u/Heads_Down_Thumbs_Up

Edit: There is only one image, it’s a screenshot, don’t swipe. My apologies!

I saw a post on the Sydney subreddit today about the annual City2Surf, where hundreds, if not thousands, of garments were reportedly left at the starting line. It was largely met with goodwill because, “Yes, but it’s donated.”

I don’t see a good gesture, I see hundred and thousands of garments that didn’t need to be disposed of that will most likely become landfill.

Australians are the second-largest consumers of textiles in the world, buying around 27kg of new clothing and other textiles per person each year.

Yet there’s this mentality that if you don’t want something anymore, you can simply donate it and you’ve done the responsible thing.

To be clear, I’m not saying donating is bad. The problem is when donation becomes a guilt-free way of disposing of things and justifies replacing them.

But there’s also a huge misconception about what happens to donated clothing. One Australian estimate found that only around 15% of donated clothing is resold within Australia. The rest is sold as industrial rags, sent to landfill, or sent overseas.

I’m not arguing that people should throw clothing in the bin instead of donating it. I’m questioning why getting rid of perfectly usable things has become so normal in the first place.

Donation doesn’t erase the environmental cost of producing the replacement. That new jacket still required materials, manufacturing, labour, energy and transportation. It doesn’t magically appear in the shop because the old one was donated.

There’s this idea that a jacket can simply move from one person to another, so there’s no real consequence to getting rid of it. But the reality is much more complicated. Based on the above statistics, it will most likely end up as a rag or landfill rather than the longer life it could have lived as someone’s clothing.