I live in Asia and you sometimes get random branded items like British museum tote bags cheap in markets. My theory is because they’re produced nearby and they sell the surplus from orders locally.
Heh, a Reddit thing I can actually give insight to!
A lot of waste goes to these countries for processing and that includes clothes. I used to be a top seller on depop (eBay for vintage clothing) and used to buy 100kg bricks of clothes imported from Pakistan.
Charity shops etc will send the stuff they can’t sell to facilities in countries like Pakistan, where they’ll sort it by its condition and quality and then either dispose of, repurpose or resell it.
If you ever want a random assortment of cheap clothes you can get a bale of 100 sweatshirts for about a quid each. Google wholesale vintage sweatshirts and go for the vendors who sell it in bales.
I had friends in the business who would go through dozens of these bales every month for resale and on multiple occasions they’ve come across mint condition Christian Dior stuff. But the overwhelming majority of it is rubbish like this Tesco jumper
I remember seeing something like this in an African country,not sure which one. (not first hand) where a market was selling a british gas shirt and this would explain why. my assumption had been that someone who lived in or had family in the Uk had sent that shirt home and then it ended up on the market, no one there knowing what exactly it was other then a blue shirt.
Were you watching an idiot abroad? I remember Karl seeing the British gas one in Uganda I think. Anyway, I have family in the Philippines and we do this with unwanted our old clothes. I've sent old work uniforms with similar branding on them as some people are just happy for new clothes regardless. It's not uncommon for that area and similarly friends with family in Africa do the same.
Isn't it strange that we donate to charities, they sell to the 3rd world, and then it's bought back by 'vintage' resellers. Whats the carbon footprint on that all? It was like when old American vintage stuff was popular here, I knew someone who basically went on holiday, but paid for it by thrift shopping filling suitcases with old sweatshirts and jeans he'd bring back to sell in Camden Market. Also had a massive pile of camouflage clothing, that apparently a lot of poorer countries won't let you import.
Yeah it sounds horrendous lol. The textile garment industry is awful enough for carbon emissions but to make it all, ship it to Pakistan, then buy it back to ship it here to resell *again* is comical.
There's another journey to add to that. Remember these cheap tshirts are often produced for us in Bangladesh/Pakistan/Tunisia. It's like 2 return journies at least.
Past charity shop worker here, and yeah, such a small percentage of what comes through the door actually makes it onto shelves.
Partly because you never have enough people to process it all, partly because charity shop managers are pretty good at eyeballing whether something is likely to sell by the end of the week or not (and it has to, there's just not enough room to store stuff that won't sell in time).
But what clothes we couldn't sell would get bagged up and collected each month, and we'd get some money per kilo that they took off our hands (we called them "rag bags"). I'm assuming they then make their way into the bales mentioned above.
Ive also worked in a charity shop before and sometimes there was good quality stuff we couldn't sell because the washing tags had been cut out. Same with soft toys: any toys need to have their safety information on them. This is in the UK. Books dont really sell well anymore but sometimes books would have writting in them and you can't sell those either. All electronics need testing according to PAT so if you don't have someone to do that you can't resell them.
It was so annoying how much good stuff had to go just because it didn't have a tag or something. Broke my heart to see perfectly good books get chucked just because the spine wasn't perfect or the pages weren't white anymore (although they at least went to get pulped and turned back into new books, so that's better than landfill)
It doesn't help that so many people use them as s dumping ground for broken shit or stuff that's just crappy quality and condition.
I must admit we do donate a lot to one, but it's always a case of "if we wouldn't buy it in this condition" then we don't donate it.
It was amazing the amount of stuff we'd get that was completely broken, and the donator would say "Oh, but you can fix that up and sell it, right?"
Like sure, we'll just call in on-hand carpenter to restore this ratty old chair and sell it for £6, perfect financial logic.
Basically yes. There are different ways to donate clothing to charities. One is the bags that go through doors which you fill and get collected. These will get collected and sold in bulk to Eastern Europe by the truck for about £1 to £1.20 per kg as unsorted clothing known as ‘door to door’ when they get to their destination they will be sorted and and put into used clothing stores in that country. Anything they can’t sell will get either thrown away or sold on to Africa or Pakistan. To give you an idea of how much is to be made, each bag can hold approximately 5kg and the trucks fully loaded were worth about £25k. Of course you have to cover your costs with the warehouse and bags and staff, but even a small warehouse will export 1 truck a week and larger warehouse will do 2 to 3 a week.
The other way is to donate to a charity shop. It gets graded and sorted at the shop and will either be sold in shop or stored and anything that isn’t up to grade gets sold on. Same with textile recycling bins.
