Old clothes and unintended consequences

I like charity shops for buying clothes. There is a sense of adventure, almost a feeling of being on a treasure hunt, as you look through the chaotic muddle of mixed cast-offs to see if you can find any hidden gems. It is so different from real shops where there are rows of identical styles and colours in all sizes. Instead there is an eclectic mix of sizes and styles and only one of each item. The element of a random gamble makes shopping so much more interesting! 

But there are problems behind this world of recycling clothes. There are many new clothes available for next to nothing that are sourced from the sweat shops in low income economies. They are so cheap when new that they are hardly worth selling second hand. They do not retain their pristine shape for long so they are soon handed in to charity shops. There are thus many tonnes of clothes donated:  far too many to be sold on the limited rails of any small town charity shop. So the shop hangs out on display what it thinks it can sell, sends to the head office anything of particular value or interest (many charities have premium shops that only sell designer brands) and then sells on all that is left over by weight.

When there were fewer charity shops and clothes were more expensive and they would try and sell most of the stuff that was donated in their stores and the remainder was sold for next to nothing for rags for recycling.

Now however a new trade has grown up to sort and sell these large amounts of second hand clothing to different markets. This came to light in recent news stories. There was serious concern expressed when it was revealed that the company who bought all the spare old clothes from Salvation Army recycling centres had made £1million profit by selling them on to shops in central and eastern Europe. It seems that there are many shops in these countries that want well known western brands such as Marks and Spencer or Next. No one suggested that anyone had done anything wrong. There was just incredulity that the surplus donated clothes had generated such profits. The Salvation Army was said to be looking at the policy of selling on their excess of donated items.

There is another consequence but this time in Africa. There are so many second hand clothes being shipped into certain African countries and being sold for low prices that local people who make a living from sewing and making garments are going out of business. No wonder when we see pictures on the TV news from an African village many people are wearing western tee shirts with recognisable slogans. This is particularly ironic when you see that Oxfam and other charities are selling fair trade clothes sourced from similar third world countries. Perhaps a solution can only come if there is widespread public revulsion at the cheap sweat shop produced clothes that leads to policies of ethical corporate responsibility that some chain stores have adopted. This will mean the end of the very cheap clothes that not only have destroyed much of the British made clothing industry but is now doing the same to producers in Africa!

Charity shops can be fun and raise much needed money for good causes but with the interconnectedness of the world economy, the booming trade in second hand clothes can sometimes have unintended consequences.