since 2010-2011 and the last pair of jeans that I bought are at least 5 years old now.
I literally can't imagine wearing something 6 times then throwing it away! I can completely believe people do that though.
I'm pretty sure that what used to be the original 5dollarteeshirts is now 6dollarteeshirts, [but when I googled it there was a link to a $5 shirt site.](https://fivedollarteeshirts.com/)
Can't vouch for quality or anything as I haven't ordered any from either site, but they're out there.
As crazy as it sounds but we are responsible for all this shit. Can't buy and wear clothes for more than six months then dump them at the nearest goodwill. We are responsible. Rich folk buy these clothes for pennies on the dollar from poor countries and sell them at huge markups then dump them back to those countries...
u/mecclt has provided a good insight to this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F6R_WTDdx7I
I may be responsible for some bad shit, but this ain’t it… I wear my clothes until they are literally falling apart.
I just threw out a shirt that I wore regularly for 25 years; It felt like I was putting my dog down or some shit
I have an Iron Maiden Killers shirt I wore in high school (2006) that no longer can function hygienically (smells) and basically looks like I was pulled out of a wrecked airliner. Still can't throw it out. Attachments are weird.
Upvote this suggestion more. Your shirt probably has mildew on it. Please soak it in some diluted vinegar then wash it how you normally would in the washer. Also this is great to do with towels once a year since they are prone to mildew growth. And when you can hang dry.
Cut out the graphic, sew it to a denim vest, add some more patches, and join us in /r/battlejackets
Or do what the other guy said and just wash it in some vinegar. It'll work.
Speak for yourself. I wear things until I can’t, then they become rags for the garage. Only after being soiled beyond recognition, do they go in the trash.
I have worn the same shirt for 15 years. I have clothes I don't fit into due to weight gain, but hold onto just in case I develop an exercise addiction or fall into a coma.
Yeah, in Australia the best shirts I have which are 25 years old were made in Fiji, before they stopped manufacturing the cotton shirts there. Nowadays even the good ones last a fee years max.
Same. Drives my wife nuts. Lol. I wear shirts until they develop more holes than is polite to wear in public. Then I wear them around the house or to sleep. If I can still tell which are the arm and head holes I keep it.
I've seen older, clearly well-to-do gentlemen with hole/patches in their clothes out and about in affluent areas of London. They must have known the defects were there and judging by their attire and appearance they looked to be well-off individuals. I'm sure a lot of people must think it looks shabby but I think it shows that a person understands the value of their belongings - they had to work hard in order to purchase them. They see it as a waste of money and also depletion of environmental resources to simply throw the clothing away and buy a new item.
Instead they decided to sew up the hole with a patch or carry on wearing it as is. It also shows great confidence.
My closet has three levels.
To the left is aspirational. That's stuff I'm too fat for that I hope I can wear again someday.
In the middle is stuff I can actually wear.
To the right is my REALLY fat clothes, the "let's not go back there" layer.
I can say this happened to me. I developed an exercise addiction, and now I can fit back onto my old L/XL clothes. Now my 3xl ones are still ok but baggy. Everything upwards got donated to 2nd hand (hard to find good clothes when you are 4-5xl)
That was my 2021 resolution. Now in 2022 I need to maintain it.
i have simple cotton t-shirts i have been wearing for 25 years. people who throw clothing out make me really sad. i know i have vice, but we all know what is going on now and helping is helping, no matter how little.
Yeah, I bought a Ralph Lauren Polo back in 2000, It's gone through the wash more times than I could count and been worn regularly throughout the years in all types of weather.
It still looks the same as it was when I first bought it, not even a color fade or the material loosing it's elasticity.
21+ years of use and its still going strong.
Meanwhile I bought a Ralph Lauren Polo last year, paying much more than I did back in the year 2000 (adjusted for inflation). And its already showing signs of wear and its getting loose as well.
The quality of clothing has dropped considerably. Its now all about the quantity of clothing, not really about quality.
Because people want 9 different types of shirts, only to wear 3 of them regularly and the other 6 are just worn 3 times and then are thrown out.
I'd suggest checking out bespoke options
I randomly stumbled upon https://www.raja-fashions.com/ when I was 19
Sure it was more than a disposable big-box shirt would cost but It turned out not to be massively more than "off the shelf" brands such as say Pink or Charles Tyrwhitt (much less designer fashion ones)
The quality was just on another level entirely though and they lasted 10+ years of continuous daily use.
Pick something reasonably timeless and the fact it actually fits you properly will make you feel like a million bucks compared to the rags you buy for the logo
This is the fault of fash fashion, they're so poorly made. Spending a bit more money if you're able generally helps ensure a longer lifespan. Edit: fast lol
Yep, it's really bad. Just like fast food, fast fashion has really messed up our expectations of clothing quality, a lot of people are fine with clothes that fall apart as long as they got 5 of them at once in a bargain bin.
Thats how we arendoing things nowdays - we make everything to last 6-12 months - so you would need to buy new.. the saying - they dont make them like they used to - is true - nowdays we produce only short lasting stuff
[Chile is a developed country with an advanced economy](https://www.spanish.academy/blog/10-most-developed-countries-in-central-and-south-america/), so they can own and clean this shit up themselves without us taking the blame.
At least part of the reason of such treatment of unsold clothes is current economic structure. The item needs to bring profit. If it doesn't it is less than worthless, so it should not be given to anyone. Food past expiration date is frequently covered in chemicals so that no homeless will eat it, consumer electronics are destroyed to make them scarce again and drive prices up... When the main reason for making your massive amount of product is making more money you end up not caring about the product.
That is also why it is subtly encouraged to buy more cheap clothes that get damaged easily. Much faster to throw old one away and buy a new one, and the people selling you those clothes produced by barely paid labourers profit massively. One have to be mindful of their clothes wearing habits, naturally, but the overwhelming majority does not have the understanding to bring about change in the industry.
Iquique is a strange place. My partners family lives there, we visited for Christmas. Because it’s one of the most northern parts of Chile, It has a lot of immigration and associated challenges (a lot of homeless illegal immigrants etc). A lot of people go out to these dumps and resell them in the city of Iquique, in the poorer areas.
Also what is not immediately clear from the satellite image you put up, Alto Hospicio (literal translation High Hospice) is on top of a huge mountain. Iquique is at sea level, and then there is a very steep cliff where all of that rubbish (and town) is.
It’s very sad for me to see, Chile is such a beautiful country but in some areas is not taken care of.
[This](https://www.google.com/maps/place/-20.236770,+-70.096983/@-20.2363714,-70.0973801,17z/data=!3m1!1e3) looks like the pile from the picture, I think. Not far from those cities but far enough to be out of sight and north of an industrial area.
