Donations of clothing, though having many benefits, can often provide other parts of the world with some serious issues. Donating clothing rather than throwing them away is certainly better for the environment, as donated clothes do not end up in garbage bags which eventually end up in landfills. But some donations of clothing that go from America to other places like India actually cause some problems that most people are unaware of.
According to The Wall Street Journal, India receives many of America’s donations of clothing, often for a price cheaper than what their workers can produce.
India has banned the reselling clothing donations because of the threat that used clothing poses to local industries, including textile and clothes manufacturing. Other countries have similar bans in place to help stimulate the economy and prevent donated clothing from causing economic issues.
“Many African countries established clothing factories to serve local markets after the end of colonialism to spur industrialism, as happened in South Korea and China,” said Andrew Brooks, author of Clothing Poverty: The Hidden World of Fast Fashion and Second-Hand Clothes. “African leaders were unable to protect their infant industries and under political pressure from banks and governments in the west, were forced to liberalize their economies in the 1980s and 1990s.”
Brooks states that because of this liberalization, these local factories saw competition with imported second-hand clothing from America. Significantly cheaper donated clothing flooded the markets in Africa while workers in many of these clothing factories lost their jobs and couldn’t support themselves and their families.
Obviously, this is not the intention of the U.S. and United Kingdom, the two largest exporters of donated clothing, so it’s up to them (and us) to change our donating ways to reduce these unintended problems in the donation market. Communicating with countries before donations are sent over can ensure this problem doesn’t happen and can make donating much simpler of a process. Rather than donating to countries like India, where they have to try and donate the clothes donations without messing up their textile and clothing industries, we can just donate directly to countries that will gladly accept such donations.
It’s a tricky situation, and an unfortunate one to say the least, because struggling communities who otherwise would benefit from these cheap clothes cannot enjoy the benefits because of economic issues.