from Hacker News

No One Wants Used Clothes Anymore (2018)

by singhkays on 12/4/20, 6:00 PM with 279 comments

  • by ryanmerket on 12/4/20, 7:43 PM

    At Goodfair (disclosure: I run Product & Eng), we are based out of the used clothing capital of America -- Port of Houston, TX. It's our mission to rescue these clothes from being sold to international distributors / before they leave our shores, and sell them in thrift/vintage bundles.

    Our model is a bit unique. We purchase the same 100lb and 500lb bales the international distributors do. We have a team that processes the bales, categorizes the clothes, and then merch/list them in a marketable and fun way on the site.

    Textile waste is the 2nd largest polluter behind oil & gas. If we can help create a culture of buying second-hand first, we think there's a massive opportunity to put a dent in climate change.

    We just got some of our first press yesterday. :) https://www.houstonchronicle.com/techburger/amp/Houston-dres...

    tl;dr WE WILL TAKE ALL YOUR CLOTHES. :)

  • by ogre_codes on 12/4/20, 7:05 PM

    The average age of my clothing[1] is probably 5-10 years with some items well over 10 years old. Some of my clothes are legal to drink.

    The idea of buying clothes then donate them after 6-12 months has always been broken. With growing kids (or if you gain/ lose a bunch of weight) you don't have a ton of choice. For most adults, the only way you can really ensure you have an environmentally friendly wardrobe is by purchasing carefully and keeping clothes until they genuinely wear out. For jeans and good quality jackets, that can be decades.

    When you donate clothes to St Vinny's (Goodwill/ Salvation Army/ whatever), they keep the best/ resealable clothes and dispose of the rest. A bunch gets dumpstered. The only reason they accept used clothing is because of the small percentage they can actually resell.

    [1] Excluding underwear and socks!

  • by pochamago on 12/4/20, 8:35 PM

    It's funny to me that this is framed through such a negative lens, when they're basically just saying that ever more people are being lifted out of poverty, to the point where our trash is no longer of value to them. I struggle to believe that old clothes will ever be a top ten most important environmental issue.

  • by gambiting on 12/4/20, 7:35 PM

    I mean, we run a medium sized(100+ employees) second hand clothes business in Poland, with few stores bigger than most local supermarkets. Covid hit us hard, but I wouldn't say that "no one wants used clothes anymore". Quite the contrary - in recessions, like the one we're about to enter, second hand clothes are usually booming.

  • by mmastrac on 12/4/20, 7:27 PM

    In the distant past, old clothes used to be gathered and turned into rag paper [1]. It's a shame that we use so many synthetics now as that probably drastically reduces the re-usability.

    Perhaps we could add the funguses that decompose plastics into the mix and create a full-circle clothing-to-paper or fabric process.

    [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rag-and-bone_man

  • by tartoran on 12/4/20, 7:26 PM

    As far as I’ve seen thriftstores and vintage boutiques are actually thriving. My naive theory is that clothes are designed to break faster and faster and some older clothes have a quality you can’t find anymore, hence vintage has an aura of good quality old stuff. The other end of the theory is that the increasing povery forced people to rummage through thriftstores.

  • by adolfojp on 12/4/20, 9:56 PM

    It might be a cultural thing or lack a wealth thing but I've never fully understood the concept of second hand clothes. I mean, who gives away used clothes that are still in good conditions?

    And I'm not passing judgement. I just don't get it.

    I wear my nicer clothes to go out.

    When they're no longer nice I wear them around the house.

    When they get holes or stains in them I wear them to do yard work.

    After that they either become rags or they go into the garbage.

    At no point have I ever said "I no longer want to wear this, I'll sell it for a buck and buy something new".

  • by vfclists on 12/4/20, 6:49 PM

    Secondhand clothes are not good for the development of African countries. There were strong industries in many African countries before globalization kicked in.

    You have this strange situation where Westerners donate free clothes which are sold in Africa and undermine development of local industries. So called NGOs simply do the dirty work of Western corporate interests.