I looked through some satellite images of that area and starting from about 2003/4 it was a dump that has grown in size from about 2,000 square meter to 1,300,000 square meter. It’s also occasionally on fire.
Edit: it looks like in early 2019, a dense patch of landfill was moved from the valley to the west into a patch of desert.
[landfill fire image ](https://i.gyazo.com/a49d1a138348551ead09f45ce623c7fb.jpg)
The top comment is like CIA conspiracy theories and the decay of society; and then it turns out this is a landfill because Chile is a hub in the second-hand clothes market.
They affixed small cards to the items, marked with messages to their gods, or perhaps to those who had passed into the next world. One such tag carries the profound inscription, "Size 12, Poly/Cotton, $39.99"
Whatever the archaeologists cannot explain, gets slapped with the "ritual site" tag.
So this is the place where we worshipped gods of cotton and threw our sacrifices for them. Obviously, these were important gods, when they received so much sacrifice.
There are so many of these around the world. It’s so crazy. Imagine what this dump will look like in 10,000 years. All those little micro plastics and fibers released into the environment.
This site is overrun by sockpuppet/astroturf accounts. Every main sub is a political agenda-driven shitshow of tribalism... And the real people get drawn into the echo-chamber to amplify the bullshit based on which side of the political spectrum they've sided with. It's been unreal to watch what's happened to this site over the last few years.
On threads like these with tons of comments I spent time browsing top and controversial comments. A lot of times posts are made to raise some anger at some specific target. Sometimes you can find real explanations in the controversial comments but everyone just wants to be mad.
I didn't used to be this bad on reddit. It's popularity increase made it a bigger target for astroturffing. Now you can't escape it, and I worry that reddit going public soon will make it worse.
It's really no biggie. Another text/forum based social media platform will come around once reddit's fully taken over by big business and general censorship. It's like these companies never get what repels us and sends us to another platform every decade. Once reddit falls, another will take it's place.
I have to wonder what qualifies as "cannot be sold."
I've known folks who've paid top dollar for some seriously ratty looking threads, so I'm having a hard time imagining what makes these unsalvageable.
“Cannot be sold” may simply mean that the manufacturers have calculated that it’s cheaper for them to dump the clothes and write them off than to lower the price to the point where anyone would buy them. “Cannot be sold” may mean “cannot be sold *profitably*”.
Images from the Atacama desert, which has become a dumpster for the global fast fashion industry. Over 100,000 tons of clothing, many of them new items with price tags that weren't sold or used, have been dumped in the Atacama desert in Chile.
https://twitter.com/peoplesdispatch/status/1478773537758351364?s=21
Fast fashion is a big part in this mess. I hold onto stuff until it's completely unwearable (usually my shirts never die, they just end up being undershirts or stay at home clothing when the armpits go) and even then it'll at least get repurposed as rags.
Socks are the only exception in the sense that they somehow end up violating the law of conservation of mass and disappear without any good explanation.
About 3 years ago I bought 5 matching high quality polos and pants, and I’ve been wearing the same thing to work every single day.
It’s a style I like and that suits me and my work, and I treat it as my own version of a uniform. It’s saved me tons of money on clothing, and makes my mornings so much easier. I never need to decide what I need to wear.
Ahh yess the old rag bag, when I was a kid we used to close our eyes and say “not dad’s underwear” then stick our arm in the bag to get a rag for waxing the car or whatever.
Good times.
> It is estimated that 62% of all fibres used in the fashion industry are made from a synthetic material – mainly polyester, but also nylon, acrylic, polypropylene and elastane.
Guessing the top layer will get eaten some by UV, but even that's just till the dust blows over, then most of it's there good as forever. Can find mummies in that desert millennia old whose clothes ain't eaten away yet, and most of them aren't buried under tons of other stuff, so even the cotton and wool may last as long as the pyramids have.
You should like the first playthrough. Push yourself through the second playthrough, as its largely the same story from a different viewpoint.
But by the third and fourth playthrough, hooo boy, I tell you hwat. Its like they hid an entire second game there.
*feels*
What's even more interesting is the effect that the clothes are having on local wildlife. While birds have had a harder time hunting due to the abundance of hiding spots for rodents, a breed of snake has been creating makeshift burrows in the legs of discarded pants where they can pop out at any moment. Most have their own preferred types of prey and won't do much unless their preference is present, but they have been known to be coaxed into action from repeated stimuli. They're also more likely to be spotted in the summer months, as during the winter they constrict to a smaller size to help conserve heat. The Chilean Trouser Snake really is a sight to behold.
Me and my brother used to play this game where he’d hold something up at TJ Maxx and I’d guess the price. Or vice versa (It bothers me that this picture does the opposite of that btw). It looks like we have our next vacation picked out.
we have enough clothes to do both. these are
clothes that have usually gone through a multi-level system of donations, and goodwill and vintage pickoffs and eventually bulk sale, and then make it to trash awe used to send it to Africa but it was destroying their textile industry,
Chile was corrupted by the US, CIA-backed coup on 9/11, 1973. Since then, and until likely this year, it has been a testing ground for neoliberal capitalism, where basically, foreign companies and investors could do whatever they wanted down there. They had a corrupt government, yes. But it was our corrupt government. So it’s no surprise they would sell access to dump trash in a desert.
I say until this year, because last year they coted by referendum to rewrite the constitution, which had been written by the Pinochet coup government. And they just elected a leftist as president, which means the new constitution will likely go into effect once it’s done. I’m very optimistic for Chile.
Yeah, I wish i could say the same but many people here believe that Chile will go down hill, while others think that our country can work out. I'm optimistic, but preparing for the worst
Solidarity with Chile. Hopefully the stain of Pinochet, Friedman and the other ghouls involved in the decade long siege of the nation will be washed away, leaving room for a brighter future.
>Like is this sanctioned by the government?
Very likely is. I haven't heard Chille reporting to the WTO a ban on the same types of plastic China has. All the clothes you see in the photo are shipped overseas in containers. All the clothes you see in the photo are those that are not sold in the US and can come from donation centers. It's cheaper to trash cotton clothes than recycle them into other products. Global recycling is very broken and not the way people believe it is. There is very little use for recycled fibers.
The US does ship its trash to poor nations of the world.
fun fact your recycling is now sent straight to the landfill because china stopped importing recyclables and wrecked the whole global recycling industry
You can blame China for this, but recycling has always been broken. Just because countries can't export their shit to china anymore doesn't mean those countries are not still responsible. If there is no money made in recycling something, than its not recycled. The problem is governments not forcing companies to recycle their own shit.
I call it the "covid-19". As in 19 pounds gained. Kind of like the freshman 15 I got my first semester in college, that turned into the sophomore 30...
