What Actually Happens to Your Clothing Donations?

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Commons Team

March 26, 2025

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The secondhand clothing market isn't equipped for textile recycling. So when your donated clothes don't sell, where do they end up? With the rise of overconsumption and fast fashion, clothes have piled up in thrift stores, landfills, and incinerators around the world. Countries like Ghana and Chile are dealing with fashion waste from countries like the U.S., UK, and China, and the impacts are vast.

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Mountains of clothes lead to fires, polluted waterways, dying ocean life, and lost livelihoods. So how do we stop the cycle? How can we donate with purpose and dignity, and get fashion brands to actually take accountability for the full lifecycle of their clothes?

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Listen to hear what our community does with their used clothes, how a new law could force companies to clean up their act, and how Los Angeles's Suay Sew Shop is dealing with the untenable amount of clothing donations from wildfire relief.

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➡️ If you want to support Suay Sew Shop, you can browse their site here and contribute to their Textiles Aren't Trash fire relief campaign. By the way, you can earn rewards for Suay purchases and donations in the Commons app!

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Here are some of the people you'll hear from in this episode:

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Episode Credits

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Listener contributions: Holly Kane, Maya Roman, Nate Rauh-Bieri, Nick
Editing and engineer: Evan Goodchild‍
Hosting and production: Katelan Cunningham

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Citations and Further Reading

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Full Transcript

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Katelan (00:00):

Hey, you are listening to Second Nature, a podcast from Commons where we talk to people about how they're living sustainably in an unsustainable world. In the midst of your spring cleaning, you may have started a box of clothes to get rid of. Most of us would take that box of clothes to a thrift store, but unfortunately, a lot of the clothes we donate are actually ending up in landfills.

Katelan (00:29):

This hard truth can bring up some complex thoughts and feelings, at least it did for me, because donating your stuff should be a good thing. You're giving away something for free and you're keeping clothes in circulation, and you're enabling someone to get them for a lower price or for free. But these days, the supply of decent secondhand clothes much outweighs the demand. A lot of clothing donations are such low quality or in such poor condition that with so many clothes out there, they're not sellable or usable for anyone. But that wasn't always the case because even a few decades ago, we weren't buying so many new clothes to begin with. Plus clothes used to be made well enough that they were worth reselling. But now in the era of peak fast fashion, things have changed a lot. Even when you see the mountains of our secondhand clothes in Ghana and Chile, it can be hard for our human brains to comprehend the real scale of this problem. But to give you a sense of it, we have enough clothes on earth right now that we could close all the clothing factories for six generations, and still we'd have plenty to wear.

Katelan (01:44):

Overconsumption and fast fashion are the key reasons that we're drowning the secondhand market and it's creating dangerous, deadly effects for people, animals, and oceans not in some distant future. This is happening right now and we are part of the problem. I'm your host, Katelan Cunningham, and I'm a recovering close over shopper and over donator. Today on our show, we're gonna talk about where most of our donated clothes end up. We're gonna have an overdue conversation about how to donate with integrity, and we're talking about what it's going to take for fashion companies to take responsibility for their own waste. You ready? The catastrophic LA wildfires in January displaced 150,000 residents. Among the many things that these people lost their homes, their vehicles, their photos, they also lost their clothes.

Katelan (02:48):

People around the country jumped at the opportunity to help.

Katelan (02:53):

Well intentioned as they may have been, clothes were flooding the city in truckloads, and the organizations helping with disaster relief were all of a sudden dealing with the additional burden of sorting more clothes than 150,000 people could ever wear. And a lot of these clothes were tattered and stained and dirty. There were even used underwear. Organizations started begging people to stop donating clothes. A lot of those clothes ended up at the Santa Anita racetrack, which started to resemble a 320 acre landfill. It was a huge spectacle, but still only a microcosm of the global secondhand clothing conundrum. According to the EPA, over 60% of American textile waste gets sent to landfills. That's 10 million tons each year. 18% of our textile waste is incinerated. About 4%. 700,000 tons gets shipped overseas. That's enough to fill about 24,000 shipping containers every year. So what happens after these clothes get shipped overseas? Well, a lot of them end up in big secondhand markets like Ghana's Kantamanto Market.

Speaker 3 (04:06):

Oh, that's, that is actually cool. Doesn't look nice. Yeah, it's cool.

Katelan (04:12):

Ghana is the biggest used clothing importer in the world. Their economy is centered around selling used clothes from countries like the us, the uk and China. This aftermarket has become a crucial part of the global clothing supply chain. It keeps a lot of clothes from going straight into oceans and landfills and incinerator. The folks working at the continental market these days get over 60 million pieces of secondhand clothing every month. That's about 2 million a day, and they're able to resell, repair, reuse, or remanufacture less than half of them. The massive quantity of clothes paired with the lack of regulation creates dangerous conditions, which can lead to catastrophes like the huge fire that broke out in the market in January. Just five days before the LA wildfires, the market fire destroyed the livelihoods of over a hundred thousand people. On top of that, the quality of clothes that they're getting has gone down so much that the payoff for this kind of work is shrinking.

Katelan (05:13):

Essentially, vendors buy bales of clothes for about 120 to $200 each, and you don't know what's in the bail till after you've bought it. Vendors are finding that more and more clothes are unsellable because they're in such poor condition. Aker's Waste Manager, Solomon Noi, told the OR foundation that nearly 40% of shipments are of no value. He said the city has become a dumping ground for the Western world. Clothes that don't sell are burned or sent to landfills just like here in the US, or they end up in waterways. The pollution from all the clothes has made the air and water extremely dangerous and unsafe. People have had to build homes on top of piles of trash. Huge clothing brands like Zara and Shein, they depend on aftermarkets like Kto to clean up their messes. But despite deplorable dangerous conditions, these brands stay focused solely on making and selling more and more and more clothes. This is a form of waste, colonialism and out of sight, out of mind mentality where high income countries send their waste like clothes and plastic to low income countries rather than dealing with it themselves. So it's not all on us and our seasonal closet purges, but as we saw here in LA, when thousands of people donate just one bag of clothing, you can fill a racetrack before you know it.

Katelan (06:43):

One thing we you and me can do is buy fewer clothes altogether, especially from fast fashion. Brands proliferating this problem with no accountability. Second, we can become better donors. There's no one right way to do it. Here's some insight from our community.

Nick (07:05):

If I don't use something or if a friend has greater use, I don't hesitate to say, take it, it's yours. You know, that's kind of how I've gotten a lot of things in my own life from family and friends saying, oh, this is a, this is a nice vest. And someone says, oh, well it's yours. I don't wear it anymore. It's like, really? Yeah, of course. So appreciating these when they come your way and when they're given to you, but kind of keeping that same thing of it's not mine, it's my turn.

