Donating

Donating clothes is a common practice for many. When people no longer have use for their clothes, when they no longer fit, or when they simply no longer like them, donating seems like a much better option than throwing them out. We think that by donating our clothes, we are contributing to both an environmental, and a social good. However, this seemingly altruistic practice may in fact be doing more harm than we realise.

Most donated clothes are never resold locally and are instead exported to other countries, with countries in the Global North being the largest exporters, and countries in the Global South being the largest importers. While some garments are then resold within the importing country, an estimated 40% of second hand clothing imports are declared to be unsuitable for reuse or resale, subsequently ending up in landfill, and worsening already struggling waste management systems. This begs the question of whether this practice is best described as ‘dumping’ rather than ‘donating’.

The current situation is largely the result of the sheer volume of clothing that is donated –  an inevitable consequence of the fast fashion business model. By design, this model caters towards ever-changing trend cycles, by producing high volumes of low-quality clothing at a minimal cost, all at a rapid pace.

Higher demand for fast fashion has fuelled both the production and consumption of textiles which has almost doubled in the last two decades, from 7kg per person to 13kg. At the same time, garments are being discarded at double the rates compared to 2000, with 85% of all textiles going to landfill each year. This rapid disposal rate is due to the low-cost of fast fashion garments, with consumers not seeing a need to maintain the longevity of a garment if they can simply purchase a new one at an affordable price.

The existence of charities and other clothing donation sites ends up supporting our appetite for fast fashion. The convenience of discarding clothes at the nearest donation or charity collection site, opens up the wardrobe space, and the conscience, for consumers to purchase another fast fashion item as they continue the cycle of purchasing and donating.

In this way, consumers are able to convince themselves they are participating in a circular economy, as they do not see the fate of their clothes, which end up in a distant country. As such, instead of promoting reuse, clothes donating practices are now part of a cycle of overconsumption and overproduction.

Beyond the many publicised environmental impacts involved in the production of clothing, the donated clothes that end in landfill engender environmental challenges that are often overlooked. With Global South countries already struggling with overflowing landfills from food and green waste, as well as single-use plastics, the addition of donated clothing intensifies this problem, with the resulting excesses ending up in waterways and unauthorised, open dumping sites.

Consequently, textile waste that ends up in waterways often clog gutters and drains, leading to flooding in surrounding areas that heightens the spread of disease. The chemical dyes and materials used in many textiles      generate toxic pollution impacting surrounding waterways and land, and the people who rely on them for food and water.

Another common issue stemming from an inability to properly manage the disposal of textile waste, is frequent fires at open dumping sites. Those who participate in the second-hand clothing trade are often forced to deliberately set fire to the clothes that are not in a re-sellable or re-wearable condition, as the most efficient and effective disposal method available to them. This contributes to persistent polluted air throughout the surrounding area.

Likewise, accidental fires of large dumping sites also contribute to air quality pollution. One such example was the Kpone landfill, a World Bank funded project that was originally designed to help manage the landfill that was overwhelming existing infrastructure in Accra, Ghana. With a capacity to process two thousand metric tonnes of waste per day, the site was designed to last 15 years. Yet, Kpone lasted a mere five years before it reached capacity and caught fire, with the profusion of unsellable donated clothing doubling Kpone’s daily waste intake. The clothing’s inability to be compacted increased its susceptibility to fires, with air pockets between garments trapping methane gas that once alight, caused the fire to burn for eleven months and polluting the air with its toxic fumes for far longer. The disparity between intended lifespan of the Kpone landfill project and the reality on the ground, reflects a stark underestimation of the sheer scale of the problem of clothing dumping.

Despite the Global North being the largest contributor to textile waste, the Kpone example shows how the deleterious impacts of clothing dumping are being felt most in Global South countries like Ghana. This can be understood as a contravention of the ‘Polluter Pays Principle’ in waste management law which assigns responsibility for managing the impacts and regulations of pollution to the original contributor. But in the case of the export of used clothing, we see that Global North countries offload this responsibility and its associated costs to the South.

One way of understanding these dynamics is via the concept of ‘waste colonisation’, with Global North countries leveraging their power and privilege to export their own waste at the expense of the right to hygiene and safety for those living in countries without the same power and positions in the global market.

Illustrative of this North-South power asymmetry is how the United States retaliated in response to the East African Community’s restrictions on the importing of second-hand clothing. Using their trading power, they threatened a suspension of the African Growth and Opportunity Act which sub-Saharan African countries relied on for tariff-free access to the U.S. market.

We can also consider waste colonialism in relation to Wallerstein’s World Systems Theory. Dumping waste in the Global South is an example of how the ‘core’ furthers the exploitation of the periphery and semi-periphery, confining the Global South to the roles the Global North requires of them. The trade in second hand clothing is marked by unequal exchanges whereby Global North countries trade market access in return for waste disposal. It can be understood as a system rooted in a neo-colonial relationship that benefits the core countries and to the detriment of the periphery, who have to deal with the long term consequences of clothing dumping.

These neo-colonial sentiments can also be observed in the way that ‘donating’ is understood in the Global North. Encouraging people of the Global North to donate their clothes as an act of ‘giving’ and ‘making a difference’ to those ‘that need them the most’ allows consumers to ‘feel good’ about themselves and their own generosity. At the same time, the same clothes that come from donation bins and charity collections are causing disaster for those on the receiving end.

As post-development thinkers have argued, the intentional usage of euphemistic language like ‘donating’ ensures that neo-colonial relationships that benefit the North go unquestioned and uncontested. As we donate our clothes, however well-intentioned this may be, the assumption that this practice is inherently ‘good’ makes us complicit in enacting a form of symbolic violence by reinforcing the status quo that subordinates the Global South.

By distancing ourselves — quite literally — from the effects of this waste, and from the people who are forced to deal with it, those of us who have the privilege of ‘donating’ continue to uphold these arbitrary categories of ‘us’ as ‘donors’ and ‘them’ as ‘recipients’. This dehumanises the people in the countries that bear the burden of managing the very problem that we ourselves created. While many in the Global North regard themselves as deserving of the right to be free from waste and its effects on our environment, our health, our economy, and our society as a whole, it is easy to forget that those at the receiving end of waste colonialism also deserve these same rights.

When from a bale of 200 donated garments, only seven are of a quality that can be resold and re-worn, this challenges us to re-evaluate who is really benefiting from the practice of donating clothing. If so few garments are able to be repurposed by traders in the Global South, it seems increasingly implausible to argue that donated clothes can be beneficial for people, or for our planet, as promoted by this ‘feel good’ act.

So, before we rush to purchase our new clothes, before we rush to discard our old clothes in our nearest donation bins, think about the environmental and social harms that are woven into the fabric of the global market for second     hand clothing, in so doing we can reassess whether our practices can be considered ‘donating’, or ‘dumping’.