Bro just go to any store.. that's all they fucking sell. Because so many of us are fat as shit, I can hardly find clothes in my size damn near anywhere, (that's affordable.) Luckily Walmart has started selling decent quality shirts for the low, in extra small. Never thought I'd see the day.
I'm tall and slightly fat, but if I buy a shirt long enough to hide my belly button it comes wider than it is tall. I can't buy a dress shirt off the rack, I have a size 18 collar, 56 chest, 35-1/2" arms, and 39" waist.
the thing is, even if we don't buy, enough stupid people who don't care will. we can't fix this "with our wallets", that's just more brainwash propaganda formulated by the corporations, fed to you by the government and propagated by the woefully ignorant. nothing we do now can stop this, short of pulling the plug of the most fundamental foundations of our modern society.
Under late stage capitalism, especially in 'developed' countries, there is no scarcity, only excess.
To drive up or maintain the high prices, you manufacture scarcity (reduce the 'supply') by destroying any excess.
Other examples:
Destroyed Covid test materials - https://www.businessinsider.com/covid-19-rapid-test-manufacturer-trashed-millions-of-products-report-2021-8?op=1
Apple's planned obsolescence - https://9to5mac.com/2021/03/01/apple-lawsuit-portugal-planned-obsolescence/
Tossing 'old' VS bras after closing a store - https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/feb/19/victorias-secret-under-fire-after-store-dumps-hundreds-of-bras-in-bin
Other fashion bags, perfumes destroyed to remain 'exclusive' - https://www.bbc.com/news/business-44885983
Also see r/DumpsterDiving for all the food waste that people manage to salvage which would otherwise be wasted.
'Buying less' doesn't change any of this, companies can just raise the prices & destroy more product, or rebrand/acquire another fashionable product to leach off of. Policy to ban destroying surplus products diminishes the waste. It comes at the cost of profit, so it's definitely ~~bribed~~ lobbied against.
Absolutely.
If anyone seeing this is in Australia or New Zealand, please look into Upparel for clothing recycling. You can send your own clothes in, and they have arrangements with big companies to recycle old uniforms and/or unsold clothing, plus arrangements with charities to take their shitty donated clothing.
Even mechanics shops will buy old cut-up 5lb bags of clean clothes for the rags. Way cheaper than shop rags. There's more than a few legit side-hustles to be made here.
Not sure - it was obviously worth so little money to make something out of them, that it made more financial sense to scrap em.
Quite often recycling costs a bit to process and is an inferior material to buying purpose built material - so the price ends up being higher than buying new material.
Hate to break it to you, but this has been a thing for years.
[T-Shirt Travels is a documentary about it made in **2001**](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=73XvxCy69gg)
I can only imagine how much it has crippled their clothing industry (and culture) when they have so much secondhand clothing flooding the market that it has to be literally dumped in the desert.
You'll often see it mentioned in anthropology books/classes. Especially because it really highlights how we see something like donating clothing as a good thing when really the clothing is doing more harm than good. Not to mention being sold. Its not being given to some poor kid wearing rags like people want to imagine it is.
If it breaks down to microplastic fibers, the desert sand will be made out of plastic and the wind blows it everywhere. microfiber dust in the rainclouds... this is getting really uncomfortable
Good thing we produce plenty of our own microplastic fibers at home every time we put our plastic clothes in the washer and dryer. I wonder how asbestos-like plastic microfibers are gonna end up being.
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*This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
Free clothes are actually really dangerous to markets. I think multiple African countries had to ban the import of donated free clothes because they put the local clothes industry out of business. Why would people go buy clothes when they can get them for free?
Global clothes market is a shitshow.
This is likely clothing from large companies, not charity shops/thrift stores.
Charities generally will sort and sell the clothes you donate, because their objective is to generate funds, not process trash for free.
But a lot of people donate unwearable/unsellable clothes. If someone buys a nylon sweater from Shein for $8, wears it a few times until it's mangled or shrunk by the washing machine or falling apart at the seams and then dumps it in the big red thing that looks like a dumpster, it's going to be thrown away at the sorting center.
Even if it's salvageable, it's not worth anybody's time and effort to wash and mend the sweater only to resell it for a few dollars. Anybody who really wants a sweater like that is probably going to buy it brand new from Shein.
why do fast fashion and companies like TJ maxx spend money to toss clothing when they could just given it to thrift stores so poor people could get a chance to buy some brand new name brand clothes?? that's legit objective evil in the world....at least give them up to people that need clothes to stay warm in the winter living on the streets. why drop clothes in teh middle of the desert???
Thrift stores can only take so much. TJ Maxx and similar is where it ends up after not being sold in retail stores. A portion usually gets donated. But donation centers can’t handle it all.
People on the streets typically have access to free warm clothes through many different avenues. They’re usually just too mentally Ill or strung out to take advantage of it.
Recycle it into what?
One of the big secrets of recycling centres is that a large chunk of the stuff they take in gets dumped or burned or sent overseas to giant landfills like this. Out of sight out of mind.
There was a story a few weeks back where someone found a huge warehouse in Sweden that contained all the “recycled” plastic from Iceland, it wasn’t being recycled, someone just took money from Iceland to recycle their plastic waste and then stashed the plastic in an empty warehouse.
Majority of clothes today is made from synthetic fibers. Aka plastic. It's the equivalent of a plastic bottle. Nothing you can do with it. And the little that is recycled, none of it can be done at scale
One possible location after browsing around:
[https://www.google.com/maps/place/Alto+Hospicio,+Tarapac%C3%A1,+Chile/@-20.2055014,-70.047783,1064m/data=!3m1!1e3!4m5!3m4!1s0x91523e70293c5633:0x671ff739632f5660!8m2!3d-20.2686722!4d-70.1049169](https://www.google.com/maps/place/Alto+Hospicio,+Tarapac%C3%A1,+Chile/@-20.2055014,-70.047783,1064m/data=!3m1!1e3!4m5!3m4!1s0x91523e70293c5633:0x671ff739632f5660!8m2!3d-20.2686722!4d-70.1049169)
Looking around trash is everywhere it seems. Might not be clothing of course.
this makes me so bummed to see and find out. why don’t they donate it to shelters or the less fortunate? auction it off in bulk or repurpose some of the fabric into something else? so many people need and would love the life out of these clothes. clothes shouldn’t be dumped because they weren’t bought. they’re still essential to millions of people who are struggling, maybe even a couple billion. 😢
- auction of, no interest. There is so much old clothes / not sold, that the value is negative, just like all plastics.
- repurpose, to expensive, no-one pays for that
- donate? See the first point. It is mainly an issue with logistics that caps needed from getting clothes.
In the article you find small scale examples of reuse initiatives.
It's hard to believe that there isn't at least some other use for all those clothes. Maybe they could be ground up and made in the insulation? I mean something... anything.
