# Average American throws away 80 lbs. of clothing each year **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [October 24, 2022, 5:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/average-american-throws-away-80-lbs-of-clothing-each-year/973711 "2022-10-24T17:05:54Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 1\ **Showing post:** 50
**Author:** ![LSLGuy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lslguy/32/5813_2.png) [@LSLGuy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/LSLGuy)\ **Post date:** [October 25, 2022, 1:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/average-american-throws-away-80-lbs-of-clothing-each-year/973711/50 "2022-10-25T13:08:58Z")
Vast amounts of donated clothes are turned into rags or exported to Third World countries. Whether all that transportation is actually greener than landfilling them nearby is an interesting question I’m not able to answer. Here is a thread I started a couple years ago about the supply / demand side of castoff reuse. I don’t recall that we came to any great conclusions, but it was an interesting conversation with lots of good info shared. There was at least one post & cite about clothing specifically. > [@Goodwill Industries, etc.: Supply vs Demand of Cast-offs](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/goodwill-industries-etc-supply-vs-demand-of-cast-offs/914391): > > Occasioned by nothing in particular … Every year I seem to end up with a 3 or 4 large trash bags of cast-off usable clothes and household goods that I donate to Goodwill or the equivalent. Which got me to wondering … How is the overall balance of supply and demand for goods at thrift stores and the like? Are major players like Goodwill Industries drowning in cast-offs they can’t sell, or are they sucking wind with empty shelves and disappointed second-hand shoppers? Is the situation highly re… --- _[View the full topic](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/average-american-throws-away-80-lbs-of-clothing-each-year/973711)._