The Ethics of Clothing -- made, worn, donated -- Asia, US, Africa?

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The Ethics of Clothing -- made, worn, donated -- Asia, US, Africa?

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Started 4 months ago by rutheverhart
Latest reply from badkitti
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rutheverhart
Member

This topic has been mentioned occasionally but I wanted to give it it's own thread.

What are the ethics of putting clothing on our back? or of discarding clothing we no longer want?

It disturbs me to buy clothing that I suspect was manufactured in a sweatshop, perhaps somewhere in Asia. How does one really know? I tend to buy t-shirts and jeans from a place like Kohls. After wearing something for a couple of years, I donate the items (e.g. to the Goodwill), thinking I'm doing a good thing. The clothing ends up changing hands many times and being sold somewhere in Africa, in a way that may damage the traditional African garment industry.

Do I negatively affect the lives of people in two different continents just to throw on some clothing?

I don't have recent information, but would like to. I suspect that all of this shifts relatively quickly as politics and economics change, worldwide.

My thanks to @Xarcady for linking this article on a previous thread, Fascinating stuff:
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/03/31/magazine/how-susie-bayer-s-t-shirt-ended-up-on-yusuf-mama-s-back.html?src=pm

I also found this article which is more recent. Note the comments which are from people in the used clothing business:
http://www.betterplace-lab.org/en/blog/what-happens-when-your-used-clothes-arrive-in-west-africa

What other information do you have about this worldwide issue? What questions do you ask yourself?

Posted 4 months ago #
smallLife
Member

This is such a tricky topic! You could research for ages and not find any answers. That being said, I have a few questions I ask myself when I'm looking at clothing.

Disclaimer: I'm on the quality-over-quantity bandwagon with a comparably small wardrobe overall.

First: Where is it made? (while I know this can mean anything from the fabric to sewing the pieces together, it's a good starting point). Bonus points for in the US or North America, to minimize shipping. I try to avoid Asian clothing, unless it is a smaller company who takes pride in quality - see question two.

Second: Who made it? I do a bit of background research on the clothing company before I buy. I try to find business that support my local or national economy, or at the very least are still family owned. It's surprisingly not hard to do, although it may end up costing a little more up front.

Third: How useful is it/how well made? Wasn't quite sure how to phrase this, but it means regardless of origin I try to look for clothes that will stay in style and launder well. If I can get a longer life out of the product, I will use fewer resources in the long run.

In short, I try to keep the workers and products as close to me as I can, within reasonable budget constraints. I have a hard to fit body type, but have been lucky finding entrepreneurs who are designing clothing with that in mind.

I don't have any great insights to disposing of old clothes. If anyone has suggestions or names of fabric scrap companies - to be recycled - please post!

Posted 4 months ago #
Rosa
Member

I try really hard to buy sweatshop-free clothing, but I'm a large size and often just plain can't find anything (which I don't understand, frankly; older people have more money and are fatter than younger ones, and the "skinny people who do yoga" market for organic & sweatshop-free clothing is pretty saturated.)

So I stick with not buying much, and buying most of that used. But I don't worry too much about disposal, I just can't. The less I buy, the less impact my discards have. That's as far as I go.

Posted 4 months ago #
Emilie
Member

A couple of years ago, I read the book "No Logo", which has a chapter about sweatshops in the Philippines. I was VERY scandalized by it. I already tried to buy second-hand, for environmental reasons, but the sweatshop issues made me re-commit to that. I tend to assume everything was made in a sweatshop unless I'm able to find information to the contrary, or if it's made in a country with better labor laws (this isn't ironclad...there have been sweatshops in the US--check out the documentary "Made in LA"--, but it's a start.) I haven't been able to avoid sweatshop items completely, but I keep trying...it makes me shop less, which isn't a bad thing ;)

This is one site with some sweatshop info: http://www.laborrights.org

Yeah...a lot of people don't seem to realize that things like TOMS shoes, which are giving free shoes to people in Africa, can also be hurting local economies. (Someone's opinion on the topic: http://goodintents.org/in-kind-donations/toms-shoes the video is pretty convincing.)

