The Global Afterlife Of Your Donated Clothes
Varied Uses
About 80 percent of the donations are carted away by textile recyclers, says Jackie King, the executive director of Secondary Materials and Recycled Textiles (SMART), a trade association for textile recyclers. She says that means about 3.8 billion pounds of clothing that is donated each year is recycled.
"Thirty percent of the materials are made into wiping cloths that are used in commercial and industrial use," she says.
About 20 percent of the donated clothes and textiles are converted into fibers that are then made into a variety of other products, including carpet padding, insulation for autos and homes, and pillow stuffing.
King says nearly half the donated clothes — about 45 percent — is exported.
At Mac Recycling on the outskirts of Baltimore, a forklift shuttles large pallets stacked with bins of donated clothes. A large section of the warehouse is packed with colorful 800-pound bales of clothing ready to ship out.
Robert Goode, the owner of Mac Recycling, says textile recycling is a huge international industry. He says his small warehouse alone ships about 80 tons of clothes each week to buyers throughout the world, including in Central America, South America, Asia, Africa and Europe.
"Pretty much you can pick any country and there's a market for these items," he says.
'Competitive Business'
Goode says when the shipment arrives overseas, a wholesaler will break down the bales and send the clothes into different markets. At each step along the way in this process, someone makes money from the donated clothes.
"It is an extremely competitive business. ... Items are bought and sold by the pound, and you can literally make or lose a deal over half a cent a pound, quarter of a cent a pound," Goode says.
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