Grad students, 1…
…Big box retailers, 0.
Did you catch this story in the New York Times? I rarely read anything in the N.Y./Region section, but this was really interesting.
It is winter. A third of the city is poor. And unworn clothing is being destroyed nightly.
A few doors down on 35th Street, hundreds of garments tagged for sale in Wal-Mart — hoodies and T-shirts and pants — were discovered in trash bags the week before Christmas, apparently dumped by a contractor for Wal-Mart that has space on the block.
Each piece of clothing had holes punched through it by a machine.
They were found by Cynthia Magnus, who attends classes at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York on Fifth Avenue and noticed the piles of discarded clothing as she walked to the subway station in Herald Square. She was aghast at the waste, and dragged some of the bags home to Brooklyn, hoping that someone would be willing to take on the job of patching the clothes and making them wearable.
According to a Wal-Mart spokesperson, this is atypical; they say they usually donate their discarded clothes to charity and don’t seem to know why or how this happened. Not so for H&M, apparently.
During her walks down 35th Street, Ms. Magnus said, it is more common to find destroyed clothing in the H & M trash. On Dec. 7, during an early cold snap, she said, she saw about 20 bags filled with H & M clothing that had been cut up.
“Gloves with the fingers cut off,” Ms. Magnus said, reciting the inventory of ruined items. “Warm socks. Cute patent leather Mary Jane school shoes, maybe for fourth graders, with the instep cut up with a scissor. Men’s jackets, slashed across the body and the arms. The puffy fiber fill was coming out in big white cotton balls.” The jackets were tagged $59, $79 and $129.
And nobody from H&M seems to be talking about it. Reporter Jim Dwyer writes, “various officials did not respond to 10 inquiries made Tuesday by phone and e-mail.” No one has answered the letter that Cynthia Magnus wrote. Are they embarrassed by their flagrant disinterest in helping the poor? By their demonstration that they’d rather destroy these clothes than let some charity case wear them? Being quiet doesn’t make it any less embarrassing; if anything, it makes it more so.
Well, kudos to Ms. Magnus, and Mr. Dwyer, for bringing this to our attention. I never really thought before about what happens to unsold merchandise. I suppose I just assumed it sat on the shelves until it eventually sold, but then again I’ve never really grasped the concept of “new fashions for spring” sort of stuff. I would guess most places donate unsold clothes, but this article definitely makes me want to start asking.
Comments
One Response to “Grad students, 1…”
Leave a Reply
-
Recent Comments
sandeep on Thoughts on religious tolerance
bruce on Alternative medicine: worth a try?
Mike on Think before you speak
Zychan on What is Acts 29?
Emily on Grad students, 1…
Yeah, this is pretty typical behaviour. When I was “down on my luck” a few years back I used to dumpster dive at the local mall all the time. The best time to go is when the stores were changing over from one season to another – lots of great finds. Like the article says, many were damaged in someway to prevent people like me doing what we do, but truth is with a little thread & ingenuity they could be fixed up, and on a cold night a jacket with a hole in it was better than no jacket at all. Sometimes the clothes wouldn’t be damaged at all, and would still be in their original shipment packaging. Such a waste!