Maya (07:33):

My go-to tends to be giving away or donating. I know there are problems with thrift stores, especially the big name ones, but I don't think there is anybody who can be perfect with sustainability, especially because we live in capitalism. When I donate things, I do try to give them to stores that will give something else to the community besides just what they are selling. For example, brown Elephant is a phenomenal thirst store. Its proceeds help fund health clinics. Another one is out of the closet, which is a thrift store that provides free HIV testing, which is phenomenal for Chicago. So trying to donate to areas that also benefit the community and aren't just big name brands is something I try to do.

Nate (08:30):

I'm a big fan of Buy Nothing groups. I think they're a really fun way to move items to people who could really use them. It's a way to connect with other people in your community, even on a very small scale. It's a really nice way to kind of create an alternative economy where you're not exchanging money, you have something that you don't need, somebody else needs it. It's wonderful to be able to, and satisfying, I should add for somebody else to get that. I also really like the idea of setting up swaps that are more themed based. I am thinking about putting together a gear swap for my running group, so people who have more than they need or have something that they don't use and they can swap that and we can connect that with people who could really use it.

Holly (09:16):

I find hope in the intersection of creativity and climate action, seeing how people repair their clothing and seeing other people get inspired by that. I think creativity is a really powerful thing. Making and mending my own clothes has done so much for my personal style and has really helped me develop a strong, caring relationship with the clothes I own. And I really think this is the way forward. When you have this attachment to your clothes, you're way more like likely to look after them and keep them in use for as long as possible.

Katelan (10:00):

While working on this episode, I started to thinking about donations in these two categories, and I found it really helpful. Maybe you'll too. Okay, so you have direct donations and you have indirect donations. An indirect donation would be like giving your clothes to a thrift store or a nonprofit. You give them stuff and then they sort it and give it away or sell it. A direct donation would be like when you give your used shirt to a friend or you give your jeans away to someone in your buy nothing group, or you give a rain jacket to your unhoused neighbor, you're giving something directly to the person who's gonna wear it. I don't think one type of donation is inherently better than the other, but they do require us to ask different questions before you directly give someone your secondhand close, you'd probably ask like, Hey, do you like this? Does it fit? Do you want it? When it comes to indirect donations, we're not often forced to ask any questions of ourselves.

Katelan (11:04):

Some organizations have strict guidelines, but stores like Goodwill, they're not as strict. So they won't say, Hey, don't give us clothes with a bunch of holes or stains. But inevitably those types of things are unsellable. So statistically they will probably end up in the landfill even after you've dropped them off at the thrift store. It just makes me think we should be asking ourselves more questions before making these indirect donations. Like, if I don't consider this wearable, will someone else? Is this something that someone can wear with dignity? Is it Resellable? And listen, the Onus is not all on thrift stores here. They exist to resell clothes, not recycle them. Recycling clothes is a massive job all its own. There's a local business here in LA that's taking on this massive job, it's called SUAY. So Shop and I had the great honor to sit down and talk with Sumac Alvarado del a who is SUAY's co-founder and chief of Resource Mobilization. Hi Sumac. Thank you for coming on the show.

Sumaq (12:08):

Thank you for inviting me

Katelan (12:11):

At SUAY Sew Shop your team has been repurposing and upcycling recycling remanufacturing textiles for several years now. So you're not strangers to dealing with a lot of clothes. But during the LA wildfires, y'all received so many donations, it was on a whole other level. I was wondering if you could walk us through what those weeks looked like and I don't know, had your team ever dealt with that much volume before?

Sumaq (12:36):

Uh, wow. This is the big question, isn't it? I was thinking about this the other day when I was talking to my colleagues and the volume itself isn't necessarily the shocking or groundbreaking piece of it all. I think it was like the crisis and how it all came at once, right? And the type of textiles. So mostly unwanted unwearable and suitable. So we launched our textile recycling program about four years ago, and in those four years we have processed about like a little bit over 4 million pounds of textiles. Wow. But the state of those textiles are often like mixed. You know, some of them are in pretty fair condition for recirculation minimal intervention. And then another good chunk of it is like not necessarily wearable and we consider them prime for remaking. So like cut them up over D them, making them into like our cool like sweet remake pieces.

Sumaq (13:41):

And then there's always like a few much smaller percentage of it that is gross. Some of it is like not in good shape, so it takes a little bit more time and imagination to figure out what to do with them. You know, in the case of what we're counting now is about a little bit over 120,000 pounds of textiles solely from overflow donations, from fire relief that we have collected so far. The majority of this is the latter. The sorting process has been a lot more arches. It's also because in the four weeks, right during the fire starting on January 11, just with four weeks we got a hundred thousand pounds. Um, wow. So it was a lot. And the sorting of it has been quiet, uh, labor intensive. And then now that we know what we have in our hands is like the process of coming together and figuring out, okay, how do we give these textiles a new life? We believe that there's a way and if someone can figure it out, it's gonna be us that way.

Katelan (14:52):

There are so many things in the world now, right, that are automated and robots can do them, computers can do them, but making clothes and tailoring clothes and repairing clothes, it's still a very human process. And I feel like we've gotten so detached from the people who make our clothes and understanding that process, that there's this cognitive dissonance even when we hear about the awful labor conditions of garment workers around the world and especially in fast fashion brands. Why is it so important to reconnect with our sewers and the people who are doing this critical work?

Sumaq (15:26):

First of all, I think it's good to just make this point that this isn't just a critique of fast fashion, right? It's an issue that exists in the entire fashion industry, in the entire garment industry and beyond. Anywhere where skilled manual labor is present. Because we have seen that even so-called luxury brands so often like idealized for their exclusivity and craftsmanship. These brands have been implicated in perpetuating sweat shop like conditions just last year an Italian prosecutors and cover like some like labor abuses and workshops producing things for like Theor and Giorgio Armani. So wow. It exists, you know? Yeah. And this global industry has thrived on the systematic exploitation of workers, the humanizing skill, manual laborers who in truth to be completely honest, are like the heart and soul of fashion. So reconnecting with sewers, with garment workers is about far more than industry reform.

Sumaq (16:33):

So it's about just societal transformation, sewing and making clothes. It's not just a job, you know, for us it's an, honestly, it's an art form. Totally. When I go into our sewing shop, it's a craft. Not anyone can make something beautiful out of trash. And a lot of our manual laborers come from generations of sewing shop people, whether they're cutters or sewers. There is a cultural tapestry there where like, you know, innovation and tradition kind of come together. The people who are making our clothes, designing them, uh, reimagining these garments are like storytellers weaving like identity and culture into each of the pieces that we create. Just recognizing this expertise, this creativity, and most importantly just their humanity is key to dismantling systems that commodify and exploit. So for me, it's like when you as an individual choose and make the intentional decision to reconnect with those who are making your clothes or who are picking your food, these hardworking individuals that are behind this machine, you know, that just keep the society that keeps like moving forward.

Sumaq (17:54):

It's like us choosing to champion human dignity. So when we like reconnect them, we're like in a way resisting this culture of this possibility, you know? Right. And like really honoring the labor and the skills that go behind each piece. So for us, it's like always trying to figure out how do we amplify these voices? How do we provide like life sustaining wages? How do we celebrate this work? And all of these little pieces that a lot of times goes not really seen. They're like little acts of resistance against the bigger narrative, you know, of like just detachment that then allows exploitation. So it's like a shift in the power.