    The Dirty Business of Old Clothes (Youtube) - https://bit.ly/3g9IuG8

    The U.S. Is Fighting Rwanda Over Trading Used Clothes - https://bit.ly/3op1BPp

    It is even worse with tomatoes -

    Tomatoes and greed – the exodus of Ghana's farmers - https://bit.ly/3qsLbHG

  • by waynesonfire on 12/4/20, 7:15 PM

    This is why I try my best to wear organic fibers. If I can't donate them at least they'll quickly decay in a landfill. A quick google search revealed that synthetic fibers, polyester, spandex, nylon, take 20 to 200 years to decompose.

  • by Zelphyr on 12/4/20, 7:14 PM

    Among many other things, COVID is changing this industry rapidly. Fashion brands have been pummeled and are looking for looking for alternative revenue sources.

    A friend of mine started ReCircled (https://recircled.com) to offer a 360-degree solution to fashion brands to help them get a garment recommerce solution implemented quickly.

  • by Jemm on 12/5/20, 2:01 PM

    As an anecdote, here in a building of 400 residences the monthly used clothes donation could fill a large van twice.

    The clothes used to be donated to local services who distributed them to those in need but starting two years ago those organizations no longer took used clothes. Many of them are so awash in money from rich donors that they buy new clothes and their clients no longer will accept used.

    The only choice left was to donate to organizations who took the clothes and sold them to a local business who then either sell them locally at a high price (often higher than new) or ship them overseas.

    Lately even that market has dried up and now used clothes go into the dumpster.

    This isn't just clothes, but everything from housewares to high end electronics.

  • by mcswell on 12/7/20, 2:21 AM

    I'm thinking with covid restrictions--and the probable continuation of work from home much of the time even post-covid--that there will be less reason to buy fancy new clothes, and used clothes will be just fine for those of us lucky enough not to have to go in to work all the time. Last summer, I was wearing ragged shorts in my home office much of the time, which I wouldn't dream of doing in the real office. I just have to remember to turn off video if I'm in a zoom and have to get up.

    Actually, I do dream things like that sometimes...more or less: https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/NotWearingPantsD...

  • by zshrdlu on 12/5/20, 5:52 AM

    A couple of East African countries resolved to stop importing used clothes, one of the reasons being to boost their own local textile industries.

    They were almost all pressured out of their resolve (except Rwanda IIRC). Modern Opium Wars. So you see it doesn't matter that they don't want used clothes, they will bend to the might of America.

  • by chiefalchemist on 12/5/20, 10:49 AM

    A better headline would be:

    No One Wants _The Inconvenience of Shopping for_ Used Clothes Anymore

    Put another way, selling used clothing online is difficult; the overhead significantly more than new clothes. For example, every used item is unique, a one-off. Therefore, all the work that goes into bringing it to market (e.g., photos, description, getting it on the website) must be baked into the margin of that single item.

    In other words, it doesn't scale. The key would be to find something that does scale, and pairs well with the used clothing.

  • by smm11 on 12/4/20, 9:22 PM

    I can't throw a rock without hitting a vintage clothing store. Jeans, concert T-shirts, hipster-ish stuff is like gold. No One Wants SOME Used Clothes Anymore, at least in 2018, I think.

  • by basseq on 12/4/20, 10:27 PM

    Original thread from 2018 on this article:

    https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16168410

  • by smithza on 12/5/20, 3:33 AM

    My wife and I have decided buying used clothes when we cannot afford sustainable, ethical clothing sources, is the best way to boycott unethical clothing sources.

  • by forgotmypw17 on 12/4/20, 9:46 PM

    I only want used clothes.

    Not only is it better karmically, but new clothes are full of offgassing dyes and other synthchems, not great for a human's health.

    Many I know are going this way too.

  • by JMTQp8lwXL on 12/4/20, 10:23 PM

    > Now that cycle is breaking down. Fashion trends are accelerating, new clothes are becoming as cheap as used ones, and poor countries are turning their backs on the secondhand trade.

