Category: As I wrote in the first part of my review of “The Travels of a T-shirt in the Global Economy”, one thing that never occurred to me was what happens to clothes after I donate them to charity.
Chapter 13 starts with an anecdote about the women of Bethesda, MD, who line up bright and early each Saturday morning behind a Salvation Army truck. The early bird gets the worm, or in this case gets rid of the worm! The juxtaposition of expensive SUVs lining up to donate bags of barely worn clothing to charity, only to then head to the mall to purchase more clothing, outlines how silly the American consumerism culture must appear in developing countries. And yet, without these rampant “excesses” in the U.S. and other Western cultures, an entire marketplace and means of survival would not be available on the African continent.
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