What happens when you donate to Goodwill?
Remake spoke with Adam Minter, the author of Secondhand: Travels in the New Global Garage Sale to find out.
**jump to 0:45** to skip our getting set-up 🙂
According to Adam, there’s far much more clothing out there that can ever be worn. It’s not just Americans who accumulate stuff — we all struggle with this same issue — and the cost isn’t just environmental, it’s emotional.
In the process of writing this book, Adam sat on a stool for hours in Tucson, Arizona watching as individuals dropped off donations at a local Goodwill — and as he quickly learned, more was being taken in than could possibly be sold in the store itself.
So what happens when you donate to Goodwill, and what about all those overflow donations that thrift stores can’t seem to get off their shelves? Only about one-third of donations are sold in the actual store they are donated to, while a majority of the textiles end up being marketed internationally and sold to graders that sort it and send it out to different countries around the globe.
Learn more about Adam’s findings, what surprised him most, and what you can do to make a difference when it comes to dealing with the excess of secondhand clothing around the globe.
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