Because of online shopping, discarded clothing is covering the planet.

More worn clothing is being discarded. We are purchasing a faster fashion, which is transient. Clothes sales on e-commerce sites increased. 

Many of the customers were homeless. I rummage through a mountain of donated items, looking for vibrant shirts, tailored jackets, and other treasures that could help the charity's poor clientele. 

Not every item, however, was worth providing to clients. Those items were thrown away, a faded Gap T-shirt and a damaged pair of pants. 

More worn clothing is being discarded. We are purchasing faster fashions, which arrive and go instantly. Even though overall garment sales were down because of the pandemic, e-commerce clothing sales increased. We wanted to make room for the new stuff, so we cleaned out our wardrobes and donated to various charities when we were at home. 

Your donated clothes may be converted into industrial rags, carpet padding, or housing insulation. They are occasionally transported in bundles to Vietnam, Ghana, Nigeria, Malaysia, and other nations, where shops sort through the clothing for prizes. Some e-commerce returns, according to the Rest of the World, are also transferred offshore. 

E-commerce is powering the cycle. According to Digital Commerce 360, by 2021, internet sales will account for half of all clothing transactions. In that year, e-commerce apparel sales climbed by 25% to $181 billion (about $560 per person in the US). 

People usually buy more clothing than they intend to keep while shopping online. More than half of shoppers told Narvar, an e-commerce customer service company, that in 2021 they will buy many of the same goods to return the ones that do not fit. Some companies even enable customers to keep items that no longer work, allowing them to give or discard even more clothing. 

Though difficult to quantify, e-commerce is fueling an increase in garment purchases, according to Neil Saunders, a Global Data retail expert. Online shopping, he claims, exposes shoppers to more brands than they would see in their local mall and allows them to shop at any time of day. 

"When there are more opportunities to shop, there is more impulse buying," Saunders said of clothing. 

Here are four probable outcomes for the garments you are throwing away. 

| Recycled, but not for use in the production of new outfits 

Your old happy rags could become true rags. According to the Secondary Materials and Recycled Textiles Association, recyclers buy old garments and turn them into rags for auto detailing furniture stuffing and automobile soundproofing. Fiber recyclers may collect old clothing from donation bins in parking lots or purchase it from groups. 

Although it may not be the outcome you were hoping for with your old jeans, it does have advantages. Fewer natural resources are used because fewer new fabrics are required to create those items. Furthermore, fiber recycling keeps clothes from being burned or disposed of in landfills. 

It also provides funding to organizations that sell unwanted garments to recyclers. According to a news release from SMART, "the acquisition of improper donations provides additional funds to charity organizations and serves as an important source of revenue." 

Old clothes are rarely recycled into new ones. Most items are difficult to deconstruct and replace with new fabric since they are made of natural and synthetic fibers. 

| Available at street markets 

Secondhand clothing from the United States may be found all over an outdoor market in Accra, Ghana. Similar goods are available in other African countries. Importers buy enormous bales of used clothing and sell them to stores, which sort the garments based on their condition. 

It is important to note that even if your clothing donation winds up in one of these bales, it still benefits a charity. Instead of staying the one-of-a-kind wardrobe item it once was, your contribution has been converted into cash to assist the charity. 

The influx of used clothing is unpopular in the importing countries, partially because it competes with local producers. A group of four east African countries attempted to restrict imports to protect their textile industries. Still, only Rwanda maintained the embargo after the US imposed taxes on the countries' garment exports. 

Clothing can also be dangerous. According to studies by the OR Foundation, an organization advocating for better fashion standards in the United States and Ghana, unusable dresses poured from landfills and fouled Accra's open fires. 

| In the trash 

According to the US Environmental Protection Agency, in 2018, Americans dumped 9 million tons of clothing and shoes. Even if you donate the dress, it may be in a landfill. 

Clothes exported abroad are also discarded in significant quantities. Buyers take a chance on each bale because they cannot inspect it individually. It will certainly be discarded if they do not like what they got. According to the OR Foundation, 40% of imported apparel is thrown away. Mountains of clothing caused a catastrophic landfill fire in Accra in 2019, and vast ropes of entangled garments regularly wash up on Ghana's beaches. 

"It's ridiculous to divert clothing from landfills in the Global North by dumping this excess on the Global South," wrote Liz Ricketts, executive director of the OR Foundation, in an essay emphasizing the problems caused by shipping extra clothing to Ghana. "It's even more ludicrous to call this a solution or to refer to it as recycling." 

| On the Internet 

Of course, some of the apparel given is in good condition. Some Ghanaian business owners travel to the street market searching for higher-quality secondhand clothing to curate on social media. 

Lia Akuoko, who lives in Accra, uploads discarded goods from the city's secondhand clothing market on her Instagram account, Lias pretty finds. Akuoko-tailored jeans with a butterfly motif were among her findings. 

"They usually like colorful straight gowns," Akuoko said of her customers through WhatsApp. 

Some Malaysian enterprises offer products discovered in bundles transported from Japan on resale websites aimed toward US clients. After being sold, the apparel travels to another country. According to the New York Times, many Malaysian merchants sell their wares on Etsy and eBay, while one dealer offers his luxury Japanese fashion purchases on Grailed, a US-based men's clothing resale site. 

Alternatives to Garbage 

Advocates' initial proposal for limiting the problems created by worn clothing is to buy fewer articles. When you are ready to let go of your clothes, you have a few options, the most popular of which is to give them to the next person who will wear them. 

This can happen on resale sites where people can list their old clothes. It can also occur through websites on the internet. You can even learn mending and tailoring techniques to upcycle your items if you feel adventurous. 

When your garments are no longer usable, fiber recycling is usually your best alternative. The quickest way to accomplish this is to donate through a charity or collecting box. However, there is no guarantee that the fibers will be used in industrial products rather than in landfills, whether in the United States or halfway over the world.