Do charity shops enable us to justify buying too many clothes?

Scribbles I am not asking you to justify your shopping activities, merely curious about the reasons why people already use a specific justification for a certain type of shopping and whether, if that justification was not available, would they buy less of that specific commodity.

I haven’t time to read all the thread, but did anyone see the photos of beaches in a country in Africa awash with dumped (by Europe) clothing?

Maybe we ought to have a slow clothes movement just like the slow food movement in Italy?

So, all the clothes we wear are made by ourselves or locally made?

WWM2 Dress making could be encouraged, but i think a slow clothes movement would include buying far fewer items of clothing and only on a replacement basis.

Having said that, DD makes many of her own clothes and some of mine. She knits her DB tank tops that are widely admired and has in fact made items of clothing for all the family at different times. She is one of those people, who if sitting down, always has her hands occupied.

I think compulsive shopping is a common national sickness on a par with drug and alcohol abuse. The more you have the more you want.

I have volunteered in a fair few charity shops. The Oxfam books and music shop were ruthless about what they’ll accept and not.

Examples of the items that were often rejected were National Geographic Magazines, Atlases - since the internet arrived.

Often if a large donation was made, during the sorting of, popular contemporary paperback fiction- think Dan Brown/50 Shades of….etc if we already had several copies of them; they were sent to be pulped, the ones in best condition were kept, or any slightly unusual editions.

It was a space issue too. But mainly what could be sold to customers for the best price, and maintain the”brand integrity”.

People would often arrive with box loads after clearing the garage. This would reveal many mouldy/foxed items- straight into the dustbin or “for pulp”
Some items had a niche value such as old maps, posters, local history and related, usually Oxfam had enthusiasts to consult regarding vinyl records etc.
Ragging and pulping should make money for the charity - how much, depending on the current market conditions.

that must make a nice change though from dirty socks, and worse, that charity shops get given.

Whaaat? Do charity shops actually get given that sort of thing?

WWM2. They are Muntaka Chasant’s pictures which were taken in Accra, Ghana and show mountains of clothes piled up on beaches. The photos are copyright so I shan’t add them here but they are easily found.

Chile’s Acatama desert is the same. This BBC film:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=uyHgY2O__fY

This is similar to all the “recycled” plastic which is dumped on other countries such as Malaysia and Turkey. Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall reported on this in his series War on Plastic.

The only way to get rid of the waste is to burn it, which poisons local populations with the toxins.

Nothing will change unless we make drastic changes to the way we live and reduce our consumption. Farzanah is right but it’s a political problem as much as it is one of unbridled consumerism. The trade in textiles is part of global trade agreements.

I’m reminded of the 1970s TV series Bill Brand which is still available to watch on YT. A key theme of that was the loss of textile jobs in the north west of England. The UK took cheap garments from India and Pakistan as part of a trade deal to sell arms to those countries.

It’s ten years since the Rana Plaza collapse in Bangladesh. 1134 workers died and another 2500 injured when a sweatshop factory collapsed. The owner had added extra floors to the building to meet the demands being placed on his business to produce more and more, cheaper and cheaper clothes. The structure was not strong enough to bear the weight and vibration of heavy machinery.

Among the retailers sourcing those clothes were C&A (before it went out of business), Benetton, Bonmarché, Matalan and Primark.

This Guardian article about compensation:

www.theguardian.com/world/2014/mar/16/primark-payout-victims-rana-plaza-bangladesh

One of the slogans of the Clean Clothes Campaign is No Worker Should Die for Fashion but that’s only addressing part of the problem. The world needs to me making less and buying less but that means finding other work for the estimated 430 million people thought to be employed in fashion and textile production. Of the global workforce, roughly one in eight workers works in the industry.

I’m not sure where the statistic came from but I recall Sewing Bee’s Patrick Grant saying, a couple of series ago, that there are already enough garments in existence in the world to cloth the next six generations. Those pictures in Ghana and Chile would seem to confirm that.

Safe waste incineration which creates energy is on my wish list. Along with a rethink on why and how we consume so much stuff.
Over consumption is a bit at odds with the cost of living crisis which has hit average and below average salaried households. Also I wonder if the obesity crisis has worsened as cost of living increases paradoxically?

I trawl the rails in our charity shops but rarely see anything i would wear.

The fabrics are usually thin and inferior so wouldn't even be useful for craft projects.

I remember seeing a newspaper photo of a vast container ship at Felixstowe and the caption was something like
"single use plastic rubbish arrives in the UK in time for Christmas"

Maybe a slight exaggeration but the reality is far too much tat both clothes and household items arrive on our shores constantly.

Nothing will change unless we make drastic changes to the way we live and reduce our consumption. Farzanah is right but it’s a political problem as much as it is one of unbridled consumerism. The trade in textiles is part of global trade agreements.

textiles may form part of global trade agreements, but this doesn't mean we have to buy them. We should only buy clothes we know we will wear and wear regularly so that by the time we are finished with them, they are fit only to be binned. All the waste in our area goes to a local incinerator where it is used to produce electricity.