    New clothing isn't cheap, there's an appreciable gap between new and used prices that allows an intermediary market to thrive. A t-shirt that's $35 new could be found at Goodwill for $5.

  • by sjg007 on 12/5/20, 2:47 AM

    I have a winter coat from when I was 16 that still works great. Ditto for a leather jacket. These are both 25 years old. I even have some old leather hiking boots from that era too that are still in decent shape. I pretty much wear jeans until they disintegrate and they probably only do that due to washing.. the Levi guy said to not wash your jeans ever...

  • by thraway12 on 12/5/20, 1:26 AM

    ThredUp had some juice in the media. Heard about them on Marketplace. Checked it out: they give you as low as 3% for the value of your stuff. https://www.thredup.com/cleanout/payouts

  • by christophilus on 12/4/20, 11:48 PM

    My wife gets most of her clothes on threadup. It’s great. Menswear and boys clothes are much harder to find used. My guess (based on my kids) is that boys are just so rough on their clothes that they are only good for rags when they’re done.

  • by hypertele-Xii on 12/4/20, 11:45 PM

    I saw an ad for a pair of generic, gray college pants, costing 80 bucks new. What kind of a person pays 80 bucks for a shitty pair of pants for lounging at home, when second hand markets have a huge selection for a fraction of the price?

  • by throwawaysea on 12/6/20, 9:28 PM

    In part this is because of fast fashion (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fast_fashion), which is the industry practice of marketing trendy, cheap, poorly-made clothing at low prices. Brands like H&M are exemplars of this subindustry.

    These clothes wear out quick, are not timeless in design, and are not suitable for second-hand use. There's also a growing aversion to wearing someone else's clothing due to it feeling 'yucky'.

    Either way, we have to find a solution since we throw away about 80 pounds of textiles per person in America (https://daily.jstor.org/fast-fashion-fills-our-landfills/). Only 20% of textiles are recycled (https://www.commonobjective.co/article/the-issues-waste). Using natural fibers doesn't solve the environmental problems (https://www.newsweek.com/2016/09/09/old-clothes-fashion-wast...):

    > "Natural fibers go through a lot of unnatural processes on their way to becoming clothing," says Jason Kibbey, CEO of the Sustainable Apparel Coalition. "They've been bleached, dyed, printed on, scoured in chemical baths." Those chemicals can leach from the textiles and—in improperly sealed landfills—into groundwater. Burning the items in incinerators can release those toxins into the air.

    Synthetic fibers are even worse in terms of not breaking down easily, released pollutants, and also polluting our waterways as they are shedded (https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2016/jun/20/microfib...).

    It seems the corrective trend in fashion is towards closed loop sourcing, where we are in effect wearing "second hand" clothes that have been remade from old fibers. Right now, it is expensive. But while we wait for technological advances, maybe we just need a shift in mindset - towards buying things that last longer, that degrade more easily, and that cost more (to accommodate recycling). It means we can afford less of other pleasures, but it might be the only way around the problem.

  • by dang on 12/4/20, 8:53 PM

  • by prutschman on 12/4/20, 7:53 PM

    > Ways to [support a market for longer-lasting clothing] include offering warranties on clothing and making tags that inform consumers of a product's expected lifespan.

    Yes, please!

  • by aasasd on 12/5/20, 1:40 AM

    I want used clothes, but apparently second-hand shops only sell women's clothes now.

  • by starpilot on 12/4/20, 11:51 PM

    Poshmark is doing all right. I've bought some Patagonia items at a steep discount.

  • by gpmcadam on 12/5/20, 9:38 AM

    Tell that to Depop

  • by bergstromm466 on 12/5/20, 10:18 AM

    Noone in the elite wants to examine the exploitative capitalist relationships that support fast fashion

    The True Cost (2015) documentary trailer: https://youtu.be/OaGp5_Sfbss?t=31

  • by ebg13 on 12/4/20, 10:52 PM

    I do want used clothes, but the average man who donates used clothing in the US is much fatter than I am so nothing ever fits.