Katelan (18:39):

You and I were talking a couple weeks ago and you mentioned to me that it feels like we're at a crossroads because the folks in Acra, for example, a lot of their livelihood depends on waste from wealthier countries, and yet there's huge inequities in how these people are treated and there's so much shortsightedness about what's possible for them to do with these clothes, which y'all have experienced with firsthand as well. It's this huge question and I guess I just kind of wondered like how you think about that. How does SUAY think about that? About economies relying on our waste and just the need to reform our relationship with these people, but also just the systems that allow the sort of pervasive waste that we, we keep shipping over there.

Sumaq (19:21):

So the devastating January 1st fire roughly consume about 60% of the conman market. And this has been very present for us here at SUAY because we have a very close relationship with the OR foundation who does a lot of really important work there. Mm-hmm <affirmative>. And this has truly been more than a tragedy. It's really impacted about 10,000 people who rely solely on this way to sustain their lives, you know? Mm-hmm <affirmative>. And then it has also been a, a wake up call. And so we have long recognize the crisis of textile waste and we believe that it is not just about material excess. So again, we go back to systemic inequities that are uh, play, you know, and these demand bold action, you know, and innovation. So for us, the work that we do in diverting textiles from landfills, we are trying to amplify the incredible skill labor, you know, that makes like this large scale reuse.

Sumaq (20:28):

Not only possible, but we consider essential critical. And we are trying to take off and like really establish this recycling hub of the future in downtown Los Angeles that serves not just as a bandaid solution, but as a way to like ignite much needed transformation like, you know, to like show by doing. And for us it's like how do we talk about overproduction, right? Mm-hmm. Challenging this wasteful systems so that we can then empower local economies to thrive in resilience rather than relying on continuing to perpetuate this inequitable structures that sustain the status quo for us. Right. Liz from the OR foundation captured it beautifully when she said that our two worlds of Los Angeles and Camp Manto have been brought together by an unfortunate shared reality that there is simply too much clothing. Hmm. So this shared crisis is forcing us to dream bigger and to be daring and bold and to go beyond waste management.

Sumaq (21:39):

Mm-hmm <affirmative>. We have to be part of this bigger project to try to truly build an equitable circular economy in which textiles are no longer tools for exploitation, you know, but they can be tools to for solidarity, dignity, and recovery. Right? And having full awareness that our waste just doesn't magically disappear. It does end up somewhere and it does create and perpetuates harm. And then while doing that, also something that at SUAY we talk about, it's like this idea of reparations as well, right? So like we are a business that is handling textile waste. Our textile waste has created all of this major harm in communities like Acra and that it's our trash, but not only our trash, but it's like this brand scratch. They're the ones that are producing um, this massive amount of products. Mm-hmm <affirmative>. Then how do we also share and figure out systems where there is some sort of reparations structure within these bigger systems, right? So for us, like mm-hmm <affirmative> for SUAY, which is a tiny little player, you know, we don't move billions of dollars like some of these companies do, but we do our very best in making sure that when we're doing good we like always show up and support for our communities that have been deeply impacted by textile waste mismanagement.

Katelan (23:15):

I guess I've used every service that y'all provided SUAY <laugh>, but I love that you rescue clothes at the end of life, but that you provide services that enable people to like love and wear their clothes for longer. So you offer repair, you offer the dye bath. Have you seen customers sort of change their buying habits? Like sort of change how they're thinking about clothing upstream before it even gets to you in a donation form?

Sumaq (23:39):

Absolutely. Like for this to work, we really need to place like community people at the center of everything we do, right? Because real change comes from like the collective action, like so a group of people making decisions together and then that creates a ripple effect. So through cultural work education showing people like you know that an alternative is possible, you know, so engaging with them, showing them how to work with their clothing is by default like empowering them and moving them to like think differently, right? So we are enabling individuals to repair and reimagine their wardrobes. We talk about like the act of extending the life of your garments and textiles and how this within itself is like pushing forward like a shift towards like responsible ownership. One of our most popular programs is our community die bath, right? The concept of it's very simple yet profound, you know, but it's like thousands and thousands of pieces a month.

Sumaq (24:48):

I truly enjoy when I do get the time of taking D bath orders in and collaborating with our customers to like think about their colors, which one is gonna look better? There's a stain here. Do you think which color will cover it? Just seeing like their curiosity and excitement as they rediscover the potential in a faded sheet, uh, set or renew the life of what the color T-shirt, it's like it's hopeful. Hmm. And many have described it as transformative and when they pick up their items, their joy and excitement is actually palpable. You, you see it <laugh>. So for me it's more than just a service that we offer a community, but it's really hope because like you know, they did not have to buy a brand new shirt, like they just refreshed it and and extended its life. Also at soy. Like we have club men with Cosmo, which for me is also another deeply inspiring space.

Sumaq (25:50):

This is also like a way of building community and this efforts whether there's like smaller or bigger transform clothing from something that's seen as disposable into like objects that we own that have value, that have meaning. Uh, and I think this is inspiring people to move away from being like passive consumers to instead becoming like stewards of their belongings and have that sense of responsibility and it goes beyond this individual action because for us it's like always looking at the systems and we believe that like repair should be universally accessible. All brands, especially those contributing to mass overproduction must take responsibility for making repairs accessible through subsidizing through commitment For us, like democratizing repair isn't just like a luxury or a trend, it's something essential to creating this future where like sustainability and equity guide the way forward.

Katelan (27:00):

So I have to ask before we go, what are y'all gonna do with all those clothes that you got from the fire donations?

Sumaq (27:09):

So the OR foundation and SUAY are coming together and we're launching 100,000 bags for sustainable disaster relief and it's building off of the textile rapid response initiative that Sue did around the LA fires. And we have a bold and really ambitious goal of $2 million. The way it's gonna work is that we are going to divide it in half and it will be split between Los Angeles and Ghana in la the funding is gonna be used to like mitigate the overwhelming flow of clothing, donate donations where like textiles already make up a larger portion of the city's waste. We at SUAY are going to make sure that this clothing and textiles are, don't end up in landfills by repurposing them into high quality remade apparel and home goods in LA in our vertical sewing and production shop. It's an ambitious campaign. Look out for the textiles are in trash collection, which are gonna be made 100% from these textiles that we got from la fire donation excess. Yeah. So it's going to be super exciting visionary, something very tangible for us to kind of focus and doing in the midst of so much just darkness in that we're currently experiencing. Our expertise is to recirculate textiles. That's what we know how to do and that's what we're gonna do and that's our offering and how we can continue to keep moving the movement forward.

Katelan (29:01):

Well I feel so lucky to have y'all here, so grateful and I'm a big fan and have been for a long time. So I'm really grateful that you're able to take out the time and you're very busy weekend <laugh> to come and talk to me. So thanks for coming on the show.