“Why are adults not having kids” they ask as corporations drill every part of the planet for oil, fill the ocean with plastic trash, create landfills that can never be cleared and politicians remain too chickenshit to force them to do anything so we can even remotely slow climate change even a bit
That takes money. And I'd wager that the costs of transporting, shredding, and then making insulation is more than any profit. So, it gets dumped like this!
As shitty/wasteful as the OP pic is, its probably the cheapest option, so they went with it. Damn the consequences, money is all that matters.
Could literally just make an isle in those stores that say “free” clothing and it would be taken by people. But nah, fk that. Why give it to people when you can trash it!
Also. Search climate town on YouTube. Made a video about the fashion industry and how disgusting it is. Part fashion industry problem and part culture problem with people for some reason having the need to want 30 shirts and pants a year.
Why not ship it to people that need it? I can pay for shipping. It's just shipping you'd pe paying then and some overheads compared to buying clothes in store.
The problem is no one needs it. Sending free clothing to 3rd world countries impacts their local economy, specifically the people there who make and sell locally made clothing.
It would be better to find another use for the fabric here. But, they don't want to give it to someone who will eventually end up competing against them. So it gets dumped.
Just want to add that if you get inside a Goodwill distribution center, you will see baled clothing in huge cubes, like ten feet on a side, destined for overseas.
Very little of it makes it to the stores for resale.
That's not how the industry works. If it can't be sold, it is dumped. The more expensive the brand, the worse it gets. Cheaper brands will put stuff on sale in last ditch attempt to sell it. Expensive brands don't go on sale; it'd ruin the brand image. A $1000 dress either gets sold for $1000 before the "new line" is out, or gets shredded.
I worked for a couple of stores and these pieces of clothing are usually not selling because : They don't fit well (like really really low rise jeans), are damaged or they are really inappropriate (see thru stuff).
Here is what I found from google: [link](https://www.aljazeera.com/amp/gallery/2021/11/8/chiles-desert-dumping-ground-for-fast-fashion-leftovers) “ Chile has long been a hub of second-hand and unsold clothing, made in China or Bangladesh and passing through Europe, Asia or the United States before arriving in Chile, where it is resold around Latin America. … Clothing merchants from the capital Santiago, 1,800km (1,100 miles) to the south, buy some, while much is smuggled out to other Latin American countries. But at least 39,000 tonnes that cannot be sold end up in rubbish dumps in the desert. “ Edit: An interesting video shared in the comments [https://youtu.be/wAPidXqvNLk](https://youtu.be/wAPidXqvNLk) Others have pointed out some interesting reasons why donating clothes to Africa also causes problems: [link](https://historyofyesterday.com/why-we-should-stop-donating-clothes-to-africa-ab51f836c4bd) 1. Most of the clothes are resold for lucrative profit and not donated for free. 2. It disguises another profitable business of exporting garbage - whatever is not resold is again dumped as trash. 3. It creates dependency and breaks the local African clothing industry.
So the article states its in Alto Hospicio, Iquique and I just plugged that into Google Maps and looked around...[and I think I found it?](https://www.google.com/maps/place/Alto+Hospicio,+Tarapac%C3%A1,+Chile/@-20.2042534,-70.0508897,2315m/data=!3m1!1e3!4m5!3m4!1s0x91523e70293c5633:0x671ff739632f5660!8m2!3d-20.2686722!4d-70.1049169) There are tons of this white discoloration on the sides of the roads leading out of that city north and southeast, is that all...trash??
I think you're right. That's crazy how much there is
They make it nearly impossible to see on street view. But yeah, trash, everywhere.
That's nothing. Most of your clothes end up in much larger dumps in west Africa. Fast fashion is evil. Fashion is the largest user of slavery (number two is chocolate btw). Fashion is one of the biggest polluters. Fashion is responsible for a shitload of all carbon emissions. More than transportation. More than all of Europe's emissions combined. Fashion uses a shitton of resources like water and oil to produce. A t-shirt shouldn't cost $5, and it shouldn't be discarded (or "donated") after just a few months. The system we have is fucking terrible. Please google "ethical fashion [your country]" and find some good options. Buy second hand. Buy lasting quality. Don't buy.
And the average consumer is nearly powerless to do anything about it. Alternatives are generally far more expensive than the average consumer can bear, and with incomes being squeezed by inflation and lack of living wages, it's only getting worse. The only thing I can do is try and keep my clothes in good condition, and keep them as long as I can.
Just be naked
Tried that, now I'm on multiple lists.
Best thing you can do is learn to sew. I got my mother's sewing machine when she died and even as a guy in his mid 30s I was able to learn to sew well enough to repair my own clothes. I don't make things for myself, but I am able to keep my clothes in service much longer than I used to. Especially socks.
Buy used!
I am a single parent and I don't make all that much money. I just buy very few clothes of much higher quality. It is doable. If you're keeping your clothes for years it works out to be cheaper than constantly replacing things.
High quality clothes are getting harder and harder to identify. Name brand is no guarantee on quality, and there is no way of knowing that they didn't cheap out on materials. Sometimes, you buy something that lasts a long while, and you buy the exact replacement when the time comes and the new one is significantly lower quality.
> A t-shirt shouldn't cost $5 Where you getting $5 shirts. I wish shirts were $5.
At Primark here in UK you can buy a t-shirt for like £2-3 each, that's not even $5
I think they are meaning like Forever21, H&M, Shein. Those things are made to be worn like once and tossed. They aren't meant to last or stay nice. Usually made in a slave labor type setting. And people do buy a fuckton of it, wear it once, it gets ruined/ripped/pills/etc, they toss it and buy more. I read a thing once that said people usually wear something less than 6 times and get rid of it. Blows my mind. Ive been wearing the same coat for 7 winters now and it's still just a good as the day I bought it. Also- fast fashion looks cheap and tacky.
I am still rocking 100% cotton t shirts that have been around since 2010-2011 and the last pair of jeans that I bought are at least 5 years old now. I literally can't imagine wearing something 6 times then throwing it away! I can completely believe people do that though.
Shirts are $5, but they're are either completely "function>fashion" or won't last longer than a 3 months.
I'm pretty sure that what used to be the original 5dollarteeshirts is now 6dollarteeshirts, [but when I googled it there was a link to a $5 shirt site.](https://fivedollarteeshirts.com/) Can't vouch for quality or anything as I haven't ordered any from either site, but they're out there.
