Old clothes collection
A used clothing collection is the organized collection of used or unused clothing , shoes and other textiles by a non-profit association or commercial collector (see also textile recycling ). The clothes collected are donated to the collectors; it should be in a usable condition.
Used clothes collected by professional, specialized collection companies are sorted by hand into up to 250 categories ; approx. 5% are shoes, another approx. 35% are used again as clothes of various quality levels, 25% are used for other recycling products, approx. 15% are used for cleaning rags or are thrown away in the trash (as of 2013) Since 2011, there has been an increasing number of illegal collectors entering the market who have been collecting unannounced street collections, setting up their own collection containers without official approval (on private property they are beyond the control of the authorities) or breaking into third-party containers.
background
In Germany, the causes of the collection of used clothes can be seen on the one hand as the constant consumption of the affluent society and on the other hand as the desire for charity . The aim of the donors is to get rid of old, superfluous, unpopular or out-of-fashion clothes, if necessary to make space for new clothes - and at the same time to help those in need. For example, an urgent need for used clothing can arise when buildings and homes are destroyed in a disaster.
In Germany, around one million tons of old clothes are put into old clothes containers or collections every year, and the trend is rising. The widespread use of the Internet has meant that less high-quality used clothing than before has ended up in used clothing collections. Online auctions are now a competition from organizations that collect used clothes.
Types of collection
Street collection
Street collections have been subject to registration in Germany since June 2012 (see legal situation in Germany ).
Depot container
Depot containers are steel containers with a special throw-in mechanism, a rotary lock, which is often referred to as a flap. This mechanism should enable simple filling and the highest possible filling level, on the other hand also prevent theft and the intrusion of animals, such as mice, and make it difficult to set fire to. In addition, it is important that the groupage does not get wet and thus unusable when it rains. A canopy repels rain.
When trying to remove clothes, people have repeatedly got stuck, mostly in the inner slot of the lock. In Austria, there was a serious accident when a 63-year-old man used a pallet as a climbing aid, which then slipped or broke. The man got caught with one arm in the flap and eventually suffered a fatal heart attack.
There are around 120,000 used clothing containers in Germany. The German Red Cross has around 25,000 containers for used clothes, all of which are provided with information stickers about the use of the clothes. The printed address enables direct contact to the DRK regional association. The DRK collects up to 100,000 tons of used clothing annually, around 95% of which are sold to finance charitable work with the proceeds. Some parishes of the Protestant and Catholic Churches maintain their own depot containers on their properties.
In many cases, containers for used clothes are decorated with the logo of a non-profit association or a social institution. But that doesn't have to mean that the owner of the logo carries out the collection himself. He can rent his logo to a commercial collector for a flat fee, who then uses the logo associated with a charitable image to his advantage. The fair evaluation association, to which numerous aid organizations such as the Protestant Diakonie and the Catholic Caritas Association are affiliated, protests against this practice.
Many waste disposal companies also set up containers and thus compete with other used clothes collectors. In every city there are container locations for waste glass and other packaging material, sometimes also for waste paper, which are maintained by the waste disposal company responsible for the area (city or municipality or a legally independent subsidiary). There are often depot containers for clothes and shoes at these locations. For example, there are used textile depot containers at more than one hundred container locations for the municipal cleaning service in Hamburg . In Duisburg , the municipal companies have set up around 400 used clothing containers.
In addition to the depot containers at the municipal or church container locations, there are also containers on private properties. The vast majority of them are in parking lots in shopping centers, grocery stores or hardware stores. The property owners usually tolerate these containers without getting any money for them, as they hope for a higher customer frequency.
Closets
Some aid organizations also accept clothing directly in their closets, e.g. B. DRK , Caritas and Oxfam . Clothing handed in there is passed on to people in need in the clothing stores, sold through the company's own second-hand shops or given to a cooperation partner.
Further acceptance points
In addition to the clothing stores of the specialized organizations, social department stores and relief goods initiatives and used clothing also accept directly. Furthermore, some lead congregations regularly collections by where old clothes can be brought to the premises of the church, and then enter the clothing donations to charitable organizations on.
At recycling yards, the collection runs through depot containers set up there. In addition, there is sometimes the possibility of returning larger quantities directly to the recycling center.
