You know the store, I’ll bet.
(Hobby Lobby)
Not surprised at all!
That was a really eye-opening doc for me. I’d never heard of that Brandy Melville chain before. The owner is a total creep.
It’s crazy. I bought a selection of wide legged cotton pants for summer, and I’m glad I read the reviews because I had to order 5X!!!
I saw a store going out of business dump dozens of bolts of cloth on the sidewalk in front. People grabbed it pretty quickly; I would not assume waste in such cases.
This document says that in 1801 in New York state you could get a “suit of clothes” for $4–$5; for that kind of money nobody was going just to toss them. But it is a mistake to think that when something becomes cheap (which is good) it becomes disposable.
Within a decade of 9/11, the family that owns the Hobby Lobby chain was buying hundreds of antiquities looted from Iraq. So their objection to goods produced in Islamic countries didn’t last very long.
I read that.
They are fundamental Christians. That’s why they say they’re closed on Sundays.
It didn’t surprise me they’d have two sides in their professional life and their personal lives.
Seems a bunch of businesses have two faces.
Did you order off Shein or Temu?
Don’t mean to pry.
There is a certain pant that I ordered. Khaki(they had loads of colors and prints) ordered a big size. They were Capri length. I knew they’d hit about mid-knee for me.
Had pockets, a deep hem and they cut in at the bottom, with a bit of an overlap.
Love them. I was right, nominally short but I call them knee pants. It’s really nice cotton. And they were cheap. Something like $8.
Neither. It was called Ecupper. As for length, I’m lucky I’m short, and I don’t like cropped pants. Lots of cropped pants are ankle length on me!
Seriously nice line.
Let me know how they fit.
Adam explains how most returned clothing is not resold but trashed, as others have said above.
I’m very simple clothing wise. I know my sizes and work from home. Most expensive item is shoes of course. Always some form of hiking shoe/boot. Size 13. Done.
I loath going to stores to buy clothes. Food and beer is pretty much all I go to the ‘store’ for. Well, and trips to a hardware/lumber yard. Though any of my power tools I just buy online. But I pretty much done with all of that. I hope.
Oh, I do have a UPS box in town. It’s between the grocery store and liquor store. I don’t have them take it those last miles to me. And I can combine trips. That would be mean, especially in the winter.
Overall I’d say that the only thing which is special about clothing is the idea that it comes in sizes.
Everything we buy from any channel is made in an exploitative manner. And anything we buy from any channel is rife with environmentally unsustainable behavior all the way along. From wastage during the raw materials gathering to the finished product arriving at your door. And the disposal of everything along the way, from mine tailings or plant waste, to defective production, to production pollution, to packaging, to your own disposal of the item when consumed or worn out or failed. Every bit of that is done in a heedless wasteful exploitative fashion.
Much like the recent discussions on veganism, wherein the (reluctant) consensus is that the cruelty is built-in and can’t be ameliorated until the scale of society is reduced to raising your own chickens.
The wastage and environmental unsustainability is built into everything about post 19th-Century industrial / commercial life. Fretting over what happens when you buy 2 pairs of pants, e.g. one small and one medium, and end up returning the wrong one is simply silly. The sustainable solution is buy zero, not fuss over 1 versus 2. Of course our society will promptly collapse if very many of us did that.
Retirement aged folks tend to buy less crap since they generally have enough durable goods to last their increasingly finite duration, and their wear and tear on durable consumables like clothes, shoes, and cars is reduced. And their consumption of true consumables like food, TP, etc., is also reducing along with their appetite.
It’s a lot easier to be closer to sustainable as a 70yo than as a 28yo w 2 kids and another on the way.
Good video. Reminds me of the switcheroo with plastics recycling (most of it also ends up in the landfill, but the plastics industry has cultivated the “feeling” our recycling efforts make a difference - they dont, and only encourage more plastic production and consumption and waste). But, that’s a topic for another thread.
Sadly, this is true, and it takes effort to avoid.
Not that crazy, but as a very general rule you can assume the wholesale cost is roughly half the retail cost, and the manufacturing cost is roughly half the wholesale cost (for clothes manufacturing is going to be even less, whereas high end electronics, computers, etc. manufacturing is going to be higher). So those leggins probably cost no more than $7. That’s pretty close to the cost of return shipping alone. Also factor in the cost of employees to generate an RMA for the customer, receive and unpack the item, inspect it, possibly reattach tags, repackage it, source replacement packaging if needed, log it back into inventory, and then re-warehouse it. If the customer pays for return shipping, then that leaves maybe 15 minutes of labor time to break even.
A few retailers who sent me a wrong item told me to keep it and they shipped me the correct one. That shows they have decent margins, or in one particular case they were trying to get rid of old stock that was heavily discounted to begin with. The Amazon situation is unfortunate, but if you’re not buying super cheap crap and you’re buying it from somewhat more reputable retailers, then there’s a higher chance they’re putting returns back into inventory, or at least down-cycling them to discount retailers.
That was a great multi-part series of their podcast. My wife and I both got the t-shirts.
Well, we gotta have clothes or we go nekkid😳
Don’t need that.
This waste thing makes me think of the buffalo destruction and near extinction in the late 19th century. (I recently saw the PBS series).
So waste is not new.
I saw a lady on a cooking series that made smoothies with frozen banana peels, peach peels and other garbage(IMO). You can go too far.
My old Granny did make plum cordial with plum peelings, there is some use for peelings, I suppose.
Granny went too far by nipping on it too much some afternoons.
That was done as a weapon of war. We seem to be fighting ourselves, now.
They fit fine on me!
I meant the shooting of thousands, money was the reason, of course it went a long way to solve the Indian problem.
The congress took up a conversation about limiting the killing as to not cause extinction. It passed. The Senate passed it.
Pres. Grant never signed the bill for whatever his reasons.
The buffalo was wasted. Carcasses were left to rot on the prairie by the 1000s. Instead of having it butchered and used for meat(some of it may have)
they wasted it.
I’m sure the peoples of the plains thought of it as an act of war.
The declaration was to round them up and shoot their source of a livelihood so someone in England or France had a rug or hat and leather belts to run machinery in factories.