Re:No One Wants Used Clothes Anymore (2018)
by Nursie on Friday December 04, 2020 @02:42PM
(#25306763)
My partner is the manager of a red cross shop here in the UK, and it's exactly this - anything not of resale quality (or just too 'personal', like used underwear) goes for 'rag' and they get paid by weight by the rag company. The rag clothes are shredded, IIRC, not sure what for.
They also have a book company who have a similar arrangement, they pay a few pence per book, though IIRC they do make use of the books as-is rather than shredding.
Re:No One Wants Used Clothes Anymore (2018)
by convolvatron on Friday December 04, 2020 @04:23PM
(#25308215)
alot of workshops (metal, wood) buy rags for finishing work, etc. At $2/lb it adds up pretty fast.
Re:No One Wants Used Clothes Anymore (2018)
by fakedang on Friday December 04, 2020 @02:57PM
(#25306944)
Rags can be used to make paper or some forms of packaging.
Re:No One Wants Used Clothes Anymore (2018)
by corty on Friday December 04, 2020 @02:36PM
(#25306668)
Usually clothes don't get shipped to developing countries to be used as clothes. They get shredded and used as a source of cotton and other fibres after sorting, e.g. to create stuffing, insulation or paper.
Donated stuff is treated the same way, and just the proceeds used as a donation to help the third world. Read the fine print on the used-clothes-bin.
Re:No One Wants Used Clothes Anymore (2018)
by ogre_codes on Friday December 04, 2020 @03:07PM
(#25307071)
This article is basically about how that entire part of the recycling chain is shutting down because it's cheaper to just manufacture new.
Regardless, even when they were shipping them out, the environmental cost of shipping and repurposing was always higher than the cost of just using what you had.
Over here in the UK and much of Europe, the charities sell them by the ton to traders that ship them to Africa or other developing countries.
Some charities don't even handle them, they enter into a contract with a third party that specialises in the trade that collects the clothes and then pays the charity a fixed amount of money per ton. The whole service is branded, so you would think that you're donating to the charity directly when in fact they are paid by the trader by weight.