Where Do Our Donated Clothes Really Go — And Why Is It a Problem?
Time and again, people – mostly those in need – who are trying to obtain clothes illegally meet a gruesome death inside the metal bins provided by aid organisations. Anyone investigating deaths in used clothing collection bins will come across a surprisingly high number of cases.
A man gets stuck in a used clothing collection bin and freezes to death. A woman dies after becoming trapped in a bin. A man tries to retrieve a key, gets stuck and dies a day later. A woman is found dead – her neck was trapped in the opening.
The question is, why do these containers need to be so secure? Because recycling old clothes simply doesn’t work! The Greenpeace investigative team looked into this question and fitted 20 items of clothing with GPS trackers before donating them to various organisations, in order to trace the journeys of the donated clothes and shoes.
The garments covered enormous distances of up to 11,300 kilometres. Between June 2024 and March 2025, all 20 garments together covered just under 81,000 kilometres, thereby circling the Earth twice. The three longest journeys were made by a pair of boots (11,300 kilometres), a jacket (10,200 kilometres) and a pair of shorts (9,700 kilometres).
Some items took absurd routes and ended up in unusual places. A black jacket ended up in a steelworks in Pakistan. A white hoodie ended up in a warehouse belonging to a company in the Ivory Coast with a seized website; a purple winter jacket was cut up in Tunisia and the two sewn-in trackers were scattered over 350 kilometres – and a checked flannel shirt remained in a post office in Tunisia for months.
Only three of the 20 items of clothing may have been reused by people. Three items were destroyed at the premises of used clothing companies and, at best, downcycled. Five items were destroyed or burned in places without waste facilities. One item ended up by the roadside in an industrial estate in Spain. Five items remained unused in warehouses and one item shuttled between a market and a warehouse in Tunisia.
Three out of seven donated and defective items ended up in countries without a suitable waste infrastructure, despite being sorted.
Fast fashion leads to overproduction and massive waste. Only a third of newly produced goods are actually sold.
But now for the good news:
The development of the interactive course ‘Sustainable Textile Counsellor’ has been completed. Pilot and validation activities will begin in the individual partner countries over the coming weeks. If you are interested in taking part, please contact the relevant project partner!
Austria: info@bildungslab.com or olcay.belli@compass4you.at
Estonia: riina.oun@artun.ee
Greece: thanos.loules@iasismed.eu
Slovenia: office@eu-integra.eu