Sumaq (29:16):

Thank you so much and again, thank you for doing this podcast. I think it's a very important space and uh, for your listeners to keep on supporting you all so that second nature continues to produce this content that is very much needed.

Katelan (29:35):

Thank you. In 2018 in the US we discarded 80% more close than we did 18 years prior in the year 2000. That's according to the latest data from the EPA, but the rate today is probably higher. The timeline here pretty much lines up with the uptick in fast fashion, which got me wondering what can we actually expect these big fashion brands to do to take accountability for the lifecycle of their clothes before they're used and then shipped overseas. I called up commons founders, Sanchali Seth Pal, for a little deep dive. Hey Sanchali.

Sanchali (30:20):

Hey Katelan.

Katelan (30:22):

So I have to admit that I'm feeling a little bit bummed out because it seems like businesses don't really have an incentive to take responsibility for all this textile waste and unless there's an incentive, I'm pretty sure most of these big brands are not gonna do anything about it.

Sanchali (30:36):

Yeah, companies environmental impact can't just stop at the sale of their products and after that it's considered the consumer's responsibility. This is how a lot of carbon accounting is done today is companies measure their impact from cradle to threshold.

Katelan (30:52):

So companies are really only thinking about a really small portion of the overall environmental impact of their product. But you're saying they should be responsible for like waste and emissions of the entire product's life, right?

Sanchali (31:06):

I think so. I mean the majority of the environmental impact of something like say a T-shirt comes from the use and end of life of that t-shirt. So if you're just thinking about as a company the emissions of producing that product, you're missing out on the big picture of the impact of what you're producing. Let's go back to the issue you brought up earlier in this episode about all of the clothing donated after the LA fires. Say we look at that as an example. The Santa Anita racetrack amassed 2,800 tons of textiles. The emissions of all of those clothes is equal to a week's worth of emissions from LA's cars. That is a huge amount of impact and it should be the company's responsibility to think about and deal with that.

Katelan (31:47):

Circular initiatives are trying to push us toward that right, this cradle to cradle. How can we enforce companies to really start making these sorts of forward thinking changes?

Sanchali (31:58):

Well, I'm glad you asked here in California, we actually had a big win on this front last year we passed the Responsible Textile Recovery Act of 2024. It basically applies to all textile related products like clothing, shoes, handbags that can't be reused in their current condition. And it's the first EPR for textiles in the US so it's a huge deal.

Katelan (32:19):

Can you remind me what is an EPR?

Sanchali (32:21):

An EPR is an extended producer responsibility program. It's basically a program that makes brands financially and operationally responsible for managing a product through the product's full lifecycle.

Katelan (32:33):

Gotcha. This sounds like it could be similar to the laws we have around disposing stuff like pharmaceuticals and mattresses and sharps and things like that.

Sanchali (32:41):

Yeah, it's exactly like that. Um, what I like about these kinds of policies is that they're very action oriented. So a bill like this means that apparel and textile producers need to set up producer responsibility organizations or pros that will actually plan for every step along the process from collection to transportation, sorting, recycling, and repair. It's super operational and it's basically about changing the ways that companies do business directly.

Katelan (33:07):

Yeah, I love that and I would like to think that once companies have to deal with their own waste, they will be more inclined to design for circularity and design for like longer term use of their product.

Sanchali (33:21):

Yeah, for sure. We are still a few years away from seeing it fully rolled out, but some of the early deadlines start as soon as next year.

Katelan (33:29):

Are there any countries already doing this that we can kind of like look to to see what our future might hold?

Sanchali (33:35):

Yes, absolutely. So France rolled out its textile EPR program in 2007. They initially launched the program focusing on downstream to help with collection and sorting of textile waste. But it's since expanded to support circular business models upstream too. It encouraging repair and reuse basically things to avoid waste. Even incentivizing more circular design in the first place.

Katelan (34:00):

Yes. Okay. You know what, I think we covered this in an article that France lets you claim money for clothing and shoe repairs as part of this program, right?

Sanchali (34:08):

Exactly. Can you imagine you go get your boots resold or your jeans mended and then you send in your receipt and you get some of that money back.

Katelan (34:16):

That would be so amazing. I am jealous of France <laugh>, but hopefully that's in our futures too. But clothing companies don't need to wait for policy changes to start building more circular businesses.

Sanchali (34:28):

Absolutely not. They can start now. They can design for circularity, offer repairs, facilitate and incentivize their own secondhand programs, and hopefully invest in more communal, circular solutions as well. We've actually already rated some brands on Commons that are doing these things today.

Katelan (34:44):

Yes, Patagonia comes to mind. Yes.

Sanchali (34:47):

Patagonia offers free lifetime repairs, so does Nudie jeans.

Katelan (34:51):

There's also Vja and they offer repairs for their shoes

Sanchali (34:54):

And Vivo Barefoot does.

Katelan (34:56):

I'd love to see that brands are already building circular businesses and that it's only gonna get better as we go. This has been so enlightening and inspiring. Thank you Sin Charlie.

Sanchali (35:04):

Thanks Caitlin.

Katelan (35:12):

The fashion conversation is a really big one to untangle. We've got brands driving us to Overconsume and they're raking in cash off the backs of unpaid labor and exploited earthly resources. And you know, we're buying what they're selling. We're buying unsustainable stuff at an unsustainable pace. But when we know better, we can do better. Now that we know the true untenable scale of the secondhand fashion market, we know how valuable it is to make our clothes last as long as possible by mending them or upcycling them. We know to opt for quality over quantity. So we're not purging our clothes every season. We know to choose secondhand before buying new when we can and when we give clothes away, we know to give with purpose and integrity.

Katelan (36:06):

And for those clothes that are too stained or too tattered, we know to find ways to reuse them in our homes or give them to a dedicated clothes recycler. If you wanna go even deeper and do a little fashion episode binge. Last year we had some real bangers, the Cure for Fast fashion. We did skipping greenwashing for sustainable fashion and um, I'll throw in Overcoming Over Consumption. That's a great one too. So maybe scroll through the archive and make yourself a little fashion playlist. Thanks again to Sumaq from SUAY. By the way. SUAY. Sew Shop is one of the secondhand brands in the Commons app. So if you buy some of their reworked clothes or you get your clothes dyed or repaired by them, you can earn rewards in the Commons app. You can shop with them online or here in their store in la. I'm there like every other weekend dropping stuff off or picking stuff up. So if you see me say hello, thanks again to our generous community. This show doesn't exist without you Today you heard from

Nate (37:09):

Nate. I live in Grand Rapids, Michigan.

Holly (37:12):

Holly Kayne in Cape Town, South Africa,

Katelan (37:15):

Maya Roman from Chicago,

Nick (37:18):

Nick in Milford, Iowa.

Katelan (37:21):

This episode was edited and engineered by Evan Goodchild. It was written and produced by your stru Kaitlyn Cunningham. Next Wednesday on the show, we're getting our hands dirty with one of my favorite acts of climate resilience community and food sovereignty, the Humble Community Garden. I'll see you there.

