by Morning Sunday-Hettleman
sundayhettleman@gmail.com
You’ve seen them yellow boxes, white boxes, even purple boxes on sidewalks, in parking lots, they seem to be everywhere. Brightly colored boxes , the ones that have a two or three word explanations painted on them. Encouraging you to donate clothing, and use this container. But, who are they, what do they do with the clothes you put into those boxes?
Those boxes tap into a public needing to “help”, you may have visions of feeding starving children, planting a native tree, saving a whale, planting a butterfly bush. But your clothing donation may wind up impeding economic progress in developing countries.
Americans donate 2.5 billion pounds of used clothes a year, mostly to the Salvation Army, Goodwill Industries and those ambiguous street boxes. Did you know that eighty per cent of those clothes get exported?
Your clothing donations are taken to warehouses where it is tied into 1,000-pound bales. The bales are then sold to a used clothing broker. A broker, may pay as little as 23 to 30 cents a pound for the clothing. A broker resells the clothes by the container. Each container holds 44 bales, or 44,000 pounds. A few containers are sold in the United States but most are shipped abroad. That’s where the rubber meets the road.
Unwashed clothing donations are resold to impoverished people in Central America, Africa, Iraq and Iran and many other countries. The countries of sub-Saharan Africa now form the world’s largest secondhand clothing destination, receiving 30% of total world exports in 2001 with a value of USD $405 million, up from $117 million in 1990 (United Nations 1996, 2003). The clothes are then sold to vendors, who resell them for as little as a dime.
Some diseases can be carried by unwashed clothes. The vulnerability of those people being exposed to diseases through unwashed clothes, reminds me of the devastation of Native Americans, by common European diseases and how whooping cough and measles swept through the Hawaiian population devastating them, because of cultural and hygienic practices. Imagine the practice of diverse cultures, their family members, friends, co-workers gathering to show their respects to the ailing member, then disperse spreading the infections far and wise. Could this happen?
Secondly, the collapse of the domestic African print manufacturing sector is linked to western market pressures, and the importation and sale of secondhand clothing sourced from those same markets. When previously banned imports of used clothing were now legally allowed into some countries. The collapse of domestic production of some cloth and the cotton industry followed.
Morning Sunday Hettleman is an environmental reporter, heard weekly on WEAA 88.9 FM, The Environmental Report and the president of the Maryland Environmental Justice Coalition.