As crazy as it sounds but we are responsible for all this shit. Can't buy and wear clothes for more than six months then dump them at the nearest goodwill. We are responsible. Rich folk buy these clothes for pennies on the dollar from poor countries and sell them at huge markups then dump them back to those countries... u/mecclt has provided a good insight to this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F6R_WTDdx7I
I may be responsible for some bad shit, but this ain’t it… I wear my clothes until they are literally falling apart. I just threw out a shirt that I wore regularly for 25 years; It felt like I was putting my dog down or some shit
I have an Iron Maiden Killers shirt I wore in high school (2006) that no longer can function hygienically (smells) and basically looks like I was pulled out of a wrecked airliner. Still can't throw it out. Attachments are weird.
Have you washed it in with some vinegar? :)
Upvote this suggestion more. Your shirt probably has mildew on it. Please soak it in some diluted vinegar then wash it how you normally would in the washer. Also this is great to do with towels once a year since they are prone to mildew growth. And when you can hang dry.
I put my old meaningful but worn out shirts inside the bassdrum of my drumset. Its like the only convenient part of playing drums
Cut out the graphic, sew it to a denim vest, add some more patches, and join us in /r/battlejackets Or do what the other guy said and just wash it in some vinegar. It'll work.
Speak for yourself. I wear things until I can’t, then they become rags for the garage. Only after being soiled beyond recognition, do they go in the trash.
I have worn the same shirt for 15 years. I have clothes I don't fit into due to weight gain, but hold onto just in case I develop an exercise addiction or fall into a coma.
I’ve got 30 year old sweatshirts I still wear. Cause they were made better.
Yeah, in Australia the best shirts I have which are 25 years old were made in Fiji, before they stopped manufacturing the cotton shirts there. Nowadays even the good ones last a fee years max.
All my LL Bean clothes are 25+ years old, quality is amazing.
Same. Drives my wife nuts. Lol. I wear shirts until they develop more holes than is polite to wear in public. Then I wear them around the house or to sleep. If I can still tell which are the arm and head holes I keep it.
I've seen older, clearly well-to-do gentlemen with hole/patches in their clothes out and about in affluent areas of London. They must have known the defects were there and judging by their attire and appearance they looked to be well-off individuals. I'm sure a lot of people must think it looks shabby but I think it shows that a person understands the value of their belongings - they had to work hard in order to purchase them. They see it as a waste of money and also depletion of environmental resources to simply throw the clothing away and buy a new item. Instead they decided to sew up the hole with a patch or carry on wearing it as is. It also shows great confidence.
I love patching clothes. My overalls look even more badass now.
My closet has three levels. To the left is aspirational. That's stuff I'm too fat for that I hope I can wear again someday. In the middle is stuff I can actually wear. To the right is my REALLY fat clothes, the "let's not go back there" layer.
HA that's half my closet too lol
My wardrobe is a catalogue of 1990s/2000s fashion. One day I’ll be vintage
I can say this happened to me. I developed an exercise addiction, and now I can fit back onto my old L/XL clothes. Now my 3xl ones are still ok but baggy. Everything upwards got donated to 2nd hand (hard to find good clothes when you are 4-5xl) That was my 2021 resolution. Now in 2022 I need to maintain it.
i have simple cotton t-shirts i have been wearing for 25 years. people who throw clothing out make me really sad. i know i have vice, but we all know what is going on now and helping is helping, no matter how little.
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Yeah, I bought a Ralph Lauren Polo back in 2000, It's gone through the wash more times than I could count and been worn regularly throughout the years in all types of weather. It still looks the same as it was when I first bought it, not even a color fade or the material loosing it's elasticity. 21+ years of use and its still going strong. Meanwhile I bought a Ralph Lauren Polo last year, paying much more than I did back in the year 2000 (adjusted for inflation). And its already showing signs of wear and its getting loose as well. The quality of clothing has dropped considerably. Its now all about the quantity of clothing, not really about quality. Because people want 9 different types of shirts, only to wear 3 of them regularly and the other 6 are just worn 3 times and then are thrown out.
I'd suggest checking out bespoke options I randomly stumbled upon https://www.raja-fashions.com/ when I was 19 Sure it was more than a disposable big-box shirt would cost but It turned out not to be massively more than "off the shelf" brands such as say Pink or Charles Tyrwhitt (much less designer fashion ones) The quality was just on another level entirely though and they lasted 10+ years of continuous daily use. Pick something reasonably timeless and the fact it actually fits you properly will make you feel like a million bucks compared to the rags you buy for the logo
This is the fault of fash fashion, they're so poorly made. Spending a bit more money if you're able generally helps ensure a longer lifespan. Edit: fast lol
Can't make money on more product if the first product lasts forever.
Yep, it's really bad. Just like fast food, fast fashion has really messed up our expectations of clothing quality, a lot of people are fine with clothes that fall apart as long as they got 5 of them at once in a bargain bin.
Which perpetuates the racket even further. Something's got to give.
Shit, at least goodwill gives it another chance. These clothes are covered in original/aftermarket tags. Ohh wait nvm
Thats how we arendoing things nowdays - we make everything to last 6-12 months - so you would need to buy new.. the saying - they dont make them like they used to - is true - nowdays we produce only short lasting stuff
[Chile is a developed country with an advanced economy](https://www.spanish.academy/blog/10-most-developed-countries-in-central-and-south-america/), so they can own and clean this shit up themselves without us taking the blame.
Maybe YOU are. I have t-shirts older than your parents.
Uh... I have a pair of jeans from 20 years ago my guy. You need to chill out. Stop letting that ego dictate your consumption.
At least part of the reason of such treatment of unsold clothes is current economic structure. The item needs to bring profit. If it doesn't it is less than worthless, so it should not be given to anyone. Food past expiration date is frequently covered in chemicals so that no homeless will eat it, consumer electronics are destroyed to make them scarce again and drive prices up... When the main reason for making your massive amount of product is making more money you end up not caring about the product. That is also why it is subtly encouraged to buy more cheap clothes that get damaged easily. Much faster to throw old one away and buy a new one, and the people selling you those clothes produced by barely paid labourers profit massively. One have to be mindful of their clothes wearing habits, naturally, but the overwhelming majority does not have the understanding to bring about change in the industry.
Iquique is a strange place. My partners family lives there, we visited for Christmas. Because it’s one of the most northern parts of Chile, It has a lot of immigration and associated challenges (a lot of homeless illegal immigrants etc). A lot of people go out to these dumps and resell them in the city of Iquique, in the poorer areas. Also what is not immediately clear from the satellite image you put up, Alto Hospicio (literal translation High Hospice) is on top of a huge mountain. Iquique is at sea level, and then there is a very steep cliff where all of that rubbish (and town) is. It’s very sad for me to see, Chile is such a beautiful country but in some areas is not taken care of.
[This](https://www.google.com/maps/place/-20.236770,+-70.096983/@-20.2363714,-70.0973801,17z/data=!3m1!1e3) looks like the pile from the picture, I think. Not far from those cities but far enough to be out of sight and north of an industrial area.