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What Actually Happens to Your Clothing Donations?

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The secondhand clothing market isn't equipped for textile recycling. So when your donated clothes don't sell, where do they end up? With the rise of overconsumption and fast fashion, clothes have piled up in thrift stores, landfills, and incinerators around the world. Countries like Ghana and Chile are dealing with fashion waste from countries like the U.S., UK, and China, and the impacts are vast.

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Mountains of clothes lead to fires, polluted waterways, dying ocean life, and lost livelihoods. So how do we stop the cycle? How can we donate with purpose and dignity, and get fashion brands to actually take accountability for the full lifecycle of their clothes?

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Listen to hear what our community does with their used clothes, how a new law could force companies to clean up their act, and how Los Angeles's Suay Sew Shop is dealing with the untenable amount of clothing donations from wildfire relief.

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➡️ If you want to support Suay Sew Shop, you can browse their site here and contribute to their Textiles Aren't Trash fire relief campaign. By the way, you can earn rewards for Suay purchases and donations in the Commons app!

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Here are some of the people you'll hear from in this episode:

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Episode Credits

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Listener contributions: Holly Kane, Maya Roman, Nate Rauh-Bieri, Nick
Editing and engineer: Evan Goodchild‍
Hosting and production: Katelan Cunningham

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Citations and Further Reading

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Full Transcript

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Katelan (00:00):

Hey, you are listening to Second Nature, a podcast from Commons where we talk to people about how they're living sustainably in an unsustainable world. In the midst of your spring cleaning, you may have started a box of clothes to get rid of. Most of us would take that box of clothes to a thrift store, but unfortunately, a lot of the clothes we donate are actually ending up in landfills.

Katelan (00:29):

This hard truth can bring up some complex thoughts and feelings, at least it did for me, because donating your stuff should be a good thing. You're giving away something for free and you're keeping clothes in circulation, and you're enabling someone to get them for a lower price or for free. But these days, the supply of decent secondhand clothes much outweighs the demand. A lot of clothing donations are such low quality or in such poor condition that with so many clothes out there, they're not sellable or usable for anyone. But that wasn't always the case because even a few decades ago, we weren't buying so many new clothes to begin with. Plus clothes used to be made well enough that they were worth reselling. But now in the era of peak fast fashion, things have changed a lot. Even when you see the mountains of our secondhand clothes in Ghana and Chile, it can be hard for our human brains to comprehend the real scale of this problem. But to give you a sense of it, we have enough clothes on earth right now that we could close all the clothing factories for six generations, and still we'd have plenty to wear.

Katelan (01:44):

Overconsumption and fast fashion are the key reasons that we're drowning the secondhand market and it's creating dangerous, deadly effects for people, animals, and oceans not in some distant future. This is happening right now and we are part of the problem. I'm your host, Katelan Cunningham, and I'm a recovering close over shopper and over donator. Today on our show, we're gonna talk about where most of our donated clothes end up. We're gonna have an overdue conversation about how to donate with integrity, and we're talking about what it's going to take for fashion companies to take responsibility for their own waste. You ready? The catastrophic LA wildfires in January displaced 150,000 residents. Among the many things that these people lost their homes, their vehicles, their photos, they also lost their clothes.

Katelan (02:48):

People around the country jumped at the opportunity to help.

Katelan (02:53):

Well intentioned as they may have been, clothes were flooding the city in truckloads, and the organizations helping with disaster relief were all of a sudden dealing with the additional burden of sorting more clothes than 150,000 people could ever wear. And a lot of these clothes were tattered and stained and dirty. There were even used underwear. Organizations started begging people to stop donating clothes. A lot of those clothes ended up at the Santa Anita racetrack, which started to resemble a 320 acre landfill. It was a huge spectacle, but still only a microcosm of the global secondhand clothing conundrum. According to the EPA, over 60% of American textile waste gets sent to landfills. That's 10 million tons each year. 18% of our textile waste is incinerated. About 4%. 700,000 tons gets shipped overseas. That's enough to fill about 24,000 shipping containers every year. So what happens after these clothes get shipped overseas? Well, a lot of them end up in big secondhand markets like Ghana's Kantamanto Market.

Speaker 3 (04:06):

Oh, that's, that is actually cool. Doesn't look nice. Yeah, it's cool.

Katelan (04:12):

Ghana is the biggest used clothing importer in the world. Their economy is centered around selling used clothes from countries like the us, the uk and China. This aftermarket has become a crucial part of the global clothing supply chain. It keeps a lot of clothes from going straight into oceans and landfills and incinerator. The folks working at the continental market these days get over 60 million pieces of secondhand clothing every month. That's about 2 million a day, and they're able to resell, repair, reuse, or remanufacture less than half of them. The massive quantity of clothes paired with the lack of regulation creates dangerous conditions, which can lead to catastrophes like the huge fire that broke out in the market in January. Just five days before the LA wildfires, the market fire destroyed the livelihoods of over a hundred thousand people. On top of that, the quality of clothes that they're getting has gone down so much that the payoff for this kind of work is shrinking.

Katelan (05:13):

Essentially, vendors buy bales of clothes for about 120 to $200 each, and you don't know what's in the bail till after you've bought it. Vendors are finding that more and more clothes are unsellable because they're in such poor condition. Aker's Waste Manager, Solomon Noi, told the OR foundation that nearly 40% of shipments are of no value. He said the city has become a dumping ground for the Western world. Clothes that don't sell are burned or sent to landfills just like here in the US, or they end up in waterways. The pollution from all the clothes has made the air and water extremely dangerous and unsafe. People have had to build homes on top of piles of trash. Huge clothing brands like Zara and Shein, they depend on aftermarkets like Kto to clean up their messes. But despite deplorable dangerous conditions, these brands stay focused solely on making and selling more and more and more clothes. This is a form of waste, colonialism and out of sight, out of mind mentality where high income countries send their waste like clothes and plastic to low income countries rather than dealing with it themselves. So it's not all on us and our seasonal closet purges, but as we saw here in LA, when thousands of people donate just one bag of clothing, you can fill a racetrack before you know it.

Katelan (06:43):

One thing we you and me can do is buy fewer clothes altogether, especially from fast fashion. Brands proliferating this problem with no accountability. Second, we can become better donors. There's no one right way to do it. Here's some insight from our community.

Nick (07:05):

If I don't use something or if a friend has greater use, I don't hesitate to say, take it, it's yours. You know, that's kind of how I've gotten a lot of things in my own life from family and friends saying, oh, this is a, this is a nice vest. And someone says, oh, well it's yours. I don't wear it anymore. It's like, really? Yeah, of course. So appreciating these when they come your way and when they're given to you, but kind of keeping that same thing of it's not mine, it's my turn.