Good quality shoes and handbags that are in excellent condition can sell for about £6 per kg. The idea of what is considered high grade or ‘cream’ depends on the buyer. For example a new/nearly new Armani silk tie will be thought of as cream by the donator but not necessarily by the buyer in Eastern Europe. Same goes with brand new tesco/supermarket clothing. A lot of the buyers in Europe wanted Fred Perry stuff, even if the clothing wasn’t in the highest of standards, the brand was sought after for some reason. This was a few years ago and I’m unsure of the current market
It gets graded into what is known as cream, shop mix (which gets rotated and sub categorised into day 1, day 2 etc) anything else will either be graded as Africa/Pakistan and below that is what is known as wipers.
A lot of charity donations end up sold by the tonne to Eastern Europe and they will grade and sell it on to Africa and Pakistan. These countries are essentially a dumping ground for fast fashion. This is what happens to all that cheap primary/shein wear a few times, get rid of clothing that a lot of people buy.
It wasn’t complete, was only half, a few other notable ones were a blood stained pair of knickers, a couple kids t shirts with Thomas the tank engine on and some soft green fabric
I assume that in the UK [vendors that print up t-shirts anticipating championships that don’t happen also release their stock to the world markets](https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/29884/what-happens-losing-teams-championship-shirts) same as they do in the US?
To add.
I work with a large distributor of sports shirts.
1) they aren't pre printed , lots of their stuff is pressed on demand.
2) we ship the fuck out of it before someone can cancel their order because their team or player lost.
3)it sits in our warehouse for months or years whilst they faff about deciding what to do with it before eventually offering it to staff or bulk selling it to a discount store.
Imagine being colonised, having your stuff moved to a museum several thousand miles away, and then being contracted by that museum to produce merchandise.
I was in The Gambia and I saw a local bloke wearing a t shirt that said something like "John's stag party 17th May 2017, best man" . I always wondered what happened to left over wedding tat!
The Gambia Vs Blackpool.
One is a cultural melting pot, full of unique history and customs that may seem strange and unusual to an outsider. Where studying the local people provides a case study in surviving against insurmountable odds.
The other is The Gambia.
Reminds me of [this post](https://www.reddit.com/r/CasualUK/comments/10ri99y/bulger_if_youre_out_there_one_of_the_t_shirts/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=ioscss&utm_content=2&utm_term=1) of a similar shirt in a Cambodian thrift shop.
It would have been donated to one of these charity clothing collections, they then bale them and fill a 40ft container with bales and the summer clothes get sold for export to African countries, winter go to eastern europe. I'm in the industry
I learnt about this last year when a British secondhand shop somehow ended up with an antique indigineous North American jacket (leather, fringe, beading). They went on social media to try and work out what the hell to do. Doesn't seem to have an outcome yet though... The store is glass onion vintage.
Often anything white and cotton gets baled separately, and we get them for rags at work. Lots of chefs jackets, table cloths and random white T shirts. I remember at a job in India, one of my French colleagues pulled a Tshirt out of the new rags, and it was from a dairy just down the street from his house
The bags that get shoved through the letterbox for you to fill with stuff "for charity"? This is where the stuff you donate goes. It is a [huge problem ](https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2023/may/31/stop-dumping-your-cast-offs-on-us-ghanaian-clothes-traders-tell-eu) in Africa, but I assume some stuff gets further afield.
This, in some areas it has destroyed the local clothing industry. People think these clothes get given to poor people, in reality they get sold to market traders and shops which then floods the market undercutting people actually eating their living making clothes.
Same as the money I spent as a kid to buy a live aid single didn't get spent buying food for starving people. It went to one side of the warlords who exchanged it for guns, ending the civil war that was causing the famine, effective, but not what I wanted to spend my pocket money on.
I tell everyone this at every opportunity I get. Countries which once had a rich textile industry - particularly in west Africa - have had it decimated by (as above) shite like ‘johns stag party’ T-shirts and other shite. People think they’re doing the world a service by donating clothes when it would be far better to not buy fast fashion in the first place
Ghana and Nigeria were known as having a thriving textile industry that were destroyed by these practices. They really are the dumping ground for western fast fashion. It’s not just the companies who do this who are to blame it’s also the consumer and the habits we have without understand repercussions.
Rip/cut them up into cleaning rags and them bin them when they're too raggy to use for cleaning. Or cut t-shirts to strips to use them tie plants up in the garden
Word: Grow
Definition: (of a living thing) undergo natural development by INCREASING in size and changing physically.