Recovery
The German Red Cross (DRK) recycles old clothes according to two different models. In the “clothing store model”, the clothing is sorted by the DRK. The suitable pieces are passed on to DRK clothing stores and DRK clothing stores, the surplus is sold to a recycling company. In the "recycling model", the entire contents of the collection container are sold to a recycling company, which then sorts the textiles themselves according to different qualities: around 10% are waste, around 35% are processed into insulating materials or cleaning rags, around 55% are still wearable as clothing are exported as second-hand goods. The proceeds from the sale of old clothes by the Red Cross flow into its social work. The clothing donations that the DRK collects go partly directly to the needy, partly because of the sales proceeds as an indirect monetary donation to the Red Cross, partly they are used commercially.
The clothing collection of the Von Bodelschwingh Foundation Bethel recycles around 12,000 tonnes a year, which are given free of charge or sold cheaply as a contribution in kind to the needy. Items that are not sold individually will be sent to contractors of the umbrella association FairWANY e. V. sold. The proceeds from the sale are used for diaconal tasks. The collection is carried out decentrally; once a year a transport goes to Bethel.
Non-profit associations can participate in the business by letting a commercial collector do the collection in containers and letting them their logo and name. The logo is then placed on the containers and promotes the trust of the donors. In return, the non-profit association receives a flat fee from the user. In this frequently used recycling model, the predominantly commercial character of the recycling is concealed, which corresponds to an attempt to mislead the donors. However, renting logos and names is legally permissible.
In other countries besides Germany, still usable clothes are mostly resold in second-hand shops at a low price. For example, the NGO Oxfam has been using this business model since its founding years and offers used clothing, including in Oxfam shops in Germany.
Sometimes clothing donors have wrong ideas about the whereabouts of their donation. Contrary to what many believe, a large part of the donated clothing is not distributed free of charge to people in need in Germany or in developing countries, but instead, as in Tanzania, for example, is regularly offered for sale in markets. Africa imports used clothing for around 1 billion US dollars each year, Uganda alone for 350 million US dollars. Hundreds of thousands of jobs in textile retail depend on these imports. The used clothing is sorted in bundles and shrink-wrapped in plastic to the destination countries. In Swahili these shrink- wrapped bundles of clothing are called Mitumba .
One problem for local use is that old clothes are acyclical: winter clothes are donated towards the end of winter and summer clothing towards the end of summer.
Problematic Aspects
Bogus charity
In Germany, for example, the umbrella organization FairW Judge warns against dubious street collections that have a purely commercial purpose and pretend to be charitable. Numerous small business owners claim or suggest that their collection is being carried out for an aid organization that helps people in need. To deceive, they use charitable symbols on their collection slips and present charitable-sounding club names such as “Roter Ring Kinderhilfe”, “Humanitarian Mother Teresa Association” or “Father Rodriguez”. The association gives tips which indicate signs of dubious collectors, for example intrusive appeals to the willingness to help, missing contact details or giving a mobile phone number under which nobody can be reached. In the event of any suspicion, fair evaluation asks you to check the information on the slips of paper and to notify the authorities.
Illegal collections
Depot containers with the Red Cross symbol are not always from the DRK, because there are illegal collectors who use the Red Cross symbol without authorization. For this reason, donors should ensure that the name and emblem of the German Red Cross and the address of the collecting association are shown on the selected container.
In May 2014, in the Austrian state of Salzburg , “around 20 to 25 containers” caused trouble, which had been set up “almost overnight” in 14 Flachgau municipalities, mostly in supermarket parking lots. No names or addresses were given on the beige-colored containers labeled “dresses” and “shoes”. The environmental department of the State of Salzburg described the containers as illegal, but could not simply remove them. She urgently advised against supporting the clothing collection, because "this is the only way the containers might disappear".
Threat to the textile industry in third world countries
In terms of development policy , the export of used clothes to third world countries (called Mitumba ) is controversial. Since the trade in used clothing is in direct competition with the locally based clothing production, it can contribute to their destruction (as can also be the case with development aid in the agricultural sector, for example ). An article on Zeit Online complained in 2011 that used clothing is exported in such large quantities "that the local textile industry in many of the countries it supplies is now completely marginalized".
The German Red Cross contradicts: Buyers of old clothes are not identical with buyers of new, domestically manufactured clothes. In addition, there is an increased need for tailors. The Attac -Mitbegründerin Jutta Sundermann pointed from personal experience that the Altkleiderhandel people supplied there with good clothes.