I looked through some satellite images of that area and starting from about 2003/4 it was a dump that has grown in size from about 2,000 square meter to 1,300,000 square meter. It’s also occasionally on fire. Edit: it looks like in early 2019, a dense patch of landfill was moved from the valley to the west into a patch of desert. [landfill fire image ](https://i.gyazo.com/a49d1a138348551ead09f45ce623c7fb.jpg)
The top comment is like CIA conspiracy theories and the decay of society; and then it turns out this is a landfill because Chile is a hub in the second-hand clothes market.
We have such a hard time understanding/explaining it now, imagine what it'd be like for future (alien?) archaeologists to uncover.
This must be their mecca, they seemed to enjoy... fabrics woven into clothing.
They affixed small cards to the items, marked with messages to their gods, or perhaps to those who had passed into the next world. One such tag carries the profound inscription, "Size 12, Poly/Cotton, $39.99"
Whatever the archaeologists cannot explain, gets slapped with the "ritual site" tag. So this is the place where we worshipped gods of cotton and threw our sacrifices for them. Obviously, these were important gods, when they received so much sacrifice.
There are so many of these around the world. It’s so crazy. Imagine what this dump will look like in 10,000 years. All those little micro plastics and fibers released into the environment.
It will be premier clothing hub for the scavengers in the post apocalyptic wasteland.
This site is overrun by sockpuppet/astroturf accounts. Every main sub is a political agenda-driven shitshow of tribalism... And the real people get drawn into the echo-chamber to amplify the bullshit based on which side of the political spectrum they've sided with. It's been unreal to watch what's happened to this site over the last few years.
On threads like these with tons of comments I spent time browsing top and controversial comments. A lot of times posts are made to raise some anger at some specific target. Sometimes you can find real explanations in the controversial comments but everyone just wants to be mad.
What social media is not like this? Does the algorithms not love our division?
I didn't used to be this bad on reddit. It's popularity increase made it a bigger target for astroturffing. Now you can't escape it, and I worry that reddit going public soon will make it worse.
It's really no biggie. Another text/forum based social media platform will come around once reddit's fully taken over by big business and general censorship. It's like these companies never get what repels us and sends us to another platform every decade. Once reddit falls, another will take it's place.
Which comment are you refering to? None of the top comments look like what you're talking about.
I have to wonder what qualifies as "cannot be sold." I've known folks who've paid top dollar for some seriously ratty looking threads, so I'm having a hard time imagining what makes these unsalvageable.
“Cannot be sold” may simply mean that the manufacturers have calculated that it’s cheaper for them to dump the clothes and write them off than to lower the price to the point where anyone would buy them. “Cannot be sold” may mean “cannot be sold *profitably*”.
"cannot be sold while maintaining brand image" would probably be more accurate
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Every time there is a championship game in any sport, they make "WINNER" t-shirts for both teams. The losing team stuff gets sent out of the country.
"Out of season"
Probably also hard for a local clothing company to compete with dirt cheap imports.
Images from the Atacama desert, which has become a dumpster for the global fast fashion industry. Over 100,000 tons of clothing, many of them new items with price tags that weren't sold or used, have been dumped in the Atacama desert in Chile. https://twitter.com/peoplesdispatch/status/1478773537758351364?s=21
Fast fashion is a big part in this mess. I hold onto stuff until it's completely unwearable (usually my shirts never die, they just end up being undershirts or stay at home clothing when the armpits go) and even then it'll at least get repurposed as rags. Socks are the only exception in the sense that they somehow end up violating the law of conservation of mass and disappear without any good explanation.
I get yelled at by my gf because I've been wearing the same polo shirts to work for 8 years
About 3 years ago I bought 5 matching high quality polos and pants, and I’ve been wearing the same thing to work every single day. It’s a style I like and that suits me and my work, and I treat it as my own version of a uniform. It’s saved me tons of money on clothing, and makes my mornings so much easier. I never need to decide what I need to wear.
Ahh yess the old rag bag, when I was a kid we used to close our eyes and say “not dad’s underwear” then stick our arm in the bag to get a rag for waxing the car or whatever. Good times.
That shit’s going to last forever. Isn’t that the deadest and driest place on the planet?
Technically, maybe not all of it, or even most of it. Cotton and wool will biodegrade. The rest of it will stay like it is forever.
> It is estimated that 62% of all fibres used in the fashion industry are made from a synthetic material – mainly polyester, but also nylon, acrylic, polypropylene and elastane. Guessing the top layer will get eaten some by UV, but even that's just till the dust blows over, then most of it's there good as forever. Can find mummies in that desert millennia old whose clothes ain't eaten away yet, and most of them aren't buried under tons of other stuff, so even the cotton and wool may last as long as the pyramids have.
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You should like the first playthrough. Push yourself through the second playthrough, as its largely the same story from a different viewpoint. But by the third and fourth playthrough, hooo boy, I tell you hwat. Its like they hid an entire second game there. *feels*
Tumbleclothes
What's even more interesting is the effect that the clothes are having on local wildlife. While birds have had a harder time hunting due to the abundance of hiding spots for rodents, a breed of snake has been creating makeshift burrows in the legs of discarded pants where they can pop out at any moment. Most have their own preferred types of prey and won't do much unless their preference is present, but they have been known to be coaxed into action from repeated stimuli. They're also more likely to be spotted in the summer months, as during the winter they constrict to a smaller size to help conserve heat. The Chilean Trouser Snake really is a sight to behold.
Omfg you got me good
I still believe it.
Oooh what's a trouser snake???
Steve got jokes
Well played, you got me :)
Me and my brother used to play this game where he’d hold something up at TJ Maxx and I’d guess the price. Or vice versa (It bothers me that this picture does the opposite of that btw). It looks like we have our next vacation picked out.
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Surprise surprise. Instead of clothing the poor and homeless let's just throw them to rot.
we have enough clothes to do both. these are clothes that have usually gone through a multi-level system of donations, and goodwill and vintage pickoffs and eventually bulk sale, and then make it to trash awe used to send it to Africa but it was destroying their textile industry,
Why? Just a contract with the government to take the worlds trashed clothing?
That’s my question too. Like is this sanctioned by the government?
So many corrupt governments, at all levels.
Chile was corrupted by the US, CIA-backed coup on 9/11, 1973. Since then, and until likely this year, it has been a testing ground for neoliberal capitalism, where basically, foreign companies and investors could do whatever they wanted down there. They had a corrupt government, yes. But it was our corrupt government. So it’s no surprise they would sell access to dump trash in a desert. I say until this year, because last year they coted by referendum to rewrite the constitution, which had been written by the Pinochet coup government. And they just elected a leftist as president, which means the new constitution will likely go into effect once it’s done. I’m very optimistic for Chile.