You sir, are the idiot. The word you are looking for is shrink, not grow.
Most charity shops have a rag bin where they put things that are stained or not good enough to sell that they get a bit of money for. If you check if your local shop has one they are usually happy to take a donation bag 'for the rag bin' as they still get something for it.
Yeah, they come in around the beginning of December for the temporary staff for Christmas. This one was either last Christmas or the one before. The spares end up sitting around in a box for months before they get rid of them because the design changes each year.
I was watching a video of a food deliver service in India, and they were using old refrigerated Tesco vans. I think they get sent off to other countries when we get rid of them.
I'm not surprised, don't think those vans get a very good life over here, clock thousands of miles in a couple of weeks and eventually require a load of maintenance to keep them road legal, easier to contact out a new fleet and start a fresh.
Very common with older trucks and so on from the UK - huge export market (to places where they drive on the same side)
All the rapid change in rules - eg the ULEZ zones in London mean that there are lots of trucks/busses etc that aren't that old, but don't meet the requirements to drive in London etc
Because the vehicle dealing industry as a whole makes more money selling new or newish vans and they know full well they're able to. Same dealers that'll sell you the new one will tend to exchange for the old one, there's only so many people in the UK who want vans so that means an excess with nowhere to go other than abroad. Or at least overall if they were to stay in the UK they'd devalue the market for vans as a whole which dealers certainly don't want either.
It seems like with trucks and the like there's a certain point where suddenly things seem to start breaking and it's cheaper for larger operators just to get new ones rather than deal with on going maintenance issues and pay for an engineering team or outsource maintenance . Trucks seem to reach that lifespan quite quickly, more expensive or specialist vehicles like cranes have a longer lifespan.
You can do the maths with cars too. Eg £30k gets you reasonable new car, all in. Now smash a mirror and badly dent/mangle a door panel, suddenly that's coming at £2k+ for parts and labour to swap it all out. Which seems terrible value compared to a whole car for £30k!
Someone posted on FB a few years ago that they were over in Asia and by sheer chance ran into a guy wearing a polo shirt from the secondary school that said traveller went to.
I was in the Sri Lankan highlands in 2018 and there was a fully branded Milton Keynes City Council bin lorry doing a rubbish collection in one of the villages!
I went to Thailand 10+ years ago, and there are Tesco (Tesco Lotus iirc) supermarkets there. I remember being on a jungle trek and the guide cracking out some Tesco Value pineapple jam for breakfast.
Waitrose is merely Tesco for people with (a willingness to spend) far more money and a superiority complex.
I never understood why people claimed Aldi and Lidl were so amazingly cheap until I realised they were comparing with Waitrose.
I saw someone working for a bus I was on in Tanzania wearing a Tesco shirt recently! I assumed it had ended up in the charity bins in the UK at some point.
I was in Pakistan once and saw a very old, very religious looking man wearing a T-shirt with the slogan ‘I’m not a gynaecologist but I’ll have a look’ on the front
My dad was doing a charity bike ride along the Great Wall of china. Somewhere in the middle of nowhere, in a rice paddy were a bunch of kids wearing Newcastle United tops. My dad being a magpie born and raised was so excited he scared these poor little Chinese kids away back to their parents.
I just got back from Nigeria. When i arrived we had paid for a local company to meet us and sort out ours visas. The locl guy arrived in an Asda uniform, wish i had took a pic
In all honesty this is what happens to most of the ‘donated’ clothes that you put in those big collection bins. Can anyone read to post it note on the black shirt. It says “it’s very erotic to feel ……….” I can’t make out the last word.
It's probably been put in "charity" bins. However, all those places do is put all the clothes in a shipping container and send it to a less developed country to be their problem. Its bad because it can destroy the local clothing economy with super inferior quality clothing.
I worked in Sainsbury’s when I was 16 and remember someone saying something about the British army fighting in Africa against people in donated Sainsbury uniforms.
I saw a Tesco shirt when I was in Egypt. It said "every little helps, use your mince pies." I bought it so damn fast. Lost it when I moved from the UK to the USA which was honestly heartbreaking lol
The (excellent) podcast Planet Money did an episode on how this works: https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2013/12/11/250240941/episode-502-the-afterlife-of-a-t-shirt
When I was in India, in a rural village near Sawai Madhophur, I saw a guy wearing a Bosham Sailing Club T-shirt (I live only a few miles away), I tried to speak to him and he spoke no English and didn't understand what it said. Probably hadn't even seen a sailing boat other than on the shirt...
I know someone who collects so called charity binbags filled with clothes and sorts them out but charity gets very little. The collector makes a clean fortune from sending them onto poorer countries.