I tend to wear my clothes until they have holes...I know that my local Goodwill does sell holey/unwearable stuff to salvagers, but I also know that they'd really rather not receive that stuff in the first place. (I used to work there, so I got the inside look!) I was told that their bales of clothes go to the "industrial rag trade"...I'm not entirely sure what that is (although reading that NYTimes article, I'm starting to get an idea).

Sometimes I can remake a garment into something else, but I'm not skilled enough at sewing yet. I've looked and looked for fabric recycling opportunities in my area, but I can't find anything. So if something can't be donated, I'm not sure what to do with it beyond throwing it out (or maybe making it into shorts if it's an old pair of pants).

I've heard some people say that sweatshops are improving people's lot in life, but personally it's not something that I'd wish on someone else. Slave labor is also a big problem (http://slaveryfootprint.org/) although I don't think anyone would argue for it.

Anyway, obviously this is a topic of great interest to me ;)

Posted 4 months ago #
Jeri Dansky
Member

Regarding the discarding side of thing, you may want to read The Travels of a T-Shirt in the Global Economy. I wrote about the book here: http://jdorganizer.blogspot.com/2011/07/what-happens-after-you-donate-that-t.html

Posted 4 months ago #
rutheverhart
Member

Thanks for the input! @Emilie and @Jeri -- I'll be checking out these links.

@Emilie -- I hear your dilemma -- and I'm trying to find some sort of balance. I don't want to feel like I must wear ill-fitting clothes, or rejects, to be ethical. Can't I look good and be ethical at the same time? Oh yes, AND be frugal! Maybe I do ask for too much!

Question -- Sometimes posters here (maybe from Europe or Australia?) mention fabric recycling -- I'm very curious about this. Does anybody know anything about how it works? Where does the fabric go, what is done with it? It seems like one possible answer to the problem.

Posted 4 months ago #
clutterbug22
Member

@ruth, I'm in the UK and where we live, we have a weekly recycling collection which includes textiles which you put in a recycling basket to be collected. I've just had a look at our local council recycling leaflet which tells you what happens to a lot of the various recyclable items but unfortunately it doesn't mention what happens to textiles. I would imagine the good stuff goes to charities and the non-good stuff gets shredded or ragged. I think Oxfam charity shops here take rag (or they used to) and I got the impression the rag material was then made into woven/plaited rugs to sell presumably as a FairTrade product. I'm only going on what I've heard and what I've previously asked in charity shops, whether this information still applies I can't be certain.

Also, in the UK, there are a lot of clothes and shoe drop-off points for charities at large supermarkets and the main car-parks in towns, so there does seem to be quite a good outlet for getting rid of clothes etc(although, of course, these items are expected to be in good re-saleable condition to sell in the charity shops).

Posted 4 months ago #
susanintexas
Member

Ruth: I don't think the facilities that recycles "rags" are accessible directly by consumers. Big generators of scrap material -- clothing manufacturers, retail stores, charities -- sell by the ton in bulk to processors who then sort it into stuff that gets recycled into things like carpet padding and things that can be resold elsewhere as clothing.

San Antonio is starting an "organics" recycling program (I think the stuff gets composted), but that will not accept clothing items for recycling either.

Posted 4 months ago #
Katha
Member

Speaking from a German perspective: I went to the website of the "Fachverband Textilrecycling", an organisation which assembles commercial collectors of used clothing.

Of course, these are exactly the people who are also shipping old clothing to Africa (and I have read up a little on the subject in the past few days - not a black-and-white issue either, as so often...).

Many charities in Germany also sell surplus donated clothing to these companies, from what I have read.