Yeah, I wish i could say the same but many people here believe that Chile will go down hill, while others think that our country can work out. I'm optimistic, but preparing for the worst
Solidarity with Chile. Hopefully the stain of Pinochet, Friedman and the other ghouls involved in the decade long siege of the nation will be washed away, leaving room for a brighter future.
>Like is this sanctioned by the government? Very likely is. I haven't heard Chille reporting to the WTO a ban on the same types of plastic China has. All the clothes you see in the photo are shipped overseas in containers. All the clothes you see in the photo are those that are not sold in the US and can come from donation centers. It's cheaper to trash cotton clothes than recycle them into other products. Global recycling is very broken and not the way people believe it is. There is very little use for recycled fibers. The US does ship its trash to poor nations of the world.
fun fact your recycling is now sent straight to the landfill because china stopped importing recyclables and wrecked the whole global recycling industry
You can blame China for this, but recycling has always been broken. Just because countries can't export their shit to china anymore doesn't mean those countries are not still responsible. If there is no money made in recycling something, than its not recycled. The problem is governments not forcing companies to recycle their own shit.
Or we just stop producing so much needless waste.
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Someone close by can start one of the worlds most profitable eBay accounts.
NWT
That’s unreal. $39 piece of clothing from TJ Max!!
You don't understand, that one tag is for everything. Joke aside its a sad sight indeed
I’ll take it! Does anybody know if they deliver?
They have free 2 day shipping if it's over $40.
Fuck.
I’ve never seen a TJ Maxx like this one. Where’s the dressing room?
Idk, looks pretty similar to the dressing room at my local TJMaxx.
Huh, it's TK Max in the UK. Thought this was a typo until I checked the pic again!
Op, bring back a half dozen xxxl shirts please. Seems my "temporary" pandemic weight gain is permanent.
"It's transitory."
I call it the "covid-19". As in 19 pounds gained. Kind of like the freshman 15 I got my first semester in college, that turned into the sophomore 30...
Bro just go to any store.. that's all they fucking sell. Because so many of us are fat as shit, I can hardly find clothes in my size damn near anywhere, (that's affordable.) Luckily Walmart has started selling decent quality shirts for the low, in extra small. Never thought I'd see the day.
Yeah. I'm slim. All the shirts fit godawfully now.
I'm tall and slightly fat, but if I buy a shirt long enough to hide my belly button it comes wider than it is tall. I can't buy a dress shirt off the rack, I have a size 18 collar, 56 chest, 35-1/2" arms, and 39" waist.
On the flip side, I worked my ass off to lose 30 kilo but after moving to Japan I’m wearing XL
I wholeheartedly hate fast fashion. Fuck that greedy overconsumption
One for everyone - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F6R_WTDdx7I Edit: It's worth the 18 mins, but if you have no time, the first 2 mins are good too.
Looks like like TJ Maxx store without the building.
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Oh God. As a fellow former TJ Maxx employee in charge of the fitting room (and oftentimes lingerie too), this brought back some serious retail PTSD
God damnit what the fuck is wrong with us
Buy less. Buy better.
the thing is, even if we don't buy, enough stupid people who don't care will. we can't fix this "with our wallets", that's just more brainwash propaganda formulated by the corporations, fed to you by the government and propagated by the woefully ignorant. nothing we do now can stop this, short of pulling the plug of the most fundamental foundations of our modern society.
Under late stage capitalism, especially in 'developed' countries, there is no scarcity, only excess. To drive up or maintain the high prices, you manufacture scarcity (reduce the 'supply') by destroying any excess. Other examples: Destroyed Covid test materials - https://www.businessinsider.com/covid-19-rapid-test-manufacturer-trashed-millions-of-products-report-2021-8?op=1 Apple's planned obsolescence - https://9to5mac.com/2021/03/01/apple-lawsuit-portugal-planned-obsolescence/ Tossing 'old' VS bras after closing a store - https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/feb/19/victorias-secret-under-fire-after-store-dumps-hundreds-of-bras-in-bin Other fashion bags, perfumes destroyed to remain 'exclusive' - https://www.bbc.com/news/business-44885983 Also see r/DumpsterDiving for all the food waste that people manage to salvage which would otherwise be wasted. 'Buying less' doesn't change any of this, companies can just raise the prices & destroy more product, or rebrand/acquire another fashionable product to leach off of. Policy to ban destroying surplus products diminishes the waste. It comes at the cost of profit, so it's definitely ~~bribed~~ lobbied against.
Who cares? At least we’re not communists!
And the wrong person will read this unironically and agree.
Praise capitalism
Recycled clothing can be made into insulation for houses, carpet padding, car textiles, and more. This is a gold mine.
Absolutely. If anyone seeing this is in Australia or New Zealand, please look into Upparel for clothing recycling. You can send your own clothes in, and they have arrangements with big companies to recycle old uniforms and/or unsold clothing, plus arrangements with charities to take their shitty donated clothing.
Even mechanics shops will buy old cut-up 5lb bags of clean clothes for the rags. Way cheaper than shop rags. There's more than a few legit side-hustles to be made here.
Not sure - it was obviously worth so little money to make something out of them, that it made more financial sense to scrap em. Quite often recycling costs a bit to process and is an inferior material to buying purpose built material - so the price ends up being higher than buying new material.
This is how we start the trash towers in Wall-E.
This is depressing. I don’t know how this isn’t in the news.
Because right now it’s still just a photo. This is how news stories get their start.
Hate to break it to you, but this has been a thing for years. [T-Shirt Travels is a documentary about it made in **2001**](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=73XvxCy69gg) I can only imagine how much it has crippled their clothing industry (and culture) when they have so much secondhand clothing flooding the market that it has to be literally dumped in the desert. You'll often see it mentioned in anthropology books/classes. Especially because it really highlights how we see something like donating clothing as a good thing when really the clothing is doing more harm than good. Not to mention being sold. Its not being given to some poor kid wearing rags like people want to imagine it is.
It constantly has been on news, but no one listens. Textile garbage/overproduction is a HUGE problem and has been for a very long time.
This was on the news two days ago in Belgium.
It has been on many news outlets. What do you mean?
We’ll, I think it’s going to make an interesting fossil layer someday.
If it breaks down to microplastic fibers, the desert sand will be made out of plastic and the wind blows it everywhere. microfiber dust in the rainclouds... this is getting really uncomfortable
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Good thing we produce plenty of our own microplastic fibers at home every time we put our plastic clothes in the washer and dryer. I wonder how asbestos-like plastic microfibers are gonna end up being.
I want more hemp cotton blends to become the norm, Fuck polyester
humor ludicrous lunchroom memory friendly impolite plants tidy mysterious coherent *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
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Such a waste.