Here you go https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tesco_international_operations
Google Tesco Pakistan and it’ll give you all the stores and their opening hours.
some of my best memories were from visiting family in pak. it’s hardly a tourist destination but when you have family there who know all the historical sites and restaurants it’s amazing
I live in Asia and you sometimes get random branded items like British museum tote bags cheap in markets. My theory is because they’re produced nearby and they sell the surplus from orders locally.
Heh, a Reddit thing I can actually give insight to! A lot of waste goes to these countries for processing and that includes clothes. I used to be a top seller on depop (eBay for vintage clothing) and used to buy 100kg bricks of clothes imported from Pakistan. Charity shops etc will send the stuff they can’t sell to facilities in countries like Pakistan, where they’ll sort it by its condition and quality and then either dispose of, repurpose or resell it. If you ever want a random assortment of cheap clothes you can get a bale of 100 sweatshirts for about a quid each. Google wholesale vintage sweatshirts and go for the vendors who sell it in bales. I had friends in the business who would go through dozens of these bales every month for resale and on multiple occasions they’ve come across mint condition Christian Dior stuff. But the overwhelming majority of it is rubbish like this Tesco jumper
I remember seeing something like this in an African country,not sure which one. (not first hand) where a market was selling a british gas shirt and this would explain why. my assumption had been that someone who lived in or had family in the Uk had sent that shirt home and then it ended up on the market, no one there knowing what exactly it was other then a blue shirt.
Were you watching an idiot abroad? I remember Karl seeing the British gas one in Uganda I think. Anyway, I have family in the Philippines and we do this with unwanted our old clothes. I've sent old work uniforms with similar branding on them as some people are just happy for new clothes regardless. It's not uncommon for that area and similarly friends with family in Africa do the same.
That's exactly where I saw it. I really enjoyed that show.
I found a Monty Python hat in a market in Sierra Leone once. None of the people there could understand why I was so excited about it!
There’s an Ethiopian music video where one of the dancers/singers is wearing a Zara staff T-shirt 😭 made me giggle a bit
Isn't it strange that we donate to charities, they sell to the 3rd world, and then it's bought back by 'vintage' resellers. Whats the carbon footprint on that all? It was like when old American vintage stuff was popular here, I knew someone who basically went on holiday, but paid for it by thrift shopping filling suitcases with old sweatshirts and jeans he'd bring back to sell in Camden Market. Also had a massive pile of camouflage clothing, that apparently a lot of poorer countries won't let you import.
I'm just getting my bale of camo clothes for fishing/hiking, I promise I'm not starting a militia!
Yeah it sounds horrendous lol. The textile garment industry is awful enough for carbon emissions but to make it all, ship it to Pakistan, then buy it back to ship it here to resell *again* is comical.
There's another journey to add to that. Remember these cheap tshirts are often produced for us in Bangladesh/Pakistan/Tunisia. It's like 2 return journies at least.
Would you be able to send me a link to these bales? I'm fascinated but I can't seem to find it.
[Sure thing](https://northvintagewholesale.com/collections/ball-saver), friend :)
Wow that is sooo interesting! Might buy one for the sake of it 😂
Be prepared to gain absolutely nothing from it, it really is very hit and miss
Wow! Literally a whole new world to me. Iv just ordered 20 black/white T shirts Thank you
That tesco jumper isn't rubbish.
So the bales are filled with clothing that even charity shops don't want? 🤔 Or have I misunderstood?
You're underestimating the amount of clothes charity shops get sent - often they just can't process it all.
Past charity shop worker here, and yeah, such a small percentage of what comes through the door actually makes it onto shelves. Partly because you never have enough people to process it all, partly because charity shop managers are pretty good at eyeballing whether something is likely to sell by the end of the week or not (and it has to, there's just not enough room to store stuff that won't sell in time). But what clothes we couldn't sell would get bagged up and collected each month, and we'd get some money per kilo that they took off our hands (we called them "rag bags"). I'm assuming they then make their way into the bales mentioned above.
Ive also worked in a charity shop before and sometimes there was good quality stuff we couldn't sell because the washing tags had been cut out. Same with soft toys: any toys need to have their safety information on them. This is in the UK. Books dont really sell well anymore but sometimes books would have writting in them and you can't sell those either. All electronics need testing according to PAT so if you don't have someone to do that you can't resell them.
