I'm Lucy Biggers
and this is One Small Step
In my mission to figure out what to do with my old clothes
I've decided to clean out my closet.
Time for me to figure out what I should get rid of and what I should keep.
I'm bringing these old clothes to a thrift store
because that way I know whatever they buy is more likely to be reused.
According to ThredUP, the clothing and apparel resale market
is a 20 billion dollar industry.
If don't have access to a thrift store you can resell your clothes online at sites
like eBay, Poshmark, and ThredUp.
Today I'm at Beacon's Closet a thrift shop in Brooklyn.
They carry everything from vintage to the latest styles all of
it purchase secondhand.
On average 150 people sell their clothes here every day
This is Leah Giampietro. She's been working at Beacon's for 10 years.
She's a manager and a buyer who's going to use her expert eye to decide if any of my
clothes are worthy of their shelves.
Anything she buys will be marked down to 20-30% of the original price.
Before we get into my clothes I'm curious to know what do you look for
when you're buying clothes?
What we look for first and foremost
is the style
whatever is currently on trend, and the condition of the items.
As well as, how stocked we are in different categories.
But
I would say yeah style first and foremost.
Okay well,
And what about fast fashion?
I know we have so much of that now is that something that you guys are challenged by?
We can't often take too much of it in just because it's so readily available out
there at low prices.
We can't price them even less than what they retailed out to begin with.
Now for the moment of truth.
In the end Leah bought 13 of my items and rejected 33.
Yay I made some money.
Let's calculate how much I made. So our retail value that we have here is
That's what we're gonna sell everything for in the store.
So 35% of that is your cash option.
You made a lot more than you thought you were going to.
If you wanted store credit you have the option of taking
I decided to take the store credit so that I can shop the used
clothing in the store and save the natural resources it takes to make new clothes.
The next step is really to figure out what to do with the clothes
that weren't good enough for them to buy where do I donate these guys?
Hey guys!
This is Adam Baruchowitz.
He is the founder and CEO of wearable collections.
According to Adam his company has diverted nearly 20 million pounds of clothing
from landfills since 2004.
They run
Today we're meeting at his warehouse in Greenpoint where the floor is literally
covered with bags of clothing.
People feel very comfortable bringing their bags of clothing to my door,
and saying 'since you're a clothing recycler!'
What type of clothing are you
accepting just literally everything?
Yeah, we accept anything but the industry
standard is that about
So we need to stay within those industry standards in order to be
sustainable business.
We're a for-profit that dedicates a portion of our proceeds
to our partner charities.
So when we do a drive with a school we
dedicate a portion of the proceeds to them.
And do you ever get pushback,
when people think oh I'm donating my clothes why is it not going to
a nonprofit?
Some people think the charity genie comes but really the money that
can be generated from the sale of the clothes is what helps the organizations
and the charities,
And it turns out that roughly
What I know is it goes to a sorting facility they're gonna process it.
They're gonna reuse as much as possible and simply because
and they want to make use of this good for as much as they possibly can make use of this good.
My bags are empty.
We're taking this truck to a sorting facility in New Jersey.
Look at how many clothes are in this warehouse.
For the sorting facility clothing is a commodity.
Adam says they buy clothes at about
and then they try to resell it for a higher price.
When clothes like Adams arrive at the warehouse they get
Then they get compressed into one thousand pound pallets and are shipped to buyers.
It's so crazy because there's so many people working in this warehouse right now.
I've seen like 30-40 people working and to think that all these clothes could have
just gone to the dump and be sitting in the ground forever
but instead they're creating all these jobs and all this industry
is a really interesting perspective.
There's a whole other room down here.
Is this seriously polo?
The sheer scale of the clothes at this one sorting facility
is pretty shocking.
It's obvious we are consuming a lot of clothes in the US and
one of the reasons for this mass consumption is fast fashion.
These are cheap brands with short seasons like popular retailers H&M, Forever 21 and Zara
they create tens of thousands of affordable styles per year which is why
they're so easy to shop.
I decided to reach out to H&M rep Patrick Shaner
to see what they're doing to address our waste problem.
H&M started our garment
collecting program worldwide in 2013 and so basically how it works is we have
these beautiful boxes our garment collecting boxes and these are in every
H&M store around the world which is 71 countries right now.
It can be any brand of clothing,
it can be bed sheets, it can be one sock that you lost in the laundry.
We just say bring it all.
By 2030 everything you buy an H&M will be made from more
sustainably sourced materials.
But that's just a drop in the bucket compared to
the astronomical amount of new clothes they produce each year.
This is realy great but is this enough to offset just how much you guys create?
Sure ya, I mean definitely an issue but that's why along with this at the consumer level
and kind of teaching people to be in a more circular mindset when they're
thinking of their clothes those are really where we're going.
Making this video has made me realize donating and recycling our old clothes is very complicated.
Seeing that huge warehouse of our used clothing
and understanding that foreign countries don't even want our clothing,
made me aware that we're over consuming and it's having real consequences.
And even though recycling isn't perfect
it's still better than sending your clothes to the dump.
And if those aren't near you take advantage of
recycling programs offered by companies like H&M.
Or try this hack visit give
All you do is you take an old box fill it with used clothing,
print out a prepaid shipping label from their website,
bring it to your post office and voila your donations will be shipped for free.
It's clear to me that the clothing industry has a lot of issues around
sustainability.
It is ripe for innovation
on so many levels and that's
a whole other video that I am looking forward to making.
Thank you so much for
watching this episode of One Small Step I hope it was as enlightening for you as
it was for me.
If you liked it please share it and we'll see you next time, bye!
So I went back to Beacon's Closet and I got all of these clothes with my credit
Three dresses, three shirt, and a pair of pants.