Calvin Klein jeans for free!
Sometimes following sustainability news is disheartening. There are so many disappointing stories about companies doing terribly unsustainable things. But sometimes you come across stories like this one about Recommerce Atacama, which fill you with hope. And perhaps make you chuckle as well.
What is Recommerce Atacama?
Recommerce Atacama is part of campaign to raise awareness about fast fashion companies illegally dumping clothes in the Chilean desert.
How are they doing it? In the smartest way!
They are collecting the clothes from the desert, washing them and then distributing them for free. The recipient just pays for delivery.
The reason companies dump their clothes is because they don’t want them to be sold cheaply, thereby damaging the value of their brand. Recommerce Atacama’s action hits them right where it hurts (giving away their precious brands AND shaming them for dumping) and hopefully should be a real deterrent to dumping clothes in the future.
This made me chuckle and lifted my spirits. There are people willing to challenge the system and do the right thing.
It also made me sad
This story made me reflect though on what sort of economic system we are a part of. Companies are not dumping clothes for fun. they are doing it because this sort of behaviour is rewarded in a growth capitalist system. It is an economically-sound decision in 2025.
Read that again.
We are part of a system where it makes complete sense to plant cotton, water cotton, spray pesticides on cotton, harvest cotton, process the cotton into fabric, dye the fabric, process the fabric into clothing, package the clothing, ship the clothing, and then (when it doesn’t get purchased fast enough) to transport that clothing to Chile and dump it illegally in the desert.
All of those resources (the cotton, the water, the pesticides, the farmer’s labour, the dye, the seamstress’s labour, the shipping fuel, the sales and marketing people’s labour) are completely wasted because companies want to “protect” their brand from being associated with low prices. Those clothes could have been worn to keep someone warm. The land could have been used to grow food. And the fuel could have been left in the ground instead of being burned and heating our climate.
What does change look like?
Sorry to transform this story from uplifting to disheartening but, for me, this is a story that really made me think about what sort of behaviour our current economic system promotes. Are these the sorts of behaviours we want to promote? If not, perhaps we need a different economic system.
It is often said that it is easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism. But this is becoming less and less true. There are brilliant minds out there working on what comes after capitalism.
Look for books by Kate Soper or Tim Jackson if you want some accessible work on degrowth. And yours truly will be publishing something later this year too.
I don’t pretend to have all the answers but it is possible to imagine a future where illegally dumping clothes in the desert isn’t a sound business strategy. And the more we educate ourselves about the possibilities, the more likely they are to come to fruition.
In the meantime, if you want to be part of Recommerce Atacama’s campaign, head to their website and register to get notified when the next load of free clothes drops!
Read more about Recommerce Atacama and illegal dumping of clothing in Sarah Johnson’s excellent article in The Guardian.
Photo by Hermes Rivera on Unsplash
