That’s true, but for some good reasons, as in so much of it IS garbage to begin with. Broken toys, torn or stained clothing, damaged furniture, moldy books, etc.
As one of the volunteers who sorts items for my church’s rummage sale, I know that all too well. You have to wonder what people are thinking, when you literally find banana peels in a donation bag.
But even of the things that aren’t outright garbage, plenty still doesn’t sell. Even on the last day of the sale, when we’re offering clothes for a dollar for a full paper grocery bag, there’s still so much more clothes than customers that there’s no way we could sell it all. When we’re done (we only sell for one weekend), we box up everything and pass it on to whatever thrift shop is willing to send a truck to pick it up. But they can’t sell everything, either. When the thrift stores are done with clothes, at best, they’ll be recycled for fibers, but there’s a lot more supply than demand there, too, so a lot still ends up in landfills.
I wouldn’t have been as grossed out by banana peels, as I once was by the peel-off strip from a maxipad. Even though I used thousands of those over the decades, I really don’t want to handle those used by strangers, especially with my bare hands.
Ever heard of fast fashion?..gets bundled and dumped on poorer countries. Ends up feet deep on the beaches and into the oceans.
Yep. And it’s not just “fast fashion”.
Lots of Americans buy far more clothes than they use up. Donating stuff is simply an attempt to temporarily divert some of the ever growing overage away from landfills immediately.
If a pair of jeans goes to e.g. Goodwill and is sold to someone who wears them another 10 years, it’s still ending up in a landfill somewhere when they’re done with them.
Some fraction of what e.g. Goodwill receives goes straight into the trash stream. Other stuff goes straight to rag makers, or is exported en masse overseas for sale there. And some stuff sits on their shelves for awhile before being shunted to one of those 3 desinations.
Well, that person would still have needed pants for those ten years, so getting them from Goodwill rather than it being manufactured for them as first wearer at least cuts down on the manufacture-to-trash stream a little bit.
For sure. I suppose my point was simply to think of donation and reuse as a way to reduce and delay waste, not eliminate waste.
It reduces waste. Every time you buy a used item instead of a new item, a new item doesn’t need to be made. And while the relationship between demand for new clothes and manufacturer of new clothes isn’t perfect, it’s a good approximation.
Of course, buying used clothing is a much more effective way to reduce waste than donating used clothing, since much of it goes directly (or nearly directly) to the waste stream. Especially if you are donating stuff to make space to buy new stuff.
Fwiw, i don’t think of “donating” clothing as a real donation, i just think of it as where i throw away my clothes. The tea leaves are “thrown away” in the compost heap, and the clothes are “thrown away” into boxes at the town dump.
I don’t shop at discount stores, nor at used clothing places, because i hate to shop, and I can afford to shop elsewhere. I want to know there will be a nice brand of whatever in my size before i go. Better yet, i let my fingers do the walking and buy online. I buy Lee jeans from Lee. Sometimes i get lucky and hit a sale. Fortunately for me, i don’t need to, i can pay full price if i need a new pair of jeans soon.
But add me to the people who think it’s odd to lump first-sale discounters with purveyors of used goods.
(I do sometimes buy used clothing on eBay. But I’m shopping for something in particular, like a style of ex officio pants they’ve stopped selling, not for “a pair of pants”.)
There was a Saver’s near her that we’d occasionally go into; not in the clothes section (which I really didn’t look at) but in housewares I was amazed at the useless stuff that was there. A coffee maker with no pot, a coffee pot with no coffee maker but the sizes were obviously not compatible. A single glass or plate that was obviously part of a set; if I had that set, & if I broke one, & if I went into that location at the right time I found that needle in a hay stack field. An old home cordless phone in a plastic bag; obviously no charger & the way it was bagged, with the charger behind the phone you couldn’t even read the model # to get any info on it, etc.
I don’t want to be a huge cheerleader for Goodwilll, but … I’ve often gotten quality items there that would be much more expensive than the Walmart a couple miles away. I’m on the look out for a dutch oven I may find one some day. Mel Trotter, on the other hand is way Way over priced compared to GW. I do shop there because it’ts miles closer and still cheaper (in most cases) than Wally world or Meijer. I wuld like to look around a TJ Max etc. but all of those are farther than I want to drive.
I think you’d have to go out of your way to find a really bad deal at any of the thrifts I regularly visit, about six, SA, GW, Village Discount (Chi local). Some stuff is broken (I’ll guess 85% by patrons*) and some of the minimum-priced 99 cent stuff is bad (like an old magazine or y2k compliant printer cartridges) but they can’t really charge any less.
*The Lava lamp smashed on the floor is one I really remember though surprisingly less vivid than I hoped.
I get the better end, I think, when I do buy stuff but that doesn’t account or compensate for the hours of dozens of visits I leave empty handed: it’s recreational shopping.
I passed on a Belgian Desco ~2 qt in orange/red flame for $6.99 a while back. I’ve got some LC in that size and simply can’t justify another but someone took home a nice prize that day.
I’ve been selling on eBay a lot lately (junk from my house) and as such, I’ve been seeing a lot of “professional reseller” videos come through my FB Reels, and I’m compelled to watch.
Turns out small appliance pieces like coffee makers with no pots and coffee pots with no maker are HUGE business for resellers. So are single pieces of dinnerware.
So Savers isn’t counting on someone who lives nearby needing that specific coffee pot (which would be cool and I’m sure it does happen!) but instead the intrepid local reseller who comes by every Wednesday morning to grab all such items, take it home and store it in their converted garage/reseller storage room, until they can sell it online to the person across the country who DOES need it, for 6x the Savers price.
That’s what I like to say about my volunteer job at the library: “Let’s keep things out of the landfill, until they belong there.”
I have some LeCreuset pans that I found for $5 or $10 at a rummage sale. I didn’t really need them at the time, but I wasn’t going to pass up a bargain for something like this for an item that will probably outlive me.
I do not shop at any of these stores (except for Target) because I am not looking for cheap merchandise, except for kitchen items. I have never been inside a Walmart store either.
I do shop at Revivals Thrift Store in Cathedral City for clothes and occasional furniture, as they have very good selections. For new clothes, I will go to Tony Bahama on El Paseo in Palm Desert or some other boutiques in uptown Palm Springs. Otherwise, I will make my own clothes, although it has become more difficult lately to buy fabric.
I went to a meeting at Palm Springs some years back, and my wife hit the thrift stores there and in Palm Desert. Some of the best she’s ever seen, in terms of high quality not that expensive merchandise.