Which means your second-hand clothes are sold for you to Africa – don't stop giving them

Which means your second-hand clothes are sold for you to Africa – don't stop giving them

Maybe you've swished? Do you shwop? Today there are more ways than ever to eliminate your unwanted clothes. But whatever option you choose, your cast-offs will generally land in the hands of a specialist group or textile merchants – generally small family-run businesses like my, who have the expertise and specialist knowledge to locate a home for anything.

Years ago the rag and bone man can have swapped your cast-offs for anything from a goldfish to money, today income for clothes shops, eBay, the textile banks on virtually every recycling site around the world and the charity bags in which arrive through your letter box carry out this role. Then there are classified as the charity shops. From the British Heart Foundation towards local hospice they, naturally, would like to raise as much money as possible for their cause. But, as Mary Portas showed many years back, to ensure the profits usually are not eaten up in running any shop, only the best donations are traded in store. The rest are traded on a multibillion-dollar worldwide marketplace.

This market began in earlier 1980s with Africa is in its centre. The continent has seen one of several highest population explosions over days gone by 30 years, and all these folks need clothes. UK clothing was good quality, fashionable and made to last, so charity shops sold undesirable donated clothes to rag stores, which meant more money for that charity's good cause. These rag merchants would then sort it to match the needs of African shoppers. Once in Africa the bales connected with clothes (either 55kg or 45kg – around 550 per container, totalling 25 tons) are traded on to market stall members. They further sort the clothes – washing, ironing and packaging some items approximately sell in shops, selling additional items on stalls or re-selling that to travelling markets servicing smaller villages.

For some this industry appears exploitative, but I am incredibly pleased with my business's work as linen recyclers. We are not oil companies doing handles corrupt governments to buy any country's natural resources, nor are we selling old PCs to be dismantled by children breathing throughout toxic fume; this is a family business appointing other family businesses to ensure that much-needed clothing can be purchased by customers who want that. And we are helping for you to tackle the problem of what to do with the 900, 000 numerous unwanted clothes, which in 2009 the Department of Forestry as well as Rural Affairs, said went into landfill every year.

Our company still deals with a number of our customers from 30 years in the past, and we know the profits they've already made have allowed them to create other businesses – such while banks, petrol stations and motels for tourism. In Kenya alone research has found greater than five million jobs and ancillary jobs were created inside second hand clothing industry. And this is hardly surprising if you think the jobs created clearing the actual containers, unloading them, stall members and tailors altering the clothes, rents paid to landlords, accountants and officials employed to recover taxes. One of our newest customers fled Rwanda like a 15-year-old. Now, after living throughout England, obtaining a degree and earning a living for Microsoft, he has decided to return to Africa to generate a difference, not just to his spouse and children but by passing on his skills and knowledge to the next generation.

Historically our industry have been kept behind the scenes, considering that the charity sector did not realize its easy to explain to people that the clothes they gave them were in love with to Africans. As for the claims second-hand clothes have a negative effect on the domestic clothing market in which they are sold, I would say there are not enough resources on the planet to clothe everyone. And many countries in Africa do not have a historical clothing sector such as India, nor the climate for water-thirsty cotton production which is the reason for 40% of the world's clothes raw material.

We in the west must accept that we need to start to buy less. We need to follow the three Rs as well as reduce (buy less) reuse (extend the actual clothing lifespan) and recycle (polish the car with an old T–shirt). But at the moment the clothes we discard are of an exceptional, and usually far better as opposed to new clothing that people can pay for in the developing world. It is not an ideal situation, but currently the best we can offer. No one should stop donating clothes – at the moment the very worst thing you're able to do with your old clothes should be to put them in the trash.

.