Clothes - bin, recycle or donate?

Spent about 20 mins rooting through my wardrobe this morning to uncover this bulging bag of stuff which is now heading for the Cancer Research UK shop. It is the most relevant charity shop in our area for the cause and like many others at the moment they are appealing for donations at the moment.  According to Oxfam almost 10,000 items of clothing go to landfill every 5 minutes in the UK.  The charity shop will make the most of your unwanted clothing whether they sell it or pass it to the “rag man”. I’ve seen rates of £2 for each black bag but I can’t confirm that is accurate.

Done a bit of research and the textile recyclers handle the textiles in different ways but one of the most significant, to some controversial, is exporting our unwanted clothes to Eastern Europe and developing countries. I read somewhere that companies may sort the charity shop rejects into 30 different categories from clothing which is too damaged or dirty to use (so ends up shreaded for a variety of purposes) to those which can be traded. So already those rejects are providing employment. The controversy of exporting to developing contries lies in a consequential impact on local textile industries.  

 A more positive point of view is that clothes are being reused instead of being dumped and are also creating jobs for people in the country of destination. They may be involved in transporting shipments, unloading and processing deliveries or actually selling the clothes in local markets. According to the latest available UN figures, the UK is the second largest used clothing exporter after the US. It exported more than £380m ($600m), or 351,000 tonnes, worth of our discarded fashion overseas in 2013. Top destinations were included Ghana, Pakistan and Ukraine.

Can’t help but feel this is a far better outcome than adding to the 350,000 tonnes of used clothing which already goes directly to landfill in the UK. Among those in 2015 were the random variety I picked up from the verges. I’ve included a few photos to remind you. I leave it to you to decide what to do with your unwanted clothes but easily the most effective approach is to cut back on how many you buy.