Legal situation in Germany
June 1, 2012, sparked recycling law from the existing Waste Disposal Act. Since then, the collection of waste from private households for non-profit or commercial use must be reported to the competent authority. There are no special formal requirements for the notification, but it must be made at least three months before collection (Section 18 (1) KrWG). A distinction is made between non-profit and commercial collections (cf. § 17 Paragraph 2 Nos. 3 and 4 KrWG). Only in the case of commercial collections must information on the intended use be given. However, the competent authority can also request such information from non-profit collections at its own discretion (Section 18 (2) and (3) KrWG).
literature
- Friedel Hütz-Adams: Clothes make prey: German old clothes destroy African jobs , published by the Institute for Economics and Ecumenism, Südwind, Siegburg 1995, ISBN 3-929704-07-2 .
- Ekkehard Launer, Boris Terpinc, Franziska Strobusch: For example, old clothes, what to do with the clothes . Lamuv TB 261, Göttingen 1999, ISBN 978-3-88977-544-3 .
Web links
- Textile recycling with competence Fachverband Textilrecycling in the Federal Association of Secondary Raw Materials and Disposal
- Donate old clothes for social projects! Homepage of FairWANY, umbrella association of non-profit organizations
- The old clothes lie - How donations become a business TV report by NDR (2011) on YouTube (29:02 min.)
Individual evidence
- ↑ Cf. Illegal used textile collection: Serious containers can be recognized by the address kraichgau.news, October 22, 2016. Quote: "The property owner is always responsible for removing containers that have been set up without a permit."
- ↑ Nikola Vogt, Karen Bauer: Clothing donations are degenerating into a global business Badische Zeitung , December 17, 2013.
- ↑ For an example, see Collapse in Nachterstedt: Got slipped in zeit.de, July 20, 2009
- ^ A b Old clothing collections in Germany fairevaluation.de
- ↑ a b Ebay or Bethel? Old clothes hotly contested n-tv.de, March 24, 2011.
- ↑ thief in old clothes wochenanzeiger.de, November 23 of 2005.
- ↑ Tragic accident at old clothes container , roteskreuz.at April 24, 2013.
- ↑ a b c Problem case logo sale - who is behind the collection? Blog article on fairevaluation.de, May 15, 2015
- ↑ Welt am Sonntag No. 13, April 1, 2018, p. 37.
- ↑ Example of the Evangelical Church Community in Cologne-Zollstock : "Three used clothing containers are in front of the community office".
- ↑ Example of the Catholic parish of St Michael in Wolfsburg : “A container for old clothes on the parish property”.
- ↑ Example of waste management company in Munich : The locations of the containers for used textiles and shoes "are mainly located on the recycling islands where you can hand in [...] waste glass and plastic and metal packaging".
- ↑ Recycling of recyclable materials: old clothes, old textiles hamburg.de, authority for the environment and energy, as of December 2017.
- ↑ We collect through used clothing containers! Wirtschaftsbetriebe Duisburg, as of December 2017.
- ↑ Clothing stores of the German Red Cross drk.de
- ↑ DRK clothes container drk.de
- ↑ Your clothing donation goes to drk.de
- ^ Oxfam: Second hand clothing oxfam.org.uk
- ^ Oxfam: Shop concept shops.oxfam.de
- ^ The Old Clothes Lie How donations become a business programm.ard.de, August 6, 2012.
- ↑ Caroline Ischinger: What old clothes from Germany mean for Africa sueddeutsche.de, May 29, 2013.
- ↑ Dubious clothing collections fairevaluation.de
- ↑ By all means - dubious collections of used clothes Blog article on fairevaluation.de, June 1, 2015.
- ↑ For dubious collections: show commitment! fairevaluation.de
- ↑ Trouble about illegal used clothing containers , ORF.at, May 5, 2014.
- ↑ Michael Höft: "The kilo for 1.20 dollars": The big business with clothing donations from Germany ( Memento of the original from December 14, 2017 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (PDF), Zeit Online, November 3, 2011 (PDF).
- ↑ drkforb.drkcms.de old clothes German Red Cross, local association Forbach
- ↑ "The main problem is not used clothing " Interview with Jutta Sundermann, fairevaluation.de, August 19, 2012.
- ↑ Law on Recycling Management gesetze-im-internet.de
- ↑ Table of contents for the TV report Die Altzüge-Lüge programm.ard.de, 6 August 2012.
- ↑ On the criticism of the TV report Die Alt Kleid-Lie, cf. the ( page no longer available , search in web archives: statement ) (PDF) of the company Wittmann Textil-Recycling .