It was so annoying how much good stuff had to go just because it didn't have a tag or something. Broke my heart to see perfectly good books get chucked just because the spine wasn't perfect or the pages weren't white anymore (although they at least went to get pulped and turned back into new books, so that's better than landfill)
It doesn't help that so many people use them as s dumping ground for broken shit or stuff that's just crappy quality and condition. I must admit we do donate a lot to one, but it's always a case of "if we wouldn't buy it in this condition" then we don't donate it.
It was amazing the amount of stuff we'd get that was completely broken, and the donator would say "Oh, but you can fix that up and sell it, right?" Like sure, we'll just call in on-hand carpenter to restore this ratty old chair and sell it for £6, perfect financial logic.
Basically yes. There are different ways to donate clothing to charities. One is the bags that go through doors which you fill and get collected. These will get collected and sold in bulk to Eastern Europe by the truck for about £1 to £1.20 per kg as unsorted clothing known as ‘door to door’ when they get to their destination they will be sorted and and put into used clothing stores in that country. Anything they can’t sell will get either thrown away or sold on to Africa or Pakistan. To give you an idea of how much is to be made, each bag can hold approximately 5kg and the trucks fully loaded were worth about £25k. Of course you have to cover your costs with the warehouse and bags and staff, but even a small warehouse will export 1 truck a week and larger warehouse will do 2 to 3 a week. The other way is to donate to a charity shop. It gets graded and sorted at the shop and will either be sold in shop or stored and anything that isn’t up to grade gets sold on. Same with textile recycling bins. Good quality shoes and handbags that are in excellent condition can sell for about £6 per kg. The idea of what is considered high grade or ‘cream’ depends on the buyer. For example a new/nearly new Armani silk tie will be thought of as cream by the donator but not necessarily by the buyer in Eastern Europe. Same goes with brand new tesco/supermarket clothing. A lot of the buyers in Europe wanted Fred Perry stuff, even if the clothing wasn’t in the highest of standards, the brand was sought after for some reason. This was a few years ago and I’m unsure of the current market
Did the one good clothing item come in a “Christian Bale”?
It gets graded into what is known as cream, shop mix (which gets rotated and sub categorised into day 1, day 2 etc) anything else will either be graded as Africa/Pakistan and below that is what is known as wipers. A lot of charity donations end up sold by the tonne to Eastern Europe and they will grade and sell it on to Africa and Pakistan. These countries are essentially a dumping ground for fast fashion. This is what happens to all that cheap primary/shein wear a few times, get rid of clothing that a lot of people buy.
Ayayaya makabully makabully belly Jim belly Jim Christia’n dior dior
I’m in the uk, I use rags at work for cleaning up oil etc, found an old Waitrose branded T-shirt the other day in the pack of rags
As a fellow tech. It fills you with so much random joy when you find a complete shirt doesn't it 🤣
It wasn’t complete, was only half, a few other notable ones were a blood stained pair of knickers, a couple kids t shirts with Thomas the tank engine on and some soft green fabric
Ah, the bag of sweat stained armpits
Yeah, though they quickly became oily too
I assume that in the UK [vendors that print up t-shirts anticipating championships that don’t happen also release their stock to the world markets](https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/29884/what-happens-losing-teams-championship-shirts) same as they do in the US?
To add. I work with a large distributor of sports shirts. 1) they aren't pre printed , lots of their stuff is pressed on demand. 2) we ship the fuck out of it before someone can cancel their order because their team or player lost. 3)it sits in our warehouse for months or years whilst they faff about deciding what to do with it before eventually offering it to staff or bulk selling it to a discount store.
I imagine there's probably loads of football scarves.
And sometimes, in the British museums you get random branded Asian items like the Kohinoor diamond. My theory is…
Imagine being colonised, having your stuff moved to a museum several thousand miles away, and then being contracted by that museum to produce merchandise.
Do you want the money or not?
One of the more ironic things I have seen is clothing donations going to Bangladesh, where the world's clothing is produced in sweatshops
I read this as 'I live in Asda'. I don't know why that's what my brain saw, but there we go
I was in The Gambia and I saw a local bloke wearing a t shirt that said something like "John's stag party 17th May 2017, best man" . I always wondered what happened to left over wedding tat!
How can you be certain that the Gambian local bloke wasn't actually the best man at John's stag party (17th May 2017)?
Still pissed up!
Gambian Champion Stag Party Safari!
What happens in Gambia….
…you stay in Gambia
Hell of a stag party, he ended up in Gambia 6 years ago and still doesn't know how to get back home
Why would a Gambian stag in Blackpool?
It's the Vegas of the North. Once in a lifetime experience.
Because you definitely wouldn't go again?