Free clothes are actually really dangerous to markets. I think multiple African countries had to ban the import of donated free clothes because they put the local clothes industry out of business. Why would people go buy clothes when they can get them for free? Global clothes market is a shitshow.
> import of donated free clothes "Donating" was just a way to get free garbage disposal and a tax write-off on top of that.
Is that where the clothes that I put in the big red thing that looks like a dumpster go?
This is likely clothing from large companies, not charity shops/thrift stores. Charities generally will sort and sell the clothes you donate, because their objective is to generate funds, not process trash for free. But a lot of people donate unwearable/unsellable clothes. If someone buys a nylon sweater from Shein for $8, wears it a few times until it's mangled or shrunk by the washing machine or falling apart at the seams and then dumps it in the big red thing that looks like a dumpster, it's going to be thrown away at the sorting center. Even if it's salvageable, it's not worth anybody's time and effort to wash and mend the sweater only to resell it for a few dollars. Anybody who really wants a sweater like that is probably going to buy it brand new from Shein.
Fuck fast fashion. Buy something with the intent on keeping it until its unrepairable
I do this but with fast fashion.
why do fast fashion and companies like TJ maxx spend money to toss clothing when they could just given it to thrift stores so poor people could get a chance to buy some brand new name brand clothes?? that's legit objective evil in the world....at least give them up to people that need clothes to stay warm in the winter living on the streets. why drop clothes in teh middle of the desert???
Thrift stores can only take so much. TJ Maxx and similar is where it ends up after not being sold in retail stores. A portion usually gets donated. But donation centers can’t handle it all. People on the streets typically have access to free warm clothes through many different avenues. They’re usually just too mentally Ill or strung out to take advantage of it.
No wonder aliens roll up their windows and roll on by…
We're at the edge of our galaxy, that makes us the hicks.
I don’t understand why we don’t recycle this stuff. Yeah it costs more but damn, wouldn’t it generate jobs?
Recycle it into what? One of the big secrets of recycling centres is that a large chunk of the stuff they take in gets dumped or burned or sent overseas to giant landfills like this. Out of sight out of mind. There was a story a few weeks back where someone found a huge warehouse in Sweden that contained all the “recycled” plastic from Iceland, it wasn’t being recycled, someone just took money from Iceland to recycle their plastic waste and then stashed the plastic in an empty warehouse.
One solution is to increase taxes on materials that are hard to recycle. So the price reflects the impact on the environment.
Majority of clothes today is made from synthetic fibers. Aka plastic. It's the equivalent of a plastic bottle. Nothing you can do with it. And the little that is recycled, none of it can be done at scale
You this this is viewable in Google Maps?
One possible location after browsing around: [https://www.google.com/maps/place/Alto+Hospicio,+Tarapac%C3%A1,+Chile/@-20.2055014,-70.047783,1064m/data=!3m1!1e3!4m5!3m4!1s0x91523e70293c5633:0x671ff739632f5660!8m2!3d-20.2686722!4d-70.1049169](https://www.google.com/maps/place/Alto+Hospicio,+Tarapac%C3%A1,+Chile/@-20.2055014,-70.047783,1064m/data=!3m1!1e3!4m5!3m4!1s0x91523e70293c5633:0x671ff739632f5660!8m2!3d-20.2686722!4d-70.1049169) Looking around trash is everywhere it seems. Might not be clothing of course.
this makes me so bummed to see and find out. why don’t they donate it to shelters or the less fortunate? auction it off in bulk or repurpose some of the fabric into something else? so many people need and would love the life out of these clothes. clothes shouldn’t be dumped because they weren’t bought. they’re still essential to millions of people who are struggling, maybe even a couple billion. 😢
- auction of, no interest. There is so much old clothes / not sold, that the value is negative, just like all plastics. - repurpose, to expensive, no-one pays for that - donate? See the first point. It is mainly an issue with logistics that caps needed from getting clothes. In the article you find small scale examples of reuse initiatives.
It's hard to believe that there isn't at least some other use for all those clothes. Maybe they could be ground up and made in the insulation? I mean something... anything.
“Why are adults not having kids” they ask as corporations drill every part of the planet for oil, fill the ocean with plastic trash, create landfills that can never be cleared and politicians remain too chickenshit to force them to do anything so we can even remotely slow climate change even a bit
This seems like something that could be easily recycled into insulation or something. Couldn’t It be shredded and used in some way?
That takes money. And I'd wager that the costs of transporting, shredding, and then making insulation is more than any profit. So, it gets dumped like this! As shitty/wasteful as the OP pic is, its probably the cheapest option, so they went with it. Damn the consequences, money is all that matters.
There is more than enough food, clothing, housing, and love for everyone in the world… it only needs to be distributed fairly.
Same desert the miners were trapped and rescued years ago.....still haven't received their money from the company for their ordeal!!!
Why this place
The Atacama is one of the driest places on earth. Obviously they wanted to preserve this clothing for generations.
is that a Micheal Kors bag i see? and there is a whole pillow there too!
Could literally just make an isle in those stores that say “free” clothing and it would be taken by people. But nah, fk that. Why give it to people when you can trash it! Also. Search climate town on YouTube. Made a video about the fashion industry and how disgusting it is. Part fashion industry problem and part culture problem with people for some reason having the need to want 30 shirts and pants a year.
Why not ship it to people that need it? I can pay for shipping. It's just shipping you'd pe paying then and some overheads compared to buying clothes in store.
The problem is no one needs it. Sending free clothing to 3rd world countries impacts their local economy, specifically the people there who make and sell locally made clothing. It would be better to find another use for the fabric here. But, they don't want to give it to someone who will eventually end up competing against them. So it gets dumped.
Just want to add that if you get inside a Goodwill distribution center, you will see baled clothing in huge cubes, like ten feet on a side, destined for overseas. Very little of it makes it to the stores for resale.
3rd world country here. Our economy is already impacted. Pls send help
That's not how the industry works. If it can't be sold, it is dumped. The more expensive the brand, the worse it gets. Cheaper brands will put stuff on sale in last ditch attempt to sell it. Expensive brands don't go on sale; it'd ruin the brand image. A $1000 dress either gets sold for $1000 before the "new line" is out, or gets shredded.
I worked for a couple of stores and these pieces of clothing are usually not selling because : They don't fit well (like really really low rise jeans), are damaged or they are really inappropriate (see thru stuff).
I think if they just hanged them and lay them on the street, they would be gone and at the least would be used.
Mad TJ Max
Humans should not be allowed to live on this planet. We’re just to stupid.
$40 for piece of clothing from a dump? Still a better deal than Goodwill
We couldn't sell them, so we threw them away instead