Maya (07:33):

My go-to tends to be giving away or donating. I know there are problems with thrift stores, especially the big name ones, but I don't think there is anybody who can be perfect with sustainability, especially because we live in capitalism. When I donate things, I do try to give them to stores that will give something else to the community besides just what they are selling. For example, brown Elephant is a phenomenal thirst store. Its proceeds help fund health clinics. Another one is out of the closet, which is a thrift store that provides free HIV testing, which is phenomenal for Chicago. So trying to donate to areas that also benefit the community and aren't just big name brands is something I try to do.

Nate (08:30):

I'm a big fan of Buy Nothing groups. I think they're a really fun way to move items to people who could really use them. It's a way to connect with other people in your community, even on a very small scale. It's a really nice way to kind of create an alternative economy where you're not exchanging money, you have something that you don't need, somebody else needs it. It's wonderful to be able to, and satisfying, I should add for somebody else to get that. I also really like the idea of setting up swaps that are more themed based. I am thinking about putting together a gear swap for my running group, so people who have more than they need or have something that they don't use and they can swap that and we can connect that with people who could really use it.

Holly (09:16):

I find hope in the intersection of creativity and climate action, seeing how people repair their clothing and seeing other people get inspired by that. I think creativity is a really powerful thing. Making and mending my own clothes has done so much for my personal style and has really helped me develop a strong, caring relationship with the clothes I own. And I really think this is the way forward. When you have this attachment to your clothes, you're way more like likely to look after them and keep them in use for as long as possible.

Katelan (10:00):

While working on this episode, I started to thinking about donations in these two categories, and I found it really helpful. Maybe you'll too. Okay, so you have direct donations and you have indirect donations. An indirect donation would be like giving your clothes to a thrift store or a nonprofit. You give them stuff and then they sort it and give it away or sell it. A direct donation would be like when you give your used shirt to a friend or you give your jeans away to someone in your buy nothing group, or you give a rain jacket to your unhoused neighbor, you're giving something directly to the person who's gonna wear it. I don't think one type of donation is inherently better than the other, but they do require us to ask different questions before you directly give someone your secondhand close, you'd probably ask like, Hey, do you like this? Does it fit? Do you want it? When it comes to indirect donations, we're not often forced to ask any questions of ourselves.

Katelan (11:04):

Some organizations have strict guidelines, but stores like Goodwill, they're not as strict. So they won't say, Hey, don't give us clothes with a bunch of holes or stains. But inevitably those types of things are unsellable. So statistically they will probably end up in the landfill even after you've dropped them off at the thrift store. It just makes me think we should be asking ourselves more questions before making these indirect donations. Like, if I don't consider this wearable, will someone else? Is this something that someone can wear with dignity? Is it Resellable? And listen, the Onus is not all on thrift stores here. They exist to resell clothes, not recycle them. Recycling clothes is a massive job all its own. There's a local business here in LA that's taking on this massive job, it's called SUAY. So Shop and I had the great honor to sit down and talk with Sumac Alvarado del a who is SUAY's co-founder and chief of Resource Mobilization. Hi Sumac. Thank you for coming on the show.

Sumaq (12:08):

Thank you for inviting me

Katelan (12:11):

At SUAY Sew Shop your team has been repurposing and upcycling recycling remanufacturing textiles for several years now. So you're not strangers to dealing with a lot of clothes. But during the LA wildfires, y'all received so many donations, it was on a whole other level. I was wondering if you could walk us through what those weeks looked like and I don't know, had your team ever dealt with that much volume before?

Sumaq (12:36):

Uh, wow. This is the big question, isn't it? I was thinking about this the other day when I was talking to my colleagues and the volume itself isn't necessarily the shocking or groundbreaking piece of it all. I think it was like the crisis and how it all came at once, right? And the type of textiles. So mostly unwanted unwearable and suitable. So we launched our textile recycling program about four years ago, and in those four years we have processed about like a little bit over 4 million pounds of textiles. Wow. But the state of those textiles are often like mixed. You know, some of them are in pretty fair condition for recirculation minimal intervention. And then another good chunk of it is like not necessarily wearable and we consider them prime for remaking. So like cut them up over D them, making them into like our cool like sweet remake pieces.

Sumaq (13:41):

And then there's always like a few much smaller percentage of it that is gross. Some of it is like not in good shape, so it takes a little bit more time and imagination to figure out what to do with them. You know, in the case of what we're counting now is about a little bit over 120,000 pounds of textiles solely from overflow donations, from fire relief that we have collected so far. The majority of this is the latter. The sorting process has been a lot more arches. It's also because in the four weeks, right during the fire starting on January 11, just with four weeks we got a hundred thousand pounds. Um, wow. So it was a lot. And the sorting of it has been quiet, uh, labor intensive. And then now that we know what we have in our hands is like the process of coming together and figuring out, okay, how do we give these textiles a new life? We believe that there's a way and if someone can figure it out, it's gonna be us that way.

Katelan (14:52):

There are so many things in the world now, right, that are automated and robots can do them, computers can do them, but making clothes and tailoring clothes and repairing clothes, it's still a very human process. And I feel like we've gotten so detached from the people who make our clothes and understanding that process, that there's this cognitive dissonance even when we hear about the awful labor conditions of garment workers around the world and especially in fast fashion brands. Why is it so important to reconnect with our sewers and the people who are doing this critical work?

Sumaq (15:26):

First of all, I think it's good to just make this point that this isn't just a critique of fast fashion, right? It's an issue that exists in the entire fashion industry, in the entire garment industry and beyond. Anywhere where skilled manual labor is present. Because we have seen that even so-called luxury brands so often like idealized for their exclusivity and craftsmanship. These brands have been implicated in perpetuating sweat shop like conditions just last year an Italian prosecutors and cover like some like labor abuses and workshops producing things for like Theor and Giorgio Armani. So wow. It exists, you know? Yeah. And this global industry has thrived on the systematic exploitation of workers, the humanizing skill, manual laborers who in truth to be completely honest, are like the heart and soul of fashion. So reconnecting with sewers, with garment workers is about far more than industry reform.

Sumaq (16:33):

So it's about just societal transformation, sewing and making clothes. It's not just a job, you know, for us it's an, honestly, it's an art form. Totally. When I go into our sewing shop, it's a craft. Not anyone can make something beautiful out of trash. And a lot of our manual laborers come from generations of sewing shop people, whether they're cutters or sewers. There is a cultural tapestry there where like, you know, innovation and tradition kind of come together. The people who are making our clothes, designing them, uh, reimagining these garments are like storytellers weaving like identity and culture into each of the pieces that we create. Just recognizing this expertise, this creativity, and most importantly just their humanity is key to dismantling systems that commodify and exploit. So for me, it's like when you as an individual choose and make the intentional decision to reconnect with those who are making your clothes or who are picking your food, these hardworking individuals that are behind this machine, you know, that just keep the society that keeps like moving forward.

Sumaq (17:54):

It's like us choosing to champion human dignity. So when we like reconnect them, we're like in a way resisting this culture of this possibility, you know? Right. And like really honoring the labor and the skills that go behind each piece. So for us, it's like always trying to figure out how do we amplify these voices? How do we provide like life sustaining wages? How do we celebrate this work? And all of these little pieces that a lot of times goes not really seen. They're like little acts of resistance against the bigger narrative, you know, of like just detachment that then allows exploitation. So it's like a shift in the power.

