Happy New Year, friends. Don't worry, I haven't resolved to blog every day.
Nor did I resolve to rid myself of old clothes, but today I unloaded two trash bags full of items I haven't worn in at least five years, and sometimes much longer. Remember those pale blue dungarees I purchased in 1996? Of course not, because I wore them exactly three times. Now a lucky son-of-a-gun in a high school somewhere will get to don them instead. Perhaps in Africa:
Most of the clothes come from charities in New York, San Francisco and Los Angeles, United States Commerce Department officials say. Only a fraction of the clothes many charities collect are re-sold or given away to the poor in their own region. The rest are sold to companies known as "ragpickers," which sort and export them, executives in the business said.
The charities say that selling the clothes for resale abroad is the best way to use some of the clothing donations they receive to raise funds and serve their clients.
"Americans throw away gobs of good clothes, and they get graded, fumigated, baled and exported," said Sally Miller, who heads the Africa desk at the Commerce Department. "For Africans, these are garments being sent over, not rags."
Every morning, tons of second-hand clothes, packed tightly in 100-pound bales, are trucked to Nairobi from the port of Mombasa. Known in East Africa as "mutumba," the bales of used garments fuel a booming industry that provides thousands of jobs, from truck drivers to hawkers to tailors working out of doors in the marketplace.
They won't get my Soundgarden t-shirt, though. Or my NIN t-shirt, or my Bouncing Souls t-shirt, or even my Billy Joel Stormfront tour t-shirt. I just can't bring myself to throw away concert tees. I never wear them, and many would disintegrate if I did, but I'm too nostalgic to part with these relics. Does anybody else have this problem?