They say in the document I linked below that what they collect falls into these categories:
40 % tragbare Gebrauchtkleider --> wearable used clothing
35 % Rohstoffe für die Putzlappenindustrie --> raw material for the cleaning cloth industry
10% Rohstoffe für die Reißspinnstoff – und Fließstoffindustrie --> raw material for reprocessed material and nonwoven fabric (by the way, they have a typo in there - should be "Vliesstoff", I believe)
5 % Rohstoff für die Papier- und Pappenindustrie --> raw material for paper and cardboard industry
10 % Reststoffe, die entsorgt werden müssen --> residue that needs to be disposed of. [Translations mine, hope I found the right terminology)

Source: http://www.fachverband-textil-recycling.de/ablage/ftr/Textil_Recycling_wie_es_unktioniert.pdf

So, in Germany, if you are uneasy about the "clothing to Africa" concept, you would need to make sure that what you put in the containers is not usable as clothing anymore - by ripping or cutting the fabric, for instance - and you could be reasonably sure that it would instead end up as a cleaning rag or so.

Collection containers for old clothing are strewn throughout German cities - sometimes from charities (like the Red Cross), sometimes from these commercial collectors. Very convenient, but, regrettably, no tax deduction slips for us for donating/giving away our old clothes ;-)

If you read German, the website http://www.fairwertung.de/info/fragen/index.html?frage=10 is also a very good resource; an organisation assembling the caritative and church organisations who collect used clothing. They of course massively face the problem what to - ethically - do with all the clothes they receive that they cannot use immediately for needy recipients.

Posted 4 months ago #
Rosa
Member

I have seen the shipping containers full of fabric bales leaving the Port of Duluth. I was told they go to China for sorting/resale/recycling, but that doesn't mean the resale isn't happening in poorer markets all over the world.

It's also common in the cheaper thrift stores to see African immigrants stocking up on clothes that are clearly for resale; a Liberian coworker of mine always went home for visits with a suitcase of clothes to give as gifts & for resale, and came back with Liberian-made stuff for family & friends here.

I just don't see a way to stop it at a consumer level (aside from buying less until it resets the entire retail market to order less produced.) The volume of resold clothing that was simply overstock is huge - the big Goodwill here gets stuff Target can't sell, direct from corporate, and sometimes there will be 20 or 30 of the same shirt or pants. The same thing happens higher up the supply chain - manufacturers that have an exceptionally high-quality run will have more items than were ordered, truckloads of items that got wet or were in an accident are dumped on the market after the insurance payout, etc.

Posted 4 months ago #
Katha
Member

The articles I read mentioned that used clothing that is still wearable gets sorted into further sub-categories.

From Germany, the best stuff goes to used clothing stores in Germany, slightly less desirable stuff goes to Eastern Europe, slightly even less desirable stuff to Asian countries, the least desirable to Africa... It's a definite "market hierarchy" and it sounds kind of callous to list it like that.
I do not fully know whether to rejoice that stuff gets re-used or to feel that this squashes local production (not so clear-cut, after all - there are other factors weakening local textile industries and who is to dictate to people that they should keep on wearing traditional clothing when that might not be their preference? Plus, the used stuff is cheaper than locally produced...).

Definitely, one lesson I take away from my research is to buy less in the first place...

But I could not say now whether it is better for my old shirt to be cut up into cleaning cloths, or to be bought on a market somewhere in Uganda and worn again.
The "cleaning cloth" solution avoids the ethical "bad taste in my mouth" somewhat - but then, cutting up my shirt willfully destroys material that still has life in it and it's a "downgrade" from clothing to cleaning cloth...

Posted 4 months ago #
Zora
Member

I avoid these issues (to a great extent) by making most of my own clothing. It's well-made, it's couture-quality, and it lasts a long time. When I do give old clothing to Goodwill (because it's out of style or because I've lost weight) I'm fairly sure that it will be retailed locally and sell quickly.

Posted 4 months ago #
rutheverhart
Member

Thanks for the great links everybody, I'll check these out.

Posted 4 months ago #
badkitti
Member

I've bought clothes from the second hand markets in East Africa. Yes I'm annoyed thar charities send them for sale, but they are sold very cheaply and within the means of most of the local populace.

It did make me giggle to see people wearing jokey t-shirts with no idea what the words said.

Posted 4 months ago #

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