Katelan (18:39):

You and I were talking a couple weeks ago and you mentioned to me that it feels like we're at a crossroads because the folks in Acra, for example, a lot of their livelihood depends on waste from wealthier countries, and yet there's huge inequities in how these people are treated and there's so much shortsightedness about what's possible for them to do with these clothes, which y'all have experienced with firsthand as well. It's this huge question and I guess I just kind of wondered like how you think about that. How does SUAY think about that? About economies relying on our waste and just the need to reform our relationship with these people, but also just the systems that allow the sort of pervasive waste that we, we keep shipping over there.

Sumaq (19:21):

So the devastating January 1st fire roughly consume about 60% of the conman market. And this has been very present for us here at SUAY because we have a very close relationship with the OR foundation who does a lot of really important work there. Mm-hmm <affirmative>. And this has truly been more than a tragedy. It's really impacted about 10,000 people who rely solely on this way to sustain their lives, you know? Mm-hmm <affirmative>. And then it has also been a, a wake up call. And so we have long recognize the crisis of textile waste and we believe that it is not just about material excess. So again, we go back to systemic inequities that are uh, play, you know, and these demand bold action, you know, and innovation. So for us, the work that we do in diverting textiles from landfills, we are trying to amplify the incredible skill labor, you know, that makes like this large scale reuse.

Sumaq (20:28):

Not only possible, but we consider essential critical. And we are trying to take off and like really establish this recycling hub of the future in downtown Los Angeles that serves not just as a bandaid solution, but as a way to like ignite much needed transformation like, you know, to like show by doing. And for us it's like how do we talk about overproduction, right? Mm-hmm. Challenging this wasteful systems so that we can then empower local economies to thrive in resilience rather than relying on continuing to perpetuate this inequitable structures that sustain the status quo for us. Right. Liz from the OR foundation captured it beautifully when she said that our two worlds of Los Angeles and Camp Manto have been brought together by an unfortunate shared reality that there is simply too much clothing. Hmm. So this shared crisis is forcing us to dream bigger and to be daring and bold and to go beyond waste management.

Sumaq (21:39):

Mm-hmm <affirmative>. We have to be part of this bigger project to try to truly build an equitable circular economy in which textiles are no longer tools for exploitation, you know, but they can be tools to for solidarity, dignity, and recovery. Right? And having full awareness that our waste just doesn't magically disappear. It does end up somewhere and it does create and perpetuates harm. And then while doing that, also something that at SUAY we talk about, it's like this idea of reparations as well, right? So like we are a business that is handling textile waste. Our textile waste has created all of this major harm in communities like Acra and that it's our trash, but not only our trash, but it's like this brand scratch. They're the ones that are producing um, this massive amount of products. Mm-hmm <affirmative>. Then how do we also share and figure out systems where there is some sort of reparations structure within these bigger systems, right? So for us, like mm-hmm <affirmative> for SUAY, which is a tiny little player, you know, we don't move billions of dollars like some of these companies do, but we do our very best in making sure that when we're doing good we like always show up and support for our communities that have been deeply impacted by textile waste mismanagement.

Katelan (23:15):

I guess I've used every service that y'all provided SUAY <laugh>, but I love that you rescue clothes at the end of life, but that you provide services that enable people to like love and wear their clothes for longer. So you offer repair, you offer the dye bath. Have you seen customers sort of change their buying habits? Like sort of change how they're thinking about clothing upstream before it even gets to you in a donation form?

Sumaq (23:39):

Absolutely. Like for this to work, we really need to place like community people at the center of everything we do, right? Because real change comes from like the collective action, like so a group of people making decisions together and then that creates a ripple effect. So through cultural work education showing people like you know that an alternative is possible, you know, so engaging with them, showing them how to work with their clothing is by default like empowering them and moving them to like think differently, right? So we are enabling individuals to repair and reimagine their wardrobes. We talk about like the act of extending the life of your garments and textiles and how this within itself is like pushing forward like a shift towards like responsible ownership. One of our most popular programs is our community die bath, right? The concept of it's very simple yet profound, you know, but it's like thousands and thousands of pieces a month.

Sumaq (24:48):

I truly enjoy when I do get the time of taking D bath orders in and collaborating with our customers to like think about their colors, which one is gonna look better? There's a stain here. Do you think which color will cover it? Just seeing like their curiosity and excitement as they rediscover the potential in a faded sheet, uh, set or renew the life of what the color T-shirt, it's like it's hopeful. Hmm. And many have described it as transformative and when they pick up their items, their joy and excitement is actually palpable. You, you see it <laugh>. So for me it's more than just a service that we offer a community, but it's really hope because like you know, they did not have to buy a brand new shirt, like they just refreshed it and and extended its life. Also at soy. Like we have club men with Cosmo, which for me is also another deeply inspiring space.

Sumaq (25:50):

This is also like a way of building community and this efforts whether there's like smaller or bigger transform clothing from something that's seen as disposable into like objects that we own that have value, that have meaning. Uh, and I think this is inspiring people to move away from being like passive consumers to instead becoming like stewards of their belongings and have that sense of responsibility and it goes beyond this individual action because for us it's like always looking at the systems and we believe that like repair should be universally accessible. All brands, especially those contributing to mass overproduction must take responsibility for making repairs accessible through subsidizing through commitment For us, like democratizing repair isn't just like a luxury or a trend, it's something essential to creating this future where like sustainability and equity guide the way forward.

Katelan (27:00):

So I have to ask before we go, what are y'all gonna do with all those clothes that you got from the fire donations?

Sumaq (27:09):

So the OR foundation and SUAY are coming together and we're launching 100,000 bags for sustainable disaster relief and it's building off of the textile rapid response initiative that Sue did around the LA fires. And we have a bold and really ambitious goal of $2 million. The way it's gonna work is that we are going to divide it in half and it will be split between Los Angeles and Ghana in la the funding is gonna be used to like mitigate the overwhelming flow of clothing, donate donations where like textiles already make up a larger portion of the city's waste. We at SUAY are going to make sure that this clothing and textiles are, don't end up in landfills by repurposing them into high quality remade apparel and home goods in LA in our vertical sewing and production shop. It's an ambitious campaign. Look out for the textiles are in trash collection, which are gonna be made 100% from these textiles that we got from la fire donation excess. Yeah. So it's going to be super exciting visionary, something very tangible for us to kind of focus and doing in the midst of so much just darkness in that we're currently experiencing. Our expertise is to recirculate textiles. That's what we know how to do and that's what we're gonna do and that's our offering and how we can continue to keep moving the movement forward.

Katelan (29:01):

Well I feel so lucky to have y'all here, so grateful and I'm a big fan and have been for a long time. So I'm really grateful that you're able to take out the time and you're very busy weekend <laugh> to come and talk to me. So thanks for coming on the show.