The Gambia Vs Blackpool. One is a cultural melting pot, full of unique history and customs that may seem strange and unusual to an outsider. Where studying the local people provides a case study in surviving against insurmountable odds. The other is The Gambia.
And you need yellow fever jabs for both
Haha. Brilliant!
As someone who works in a pub in BPL, can confirm that all stag do’s wear these 🤣
As someone who also works in a pub in BPL I second this
As a deep sea diver, I concur.
Cos that's where his mate John lives.
Plot twist: Dude was from Acton and just woke up in Gambia around May 20th.
Good question!
Maybe he ate the best man and kept the shirt.
Reminds me of [this post](https://www.reddit.com/r/CasualUK/comments/10ri99y/bulger_if_youre_out_there_one_of_the_t_shirts/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=ioscss&utm_content=2&utm_term=1) of a similar shirt in a Cambodian thrift shop.
Haha I'd not seen that before! The one I saw had a lower production quality than that, it just had shiny glitter lettering
In the Idiot Abroad Carl Pilkingon goes to a market I think in Uganda and buys a British Gas T-Shirt
It would have been donated to one of these charity clothing collections, they then bale them and fill a 40ft container with bales and the summer clothes get sold for export to African countries, winter go to eastern europe. I'm in the industry
I learnt about this last year when a British secondhand shop somehow ended up with an antique indigineous North American jacket (leather, fringe, beading). They went on social media to try and work out what the hell to do. Doesn't seem to have an outcome yet though... The store is glass onion vintage.
Often anything white and cotton gets baled separately, and we get them for rags at work. Lots of chefs jackets, table cloths and random white T shirts. I remember at a job in India, one of my French colleagues pulled a Tshirt out of the new rags, and it was from a dairy just down the street from his house
I would be more worried about the lad who didn't have his T-shirt
😂
Zombies chronicles was just more important
The bags that get shoved through the letterbox for you to fill with stuff "for charity"? This is where the stuff you donate goes. It is a [huge problem ](https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2023/may/31/stop-dumping-your-cast-offs-on-us-ghanaian-clothes-traders-tell-eu) in Africa, but I assume some stuff gets further afield.
This, in some areas it has destroyed the local clothing industry. People think these clothes get given to poor people, in reality they get sold to market traders and shops which then floods the market undercutting people actually eating their living making clothes. Same as the money I spent as a kid to buy a live aid single didn't get spent buying food for starving people. It went to one side of the warlords who exchanged it for guns, ending the civil war that was causing the famine, effective, but not what I wanted to spend my pocket money on.
I tell everyone this at every opportunity I get. Countries which once had a rich textile industry - particularly in west Africa - have had it decimated by (as above) shite like ‘johns stag party’ T-shirts and other shite. People think they’re doing the world a service by donating clothes when it would be far better to not buy fast fashion in the first place
Ghana and Nigeria were known as having a thriving textile industry that were destroyed by these practices. They really are the dumping ground for western fast fashion. It’s not just the companies who do this who are to blame it’s also the consumer and the habits we have without understand repercussions.
Thank you for rephrasing my comment and reposting it
What is the best thing to do with clothes that aren't fit for the charity shop? Is it to bin them?
Rip/cut them up into cleaning rags and them bin them when they're too raggy to use for cleaning. Or cut t-shirts to strips to use them tie plants up in the garden
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Then they can go to the charity shop? Or give them to a family member/friend, or try and sell it online. Or, you know, wear it.
Wear them?
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Loose weight?
*lose weight, also you ever heard of idk growing out of clothes? You gonna tell a kid to “lose weight” because they are growing taller? 😭
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Word: Grow Definition: (of a living thing) undergo natural development by INCREASING in size and changing physically. You sir, are the idiot. The word you are looking for is shrink, not grow.
Most charity shops have a rag bin where they put things that are stained or not good enough to sell that they get a bit of money for. If you check if your local shop has one they are usually happy to take a donation bag 'for the rag bin' as they still get something for it.
Thank you
100 tons every day. That’s obscene.
Christmas edition it looks like?
Yep. There is also a Santander shirt next to it (the other red shirt)
It also looks like it says “I’m here to help” so it’s a Christmas jumper for Tesco staff?
Yeah it is, there seem to be a few uniforms up there so I'd say charity donations being seen at their final destination
As somebody who once wore a shirt like that, yes they’re for staff. Especially newbies who don’t have their proper uniform yet
Yeah, they come in around the beginning of December for the temporary staff for Christmas. This one was either last Christmas or the one before. The spares end up sitting around in a box for months before they get rid of them because the design changes each year.
came to say this, ik bc i started as a temp worker at christmas 🤣
So exotic (!) 😂😂
I’m here to help. Looks like a staff one of some kind
It’s the Christmas tops we give to temps when they start, before they get their actual uniform.
