Old Clothes for Charities

[Two_Sheds]

Like Bubblewrap, I get a bag through the letterbox nearly every week requesting old clothes for charity.

Some of the bags are for charities you've never even heard of.

I saw a TV programme recently, and it went like this:

Clothing for Africa Scam
Some charities go door to door collecting old clothes ...People generously donate their old clothes believing that poor people can buy their disguarded clothing at a charity shop, or the clothes will go to Africa and be given to the poor.

What Happens Next
What people do not know is what really happens. First the clothes are graded into what will sell in the shop to the English charity shops, and what won't sell because it is out of fashion.
The money raised from the sale of the clothes in the shop go to the charity (and the Directors get paid out of the money collected, although shop staff are mainly unpaid volunteers. )
Then a small percentage of the money raised goes to pay for shipping the remaining clothes to Africa: Mombasa , Kenya for example.

The charity's agent in Mombasa takes market traders to the port where the containers are stored and sells them the bundles of clothes at 8 shillings a bundle (Each trader buys 10-20 bundles).
The traders take the bundles to the local market and offer the clothes for sale 2 shillings per item for the first choice of an unopened bundle or 1 shilling per item on an opened bundle.
The money goes back to England (TAX FREE) to pay the Directors & Chairmans 'FaT Cat' Salaries.


It's not all bad: you get rid of some clutter, I get to buy my clothes in Oxfam, the Director of Oxfam earns a living, the shop staff are doing something useful and maybe earning a wage, the old clothes are being reused not landfilled, and African people get to buy Western clothes.
Right?

[Two_Sheds]

What happens to the clothes we put out in those bags?

Scope runs a national door-to-door textile collection service.

The Salvation Army is the largest operator of textile banks in the UK, with over 2,000 banks nationwide (often at the recycling area in supermarket carparks) processing in excess of 17,000 tonnes of clothing a year.
Clothes are given to the homeless, sold in charity shops or sold in developing countries in Africa, the Indian sub-continent and parts of Eastern Europe.

any un-wearable items (rags, really) are sold to merchants to be recycled and used as factory wiping cloths.


SHOES
Resold abroad in countries like Pakistan, India, Africa and East European countries.

CLOTHES
Resold in the U.K. and abroad. Oxfam's Wastesaver provides clothes to Mozambique, Malawi or Angola for emergency use, as well as providing warm winter clothing to former Yugoslavia, Albania, Afghanistan and Northern Iraq.

[bubblewrap]

This has been posted on Sunday night chat


The annoying thing is we live in one of the poorest areas in Loughborough(councils figures) My mother lives in a good area & gets very few charity bags.
Point being the area I live in is all terraced housing easy to leaflet.
I save all the bags to use myself I have 15 at the moment

[Two_Sheds]

The recycling of clothes has grown arms and legs.
These days, a garment has an average lifespan of only 3 years (teenager's clothes probaly a twelfth of that)

We think we're doing the right thing by recycling for charity, instead of putting it in landfill ~ but all this shipping, trucking the stuff around the UK and the globe is using a lot of fuel. As with shipping our waste plastics to China, we are dumping our recycling on other countries, using lots of fuel in the process.


The clothing (in the programme I saw) in Africa is sold to people who want to look more fashionable, not given to disaster victims with nothing.

-----------------

So instead of reducing our consumption of materials by buying good clothes to last, and wearing them till they fall apart, we have created this huge recycling monster that ships our castoffs around the planet, re-selling them to fairly well-off Africans in Mozambique. They weren't going to disaster victims.

Somebody has to run all this charitable work ... the organisers, the directors, they get a good salary out of this, while the shop staff and van drivers are probably unpaid volunteers.


I have to stop now, my brain is getting all shook up. I feel it would be better to simply reduce our consumption, rather than to think "it's OK, it's going to be recycled"

[Two_Sheds]

This has been posted on Sunday night chat

It was your post that started me thinking, and investigating.
I thought the subject warranted its own thread.