Sumaq (29:16):

Thank you so much and again, thank you for doing this podcast. I think it's a very important space and uh, for your listeners to keep on supporting you all so that second nature continues to produce this content that is very much needed.

Katelan (29:35):

Thank you. In 2018 in the US we discarded 80% more close than we did 18 years prior in the year 2000. That's according to the latest data from the EPA, but the rate today is probably higher. The timeline here pretty much lines up with the uptick in fast fashion, which got me wondering what can we actually expect these big fashion brands to do to take accountability for the lifecycle of their clothes before they're used and then shipped overseas. I called up commons founders, Sanchali Seth Pal, for a little deep dive. Hey Sanchali.

Sanchali (30:20):

Hey Katelan.

Katelan (30:22):

So I have to admit that I'm feeling a little bit bummed out because it seems like businesses don't really have an incentive to take responsibility for all this textile waste and unless there's an incentive, I'm pretty sure most of these big brands are not gonna do anything about it.

Sanchali (30:36):

Yeah, companies environmental impact can't just stop at the sale of their products and after that it's considered the consumer's responsibility. This is how a lot of carbon accounting is done today is companies measure their impact from cradle to threshold.

Katelan (30:52):

So companies are really only thinking about a really small portion of the overall environmental impact of their product. But you're saying they should be responsible for like waste and emissions of the entire product's life, right?

Sanchali (31:06):

I think so. I mean the majority of the environmental impact of something like say a T-shirt comes from the use and end of life of that t-shirt. So if you're just thinking about as a company the emissions of producing that product, you're missing out on the big picture of the impact of what you're producing. Let's go back to the issue you brought up earlier in this episode about all of the clothing donated after the LA fires. Say we look at that as an example. The Santa Anita racetrack amassed 2,800 tons of textiles. The emissions of all of those clothes is equal to a week's worth of emissions from LA's cars. That is a huge amount of impact and it should be the company's responsibility to think about and deal with that.

Katelan (31:47):

Circular initiatives are trying to push us toward that right, this cradle to cradle. How can we enforce companies to really start making these sorts of forward thinking changes?

Sanchali (31:58):

Well, I'm glad you asked here in California, we actually had a big win on this front last year we passed the Responsible Textile Recovery Act of 2024. It basically applies to all textile related products like clothing, shoes, handbags that can't be reused in their current condition. And it's the first EPR for textiles in the US so it's a huge deal.

Katelan (32:19):

Can you remind me what is an EPR?

Sanchali (32:21):

An EPR is an extended producer responsibility program. It's basically a program that makes brands financially and operationally responsible for managing a product through the product's full lifecycle.

Katelan (32:33):

Gotcha. This sounds like it could be similar to the laws we have around disposing stuff like pharmaceuticals and mattresses and sharps and things like that.

Sanchali (32:41):

Yeah, it's exactly like that. Um, what I like about these kinds of policies is that they're very action oriented. So a bill like this means that apparel and textile producers need to set up producer responsibility organizations or pros that will actually plan for every step along the process from collection to transportation, sorting, recycling, and repair. It's super operational and it's basically about changing the ways that companies do business directly.

Katelan (33:07):

Yeah, I love that and I would like to think that once companies have to deal with their own waste, they will be more inclined to design for circularity and design for like longer term use of their product.

Sanchali (33:21):

Yeah, for sure. We are still a few years away from seeing it fully rolled out, but some of the early deadlines start as soon as next year.

Katelan (33:29):

Are there any countries already doing this that we can kind of like look to to see what our future might hold?

Sanchali (33:35):

Yes, absolutely. So France rolled out its textile EPR program in 2007. They initially launched the program focusing on downstream to help with collection and sorting of textile waste. But it's since expanded to support circular business models upstream too. It encouraging repair and reuse basically things to avoid waste. Even incentivizing more circular design in the first place.

Katelan (34:00):

Yes. Okay. You know what, I think we covered this in an article that France lets you claim money for clothing and shoe repairs as part of this program, right?

Sanchali (34:08):

Exactly. Can you imagine you go get your boots resold or your jeans mended and then you send in your receipt and you get some of that money back.

Katelan (34:16):

That would be so amazing. I am jealous of France <laugh>, but hopefully that's in our futures too. But clothing companies don't need to wait for policy changes to start building more circular businesses.

Sanchali (34:28):

Absolutely not. They can start now. They can design for circularity, offer repairs, facilitate and incentivize their own secondhand programs, and hopefully invest in more communal, circular solutions as well. We've actually already rated some brands on Commons that are doing these things today.

Katelan (34:44):

Yes, Patagonia comes to mind. Yes.

Sanchali (34:47):

Patagonia offers free lifetime repairs, so does Nudie jeans.

Katelan (34:51):

There's also Vja and they offer repairs for their shoes

Sanchali (34:54):

And Vivo Barefoot does.

Katelan (34:56):

I'd love to see that brands are already building circular businesses and that it's only gonna get better as we go. This has been so enlightening and inspiring. Thank you Sin Charlie.

Sanchali (35:04):

Thanks Caitlin.

Katelan (35:12):

The fashion conversation is a really big one to untangle. We've got brands driving us to Overconsume and they're raking in cash off the backs of unpaid labor and exploited earthly resources. And you know, we're buying what they're selling. We're buying unsustainable stuff at an unsustainable pace. But when we know better, we can do better. Now that we know the true untenable scale of the secondhand fashion market, we know how valuable it is to make our clothes last as long as possible by mending them or upcycling them. We know to opt for quality over quantity. So we're not purging our clothes every season. We know to choose secondhand before buying new when we can and when we give clothes away, we know to give with purpose and integrity.

Katelan (36:06):

And for those clothes that are too stained or too tattered, we know to find ways to reuse them in our homes or give them to a dedicated clothes recycler. If you wanna go even deeper and do a little fashion episode binge. Last year we had some real bangers, the Cure for Fast fashion. We did skipping greenwashing for sustainable fashion and um, I'll throw in Overcoming Over Consumption. That's a great one too. So maybe scroll through the archive and make yourself a little fashion playlist. Thanks again to Sumaq from SUAY. By the way. SUAY. Sew Shop is one of the secondhand brands in the Commons app. So if you buy some of their reworked clothes or you get your clothes dyed or repaired by them, you can earn rewards in the Commons app. You can shop with them online or here in their store in la. I'm there like every other weekend dropping stuff off or picking stuff up. So if you see me say hello, thanks again to our generous community. This show doesn't exist without you Today you heard from

Nate (37:09):

Nate. I live in Grand Rapids, Michigan.

Holly (37:12):

Holly Kayne in Cape Town, South Africa,

Katelan (37:15):

Maya Roman from Chicago,

Nick (37:18):

Nick in Milford, Iowa.

Katelan (37:21):

This episode was edited and engineered by Evan Goodchild. It was written and produced by your stru Kaitlyn Cunningham. Next Wednesday on the show, we're getting our hands dirty with one of my favorite acts of climate resilience community and food sovereignty, the Humble Community Garden. I'll see you there.

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