There is so much each of us can do in our own lives to reduce our planetry foot print and while each person's contribution may seem small seen globally. When you add up 5, 10, 30, 50 million peoples individual contributions, it amounts to an awful lot.

Well put M0nica . Ofcourse our own part is small but all the drops in the ocean make the sea.

I coud not agree more, Monica and do what I can.

The last garments I bought were two linen dresses in July 2021 as we came out of lockdown, really just to cheer mysef up after sixteen months in black scrubs. I’m immuno-compromised so had to lockdown hard until twice vaccinated. Why did I buy them? I didn't need them. It’s the transient dopmaine rush we experience, the short-lived pleasure we derive when we acquire something new. Many psychological papers have been written about why we over-consume, why we are addicted to shopping, food, alcohol, drugs, gambling, phones etc etc.

You make a good point about enabling but it goes further than clothes, doesn’t it? Would we buy so much of everything if disposal wasn’t so easy, if we didn't have other people to get rid of what we no longer want, whole industries built around disposal even when it’s labelled recycling.

The plot of the 2008 Pixar film Wall-E:

In the 22nd century, rampant consumerism, corporate greed, and environmental neglect has caused an ecocide, turning Earth into a garbage-strewn wasteland. The megacorporation Buy n Large (BnL) had evacuated humanity to space on giant starliners, leaving trash compacting robots to clean up the planet.

It’s all coming true isn’t it apart from our ability (yet) to find another habitable planet to trash. Meantime, rich countries dump their trash on poorer ones.

We need to stop producing so much and think very carefully about how conventional societal structures define the way we live and work and more importantly, why. Time for a reread of Bertrand Russell’s 1935 essay In Praise of Idleness. It’s on Gutenberg if anyone is interested.

After seeing this video I don’t think a lot of people will bother anymore 😡

www.walesonline.co.uk/news/uk-news/angry-residents-catch-bin-men-27433353

I thought that might be somewhere in Wales and I was surprised, MerylStreep, but it's Canterbury.

How wass the contractor getting away with that!

According to the last global study from Eunomia in 2017, Wales was ranked third in the world behind Germany and Taiwan on the global recycling leader board.
10 Nov 2022

I’m having a massive clean out, I am guilty of buying things that don’t suit me or don’t go with anything, so never wear them, to see the rubbish, our clothes from charity shops, just dumped in other countries turned my stomach.

Callistemon21

^According to the last global study from Eunomia in 2017, Wales was ranked third in the world behind Germany and Taiwan on the global recycling leader board^.
10 Nov 2022

Our recycling lorry (in Wales) has different compartments for different recycling types to match our bins. If you put stuff in the wrong bin you get it back, they won’t take it.

We've still got plastic bags here for the time being, not good, but it does go into separate sections in the lorry.

Callistemon21

^According to the last global study from Eunomia in 2017, Wales was ranked third in the world behind Germany and Taiwan on the global recycling leader board^.
10 Nov 2022

There’s lovely 😄

😀

There’s so much doom and gloom around and I’m not supposed to buy a new frock without feeling guilt ridden?
I’m sure you ladies are very worthy and I admire your stance but I’ll make my contribution to saving the planet some other way and look nice while I do it.

I despair when I read some posts and realise just how many cheap clothes some of us buy, just for the sake of it. I buy only what I actually need, which is very little, and as far as humanly possible I make sure my clothes are made in the UK or EU, that cotton is not sourced from China and wool is non-mulesed. What I pass on to charity shops is little, but clean, wearable and good quality; it will find a buyer. I have little doubt that some people assuage their consciences when buying yet more cheap stuff by passing not necessarily very old cheap stuff on to charity shops. I hope some people read this, recognise themselves and reflect.

No one is suggesting that you should not by a new frock Rosalyn69. It is all about buying excess clothes, It is clear that some people are buying clothes they never wear. We hear stories of people with bulging wardrobes, who really do not even know what clothes they own, they own so many.

I never feel even remotely guilty about the clothes I buy, nor feel a need to justify buying them, but I only have one wardrobe in my bedroom because that is sufficient to hold all my clothes and I rarely give clothes to charity shops because they wear out before I chuck them out.

Of course I am only human and do on occasion make impulse buys, bad buys and lose interest in clothes that are still good to wear, but on various threads on GN over the years, some people seem to justify buying lots of clothes on the basis that if they do not wear them they can always give them to charity and I just wondered whether in some cases having charity shops able to take clothes enabled some people to justify extravagent clothes buying because they could pass them on.

Do you actually need that new frock Rosalyn? How much will you wear it and is it then likely to be bought by someone else or sent off to add to the mountain of rags in some third world country?