the shockingly high cost of cheap fashion

In fact, what happens to clothing after it’s donated is a deeply complicated, dizzyingly global story about the unseen consequences of fast fashion, the opacity of charity, and the effects on the people who end up on the receiving end of our well-meaning donations.Īnd now, many of those people are calling for Western companies and their customers to change their ways, both by consuming less and by taking more responsibility for what they do. For most of my life, I assumed that the clothes I gave to thrift stores were sold at those thrift stores, and that I was simply a benevolent donor - giving my low-rise bootcut jeans a second life, and helping a charity raise funds in the process. Maybe two years of pandemic living made owning anything but sweatpants feel superfluous.Įither way, if you’re like me, donating your used clothing was probably the end of the story.

Maybe you stood over your clothes and asked them pointedly if they brought you joy, à la Marie Kondo. If you live in the West, chances are at some point you have stuffed your used clothes into a garbage bag and hauled them off to a Goodwill or the Salvation Army. In Malawi, they are kaunjika - literally “clothes sold in a heap.” In Mozambique, they are known as calamidade, calamity, for their historical association with disaster relief aid. In Ghana, imported secondhand clothes are called obroni wawu, dead white man’s clothes. Some version of this scene plays out daily in dozens of countries across Africa. Donate any amount today to become a Pulitzer Center Champion and receive exclusive benefits! “Cheapcheapcheapcheap!” they call to passing commuters, plunging their hands into piles of polyester and Lycra and flipping the contents of their bins again and again to catch the eye of possible customers.Īs a nonprofit journalism organization, we depend on your support to fund more than 170 reporting projects every year on critical global and local issues. And then, as morning light slants through the surrounding art deco high-rises, they begin shouting. Depending on the item and its quality, they pick a price from 3 rand (about 20 cents) to 60 rand ($4). Inside are thousands of pieces of secondhand clothing that have been pressed and shrink-wrapped into cubes by textile recyclers in the U.S., Europe, and Asia.Įvery morning, the dozens of traders who work a stretch of three downtown blocks known as KwaDunusa - a Zulu word that translates more or less to “the place of bending over and sticking your backside out” - slice the thick plastic coverings from these bales and spread their wrinkled contents into double-bed-sized bins. The bales arrive by the truckload at the market in Johannesburg at dawn, squat white bricks weighing upwards of 600 pounds, each one as big and unwieldy as a dishwasher.

The shockingly high cost of cheap fashion