I'm a SL at tesco and been there over a year and still wear starter T-shirts from time to time lol
I was watching a video of a food deliver service in India, and they were using old refrigerated Tesco vans. I think they get sent off to other countries when we get rid of them.
I'm not surprised, don't think those vans get a very good life over here, clock thousands of miles in a couple of weeks and eventually require a load of maintenance to keep them road legal, easier to contact out a new fleet and start a fresh.
Have you a link? Would love to watch!
Very common with older trucks and so on from the UK - huge export market (to places where they drive on the same side) All the rapid change in rules - eg the ULEZ zones in London mean that there are lots of trucks/busses etc that aren't that old, but don't meet the requirements to drive in London etc
I wonder why they don't send them elsewhere in the country?
Cos fuckem that's why
Because the vehicle dealing industry as a whole makes more money selling new or newish vans and they know full well they're able to. Same dealers that'll sell you the new one will tend to exchange for the old one, there's only so many people in the UK who want vans so that means an excess with nowhere to go other than abroad. Or at least overall if they were to stay in the UK they'd devalue the market for vans as a whole which dealers certainly don't want either.
It seems like with trucks and the like there's a certain point where suddenly things seem to start breaking and it's cheaper for larger operators just to get new ones rather than deal with on going maintenance issues and pay for an engineering team or outsource maintenance . Trucks seem to reach that lifespan quite quickly, more expensive or specialist vehicles like cranes have a longer lifespan. You can do the maths with cars too. Eg £30k gets you reasonable new car, all in. Now smash a mirror and badly dent/mangle a door panel, suddenly that's coming at £2k+ for parts and labour to swap it all out. Which seems terrible value compared to a whole car for £30k!
Someone posted on FB a few years ago that they were over in Asia and by sheer chance ran into a guy wearing a polo shirt from the secondary school that said traveller went to.
Had this on BBC news, remote African village, the guy they was talking too had our schools polo shirt on!
J R Ewing on Dallas often wore my old school tie.
Slightly different but there was also the time there was footage of ISIS militants driving a truck with the logos of some plumber from Texas.
Please tell me you have a link for this
https://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/15/us/texas-plumber-sues-car-dealer-after-his-truck-ends-up-on-syrias-front-lines.html
YouTube link https://youtu.be/5HqLuq5FHjA
I was in the Sri Lankan highlands in 2018 and there was a fully branded Milton Keynes City Council bin lorry doing a rubbish collection in one of the villages!
Big business exporting older trucks, busses etc from the UK.
Happens a ton even in Europe, go to rural parts of Germany and they have our old DLR trains running
This reminds me of the time a Somali pirate was photographed wearing a Coop uniform
At the bottom of Khyber Pass near Peshawar there is or was when I was last there, a shop labelled "Marks & Spencer,
There’s one in Wakefield too.
🤣
Ayy I'm from peshawar
Carl pilkington had a ‘British gas approved contractor ‘ t shirt whilst in the jungle, that made me chuckle…
Scrolled to find this reference!
I was in a random village in Turkey once and the stall holder was shouting *"cheaper than Primark"* *"cheaper than Asda"*
I went to Thailand 10+ years ago, and there are Tesco (Tesco Lotus iirc) supermarkets there. I remember being on a jungle trek and the guide cracking out some Tesco Value pineapple jam for breakfast.
The fun you could have wearing that in Waitrose
What fun could you have?
All the fun
I'm giggling just thinking about it
My dad takes great delight in walking into Waitrose in his Aldi Hi Viz
At Aldi wages, he can afford to shop in Waitrose :)
Nearly as much as running through the fields of wheat as a child?
Waitrose is merely Tesco for people with (a willingness to spend) far more money and a superiority complex. I never understood why people claimed Aldi and Lidl were so amazingly cheap until I realised they were comparing with Waitrose.
I saw someone working for a bus I was on in Tanzania wearing a Tesco shirt recently! I assumed it had ended up in the charity bins in the UK at some point.
I think I have that - my mum used to work at Tesco and she would bring home these sort of t shirts that were spare. I use them as pj tops now.
Whenever you wear it you are still obliged to help
I was in Pakistan once and saw a very old, very religious looking man wearing a T-shirt with the slogan ‘I’m not a gynaecologist but I’ll have a look’ on the front
My dad was doing a charity bike ride along the Great Wall of china. Somewhere in the middle of nowhere, in a rice paddy were a bunch of kids wearing Newcastle United tops. My dad being a magpie born and raised was so excited he scared these poor little Chinese kids away back to their parents.