[bobleponge]

As I said last night on SNC, the 3 charity managers living next door to me in Kabul each earned over 100k a year, only flew business class to work and back, 6 times a year and rented the biggest house on our street.
There truly is very little money that actually gets to where its needed from some (not all I'm sure) UK charities.
The even more sickening thing is that, working in these places, even the money that does get into the country is then misappropriated.
There is a hospital not 30 miles from where I work currently. It was built by an Italian charity and handed over to the local governor 6 years ago.
The governor employed his brother as the hospital administrator, and his cousin is now the "head doctor" (dont know the proper medical term). The same Italian charity send over 35k euro a month to the hospital for it to be run and stocked properly. I was there 4 days ago with one of my workers, and I couldnt even get the guy a bandage and some painkillers after he had almost lost his lower left arm, as they had run out of everything.
The local governor (co-incidentally I'm sure) appears to have amassed a fleet of brand new Mitsubishi 4x4's over the last 6 years which he rents out to the oil companies here for an extortionate daily rate. Because of visa restrictions here,and the fact that the visa office is run by the governors nephew, the hospital always know when the charity workers are coming to see their hospital and always ensure that the place is stocked and clean for their arrival
Its a never ending vicious circle which shows no signs of ending.
Every time I come back to work I go to all my neighbours and friends and ask them if they have clothes etc that they were going to throw away, and I bring them back and distribute them amongst my workers to give to their family and friends. This way I know that the things I bring are actually getting to the people who need it.
It sickens me the corruption in this entire continent, but its accepted as a daily way of life here.

[piskieinboots]

...These days, a garment has an average lifespan of only 3 years ...

This is the only bit that has shocked me - I honestly, truly, do not get through an item of clothing in 3 years

[Two_Sheds]

Every time I come back to work I go to all my neighbours and friends and ask them if they have clothes etc that they were going to throw away, and I bring them back and distribute them amongst my workers to give to their family and friends.

This is probably daft, but is there a post office or a good person, where you can post things to?
I would rather post my (very few) unwanted things direct to a poor person in Africa/Kabel/India, that to a charity that will make money out of it.

(I once tried posting a gift box of sweets and chocolate to our soldiers in Iraq, but was told I had to name an individual, not just send it to "the troops". I couldn't, so I didn't)

[bubblewrap]

Old clothes? all my clothes are old I have some T-shirts that are 10 years old my suit(rarely worn) is 21.
I never throw anything away until it is full of holes & truly worn out.
I have a pair of boots(were my fathers) that I only ware in very bad weather that are 62 years old

[Two_Sheds]

I never throw anything away until it is full of holes & truly worn out.

That's great ... are you allowed to go down the high street? I wear my tatty gardening clothes almost everywhere, unless I have to go to town with Mr Sheds

I don't buy clothes for the sake of it, and have a policy of one-out, one-in.
I'd like my castoffs to being going to a good cause, not being shipped round the world making money for people

[Rhona]

There is a huge clothing bin in the recycle park near us, which is what we use for some stuff. I have to confess that I'm not really sure what happens to the items once they've been put into the bin, but I'll check - there is some info available. There is a request that people only send ok items - no rubbish that can't be worn.

I agree that reducing consumption has to be a good thing... (though I have been a pretty enthusiastic consumer of clothes myself, I'm changing my ways...)

[bubblewrap]

That's great ... are you allowed to go down the high street? I wear my tatty gardening clothes almost everywhere, unless I have to go to town with Mr Sheds

I don't buy clothes for the sake of it, and have a policy of one-out, one-in.
I'd like my castoffs to being going to a good cause, not being shipped round the world making money for people

Don't care what I look like as long as I feel all right in what I wear.
I dress to suit my self & as long as Madderbat is OK with it two fingers to the rest!

[Two_Sheds]

As I said last night on SNC, the 3 charity managers living next door to me in Kabul each earned over 100k a year, only flew business class to work and back, 6 times a year and rented the biggest house on our street.
There truly is very little money that actually gets to where its needed from some (not all I'm sure) UK charities.

Such a shame. We want to help, the poor need the help, and it's greedy and corruption stepping in the middle to take advantage.
Always the same.

[Two_Sheds]

Same with famines ... Ethiopia was actually exporting grain during its 1984 famine, which was caused not solely by over-poplulation and crop failures, but also by warring factions within the country, land-grabbing and price-fixing, as well as air pollution (global dimming) http://www.bbc.co.uk/sn/tvradio/prog..._summary.shtml,

Donated "aid" grain was being given to militias, not the starving.

We have enough food on this planet to feed everyone, even without GM wonder crops , but not the political will to stop corruption. It's not our place, who is Britain to tell everyone else what to do? We should mind our own business, and let other countries rule how they see fit. And then we can send food parcels to feel a bit better about it all.

(GM crops: will make money for Monsanto, they aren't doing it for charity)
It makes you feel powerless, and part of the corruption.

[bubblewrap]

Same with famines ... Ethiopia was actually exporting grain during its 1984 famine
It makes you feel powerless, and part of the corruption.

Echoes of 1840s Ireland