A surprising number of people thrift / buy used clothes. Between thrift stores and consignment shops, more people shop there than Department stores (30% vs 21%).
https://www.census.gov/newsroom/stories/thrift-store-day.htm...
It's currently popular among younger people as a push against "fast fashion". People want clothes that are unique and affordable, and their only options are thrift stores or color blocks from Uniqlo.
This is the "kind of person" who buys used clothes:
It takes dirty clothes and removed the dirt and nothing dangerous will survive the detergent and hot water.
Isn't this just an advertising platform? Why would we address criticisms here?
There used to be a store like that in Cambridge next to MIT where real estate was essentially free. We used to go to one where you just filed a plastic bag; the bag was weighed and you paid $1/lb. Great for parties and amazing finds.
I liked the clothes I got from there though! I found a cool jacket once.
Yes, kids are dumb.
Is MIT built in/near a dump or something? Or you mean it was but definitely isn’t essentially free now? Or?
I went to high school in Boston (the city on other side of the river) which was much more dangerous. At MIT I never felt my life was in danger.
I mean, I guess if it doesn’t sell, they just bale it up again and off it goes to its original destination.
Their only cost is the initial sifting and warehousing.
And even then, they might be able to sell their pre-sifted inventory at higher prices baled-up for export.
Books aren’t too different:
https://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/23/business/23shortcuts.html
I ask because, as much as I think US consumers can benefit from them, my greater concern is that they simply don't go to waste.
Either way, it's the first I've heard of your service, and it sounds fantastic. How do I get you my old clothes? Or is it aggregated and sold on to you through the network of goodwill stores and other thrift shops?
This is the sort of problem I love to hear being solved by tech & advanced logistics, rather than the latest startup that hopes to catch a piece of the advertising pie.
https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2015/08/26/434988401/epis...
By traditional usage of the word dumping, donating use items doesn't qualify. It's not being done to gain a non-competetive economic advantage. It's a semantic issue though: decide you want to construe the word a bit more abstractly and you can make it fit.
Lexical and semantic issue aside, freeing up local resources (people's time) to focus on education and learning higher level skills seems a reasonable plan. Not unlike what a family does when freeing up the time of it's youngest members to focus on learning. Of course in the context of foreign aid to a country, it presumes you don't just air drop in supplies for basic needs and leave it at that. If you're really interested in bootstrapping a population to a higher quality of life, you have to still ensure that learning etc. are available along with the capital infrastructure to create businesses and industries that utilize that learning. I'm not sure the developed world, when lending a hand to less developed countries, always gets that second part right.
Producing something efficiently for cheap is not dumping.
Sorry, but 'third world' is really only offensive to people from first world countries who find the term 'third world' offensive. Oh, and it might also be offensive to people in developing countries who can afford developed countries' lifestyles.
I may not agree with the usage either, but that's what I see all around the third world countries that I've been to, and the one where I have lived since I was born. No one really cares, and no one is offended (except see previous paragraph).
- "third world" should include Switzerland and Austria, as they were neutral during the cold war
- "developing countries" should not include places in major wars or civil wars (such as for example not Yemen), as they're clearly not developing, but rather deteriorating.
- as you point out, "global south" should include the wealthy Australia.
It also expands into other examples of hypocrisy, such as the term "African-American", which is just an euphemism for black Americans (which itself suggest that being black is bad somehow), but due to its clumsiness also includes lots of non-black people, such as Tunesian-Americans (no black people there).
Yes, that's it. You said it better than I did.
I had no idea it was related to the USSR at all and had just assumed third world strictly meant a poor nation
There is one article talking about the effect on local industry. The gist of it is that you help people out by giving them free stuff, but you kill the local food/clothing/shoe industry and therefore trap the very communities you intend to help into a cycle where they can never start businesses and raise their standard of living because nobody will buy their stuff because they get it for free through aid.
Also, the term "third world" is not offensive and most people are tired of playing this game where some group declares some term offensive and we are all expected to stop using it. You don't get to dictate the language people use to talk and think about the world around them.
I personally wear almost exclusively second hand clothes. The only things I buy new are shoes and underwear.
Tell me more. Can I mail you a box?
Our model is a bit unique. We purchase the same 100lb and 500lb bales the international distributors do. We have a team that processes the bales, categorizes the clothes, and then merch/list them in a marketable and fun way on the site.
Textile waste is the 2nd largest polluter behind oil & gas. If we can help create a culture of buying second-hand first, we think there's a massive opportunity to put a dent in climate change.
We just got some of our first press yesterday. :) https://www.houstonchronicle.com/techburger/amp/Houston-dres...
tl;dr WE WILL TAKE ALL YOUR CLOTHES. :)