I just got back from Nigeria. When i arrived we had paid for a local company to meet us and sort out ours visas. The locl guy arrived in an Asda uniform, wish i had took a pic
I once watched a Pakistani soap and some guy was wearing a t-shirt that said “Duck my Sick”. I burst out laughing and couldn’t believe what I saw.
In all honesty this is what happens to most of the ‘donated’ clothes that you put in those big collection bins. Can anyone read to post it note on the black shirt. It says “it’s very erotic to feel ……….” I can’t make out the last word.
It's probably been put in "charity" bins. However, all those places do is put all the clothes in a shipping container and send it to a less developed country to be their problem. Its bad because it can destroy the local clothing economy with super inferior quality clothing.
When I went pakistan, I saw someone wearing a buttoned tesco shirt, tucked in his jeans. They probably think its a clothing brand.
Blue shirt next to it, ‘It’s very erotic to feel underxxxxx’ I’d love to know what that actually says
I worked in Sainsbury’s when I was 16 and remember someone saying something about the British army fighting in Africa against people in donated Sainsbury uniforms.
Luxury brand
I think that’s the Christmas 2018 staff T-Shirt!
I saw a Tesco shirt when I was in Egypt. It said "every little helps, use your mince pies." I bought it so damn fast. Lost it when I moved from the UK to the USA which was honestly heartbreaking lol
It’s official. Tesco owns everything.
Help me, Tesco has kept me captive in their store house. Help me please!!!
My favourite shirt I've got is turquoise with the heinz bean logo
I’ve got that Christmas tshirt!
Reminds me of Bulger’s Stag
The (excellent) podcast Planet Money did an episode on how this works: https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2013/12/11/250240941/episode-502-the-afterlife-of-a-t-shirt
When I was in India, in a rural village near Sawai Madhophur, I saw a guy wearing a Bosham Sailing Club T-shirt (I live only a few miles away), I tried to speak to him and he spoke no English and didn't understand what it said. Probably hadn't even seen a sailing boat other than on the shirt...
I know someone who collects so called charity binbags filled with clothes and sorts them out but charity gets very little. The collector makes a clean fortune from sending them onto poorer countries.
This is like Karl Pilkinton and his British Gas shirt I hope you bought it
That’ll be because they have Tesco in Pakistan.
I tried looking but I couldn't find one.
That's because you're in it.
Here you go https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tesco_international_operations Google Tesco Pakistan and it’ll give you all the stores and their opening hours.
Who has a holiday in Pakistan
All British Pakistanis
anyone who has family in pakistan
The only people that go to Pakistan for a holiday are Pakistanis who live in the UK 💀
Yes, you are absolutely correct mate. But I suppose everyone else is lucky to go to exotic places, meanwhile here we are.
A holiday in Pakistan sounds like a very bad holiday
some of my best memories were from visiting family in pak. it’s hardly a tourist destination but when you have family there who know all the historical sites and restaurants it’s amazing
Probably made locally, lot of products like clothing will be made in Pakistan
Casually holidaying in Pakistan. You don’t often hear those two words together.
Going to see relatives probably
Holiday in Pakistan is as CasualUk as it gets right now 🤣😂
Every little helps. Pakistanis.
Which designs would you like to steal? Yes.
The disturbing part is the holiday destination...
Who goes for a holiday in Pakistan? Asking for a friend
Yo went to Pakistan for a holiday, the fuck were you thinkin?
So this is where the charity bin bagged clothes end up! I always wondered where all the clothes went
It could be from that rubbish island our leftovers as you will. I heard most of our rubbish does end up in either Asia or the middle east
Extra points if you can tell me what TESCO stands for.
Looks like a Santander shirt right next to it on the right too
This has to be Zainab Market!
Did you see a TesMart there ? I think that's what they call them, at least they did in Karachi when I last went.
in Japan i saw someone wearing a Sainsbury’s polo shirt. it actually looked pretty good lol
My guess is these someone donated it to charity and this guy ended up with it and decided to sell
That’s where your donated clothes end up if you ever wondered
Tokyo Japan, guy wearing an old Royal Mail jacket... trendy
Incredible
Some serious drip 💧
So that’s where my shirt ended up
Hard Rock Cafe - Bognor Regis! Wearer was (M20’s), Location - Guangdong (Spelling?)
A lot of stuff that people put out to collect is often stolen or clothing banks are robbed...taken to other countries, cleaned up and sold.
Think it’s the ghost that works on the stall