The stuff has become so cheap and junky that it's basically useless. Like they hand out bluetooth speakers which sound worse than laptop speakers. And then the company gets stuck with box loads of this ewaste junk when branding changes. I think the least wasteful idea I saw was the company branding on a packet of mints. At least thats something almost everyone wants and isn't any more wasteful than store mints.

I remember working at a company where some idiot in marketing ordered a thousand or so clear bouncy-balls with the company logo that had electronics inside that flashed red LEDs and made an obnoxious chime through a loud piezo speaker. They were almost the size of lacrosse ball. They were useless even for just idle play because you could probably punch a hole in a wall with one, damage equipment, or hurt someone.

To this day I have no idea what the hell they were thinking.

There was someone at a trade show I went to a few years ago (like all the rest) selling a product called (in industry) a "lunchbox" who was giving away branded snack-sized boxes of raisins.

We had these smart watches that cost like $5 a pop.. Even my 3 years old daughter at the time didn't want them.

Bulk order single color silkscreen on a cheap tee is around $5. Totes are about the same. Dye sublimation mugs are ~$3. Not sure about nalgene-type bottles but I'm guessing in the $3-$5 range.

Is it the cost? $3-$5 per item seems about what I would expect.

I'd guess the biggest problem with tees is sizing. It's not one uniform product to hand out, so you have the added complexity of multiple inventory and people asking to swap their size.

Some of those bottles reek so bad of chemicals you would have to be an idiot to drink out of them.

The tshirts, if they end up abroad, contribute to ruining the local textile industry.

Many developing countries had local industry producing fabric and clothes, but they really struggle to compete with free or almost free waste Western clothes.

When you say "local textile industry" are you thinking of cotton growing, yarn spinning, fabric weaving, or shirt cutting/sewing? Because those are all totally different things done in totally different parts of the world. There is no longer such thing as "local textile industry". A single strand of cotton is better traveled than most of us.

Lots of great learning starts here: https://apps.npr.org/tshirt/#/title

Some articles on this:

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-44951670

https://www.cnn.com/2013/04/12/business/second-hand-clothes-...

You mean the shirts made abroad, printed with Random Co. logo, shipped to the US, then shipped right back when no one wanted them? Those shirts?

How does it ruin the local textile economy for a foreign company to pay the local mill to give out free shirts?

Last time I was in an African country there were people wearing shirts like "Atlanta Winners 2019" when it was some other baseball team that won in 2019. So similar to what you describe.

Those shirts were probably made in Asia, but ruin the African clothing industry.

T-shirts are awesome, because you can wear them when you change your oil and you don't have to get your good work clothes dirty.

Sad to say but most of those shirts probably ended up in landfill.