LETTERS

Do your research before donating used clothes

Posted 9/20/22

To the Editor,

It’s the back-to-school season, which means back-to-school shopping and time to get rid of last year’s fashions and sizes.

But what happens to the old clothes? Some …

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LETTERS

Do your research before donating used clothes

Posted

To the Editor,


It’s the back-to-school season, which means back-to-school shopping and time to get rid of last year’s fashions and sizes.

But what happens to the old clothes? Some people resell items, some pass them down and many of us pack them up and we donate them. But where do they go after we donate them? Before working for Big Brothers Big Sisters, I never thought about it. I gave to Big Brothers Big Sisters, but mostly because the bins were close to my home, and it was convenient.

I’ve been CEO of Big Brothers Big Sisters of Rhode Island (BBBSRI) since 2015. I’m responsible for two 501(c)3 organizations, the mentoring organization, and the Donation Center which is a social enterprise that raises 70 percent of the funds needed to support the mentoring organization. Mentoring is my life’s work, but textile recycling and the Donation Center were new territory for me.

Textile recycling is a fascinating, lucrative, often grimy business peppered with all kinds of organizations vying for the second-hand cloth that sits in our homes. Textile recycling can mean big money! According to Future Market Insights, “The clothing recycling market is anticipated to be valued at US $5.8 Mn in 2022,” and “Overall, the adoption quotient of clothing recycling remains high with a forecasted valuation of US $16 Bn by 2032.”

When people donate clothing and household items to BBBSRI, we sell the items to Savers. The money that is raised goes to our mentoring programs, which serve more than 200 youth and their family members yearly. It doesn’t stop there. BBBSRI partners with 65 nonprofit organizations and cities and towns in Rhode Island and distributes more than $130,000 to these partners yearly. Partners include the YMCA, We Share Hope and The Women’s Resource Center of Rhode Island, to name a few.

So, who are the textile recyclers in the state? BBBSRI, Goodwill and Salvation Army are the only textile recyclers that I am aware of in Rhode Island where 100 percent of the proceeds go to charity.

Most bins and at-home pickup services are operated by for-profit companies that are making money by partnering to use a charity’s name. So how does that work? The for-profit textile recycler will contract with a charity and offer a donation or grant for the use of the charity name. The charity is receiving pennies on the dollar for the clothing and the for-profit is making millions by selling the “donations” overseas. One local for-profit noted that they collected 25 million pounds of cloth last year and gave away just under one million dollars to charity. Sounds great! Until you do the math. Let’s estimate that the for-profit sells its cloth for 50 cents a pound overseas (the current going rate for international product). That’s a gross profit of 12.5 million dollars. Less than 8 percent goes to charity, and the rest goes to the people running the business.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m all for personal growth and individual wealth. The issue is that this business venture, by asking the public to “donate” its cloth to them, is taking funding away from legitimate charities and damaging our community along the way. I implore anyone who is reading this to do your research before donating your used clothing. Think about where it’s going, and what the impact of that donation is on your local community.

In the end, we all just want to get rid of the clutter in our homes and not pollute the earth, but I would rather do that while supporting programs in our community that change hundreds of lives for the better.


Katje Afonseca

CEO Big Brothers Big Sisters of Rhode Island

donating, clothes

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