This is "Marketplace."
Whoa.
Pajamas, old dresses.
Oh, my gosh!
Where do all your old clothes really end up?
Ultimately, it is going to end up in a landfill.
Charlsie: We follow the trail around the world.
The high cost of fast fashion.
This is your "Marketplace."
I'm here checking out some of the biggest fashion chains in
the world but I'm not shopping for new clothes.
I'm actually trying to get rid of some of my old ones.
So these are my all-time favourite
sweat pants from college.
These, I washed them and they totally shrunk.
These were also super cheap.
This is just like an old tee-shirt.
It was black at one point in its life.
Some retailers are on a mission.
They want your unwanted clothes, and some are competing with
charities for it.
There's a new bin in town and the message is clear:
Don't throw old clothes in the garbage,
dump them here.
They'll take curtains, they'll take jeans.
They'll even take your old underwear.
[ ♪♪ ]
>> Charlsie: Drop off old clothes and get a coupon to
save money when you buy new ones.
>> Charlsie: But before I part with my old clothes,
I've got a few more questions.
These bins sure make us all feel good.
But are they doing as much good as we think?
Look at this!
Look at these bags!
Most of us are like the Bretons and the Palmas
in Markham, Ontario.
Somehow, we end up with too many clothes.
>> Emily, what's in here?
Old clothes that are too small for me.
Charlsie: They purge a few times a year,
normally dropping their haul in a charity bin.
Whoa!
Stuff like these have, like, holes in them.
Charlsie: This isn't just a pile of clothes.
It's now a pile of textile waste.
And we want to show the kids
just how big the problem really is.
[ ♪♪ ]
Are you guys ready to go inside and see what happens to all
those clothes that you donate?
Yes.
All right. Let's go inside.
[ ♪♪ ]
Go on in, take a look.
Whoa!
[ ♪♪ ]
Clothes! Clothes!
That's clothes.
Clothes. Do you see that?
Oh, my gosh.
Clothes!
That's a crazy pile.
Charlsie: And get this, all of this is what's leftover,
the stuff no one wants.
The stuff that thrift stores can't sell.
All those clothes you guys piled up yesterday,
this is where it can end up.
It's a lot of clothes.
It wasn't what I was expecting to see.
Charlsie: One warehouse, more than 200,000 pounds
of textile waste each week.
And that's just from in and around Toronto.
Across the country, we've got nine other locations
similar to this one.
The last year or two years, probably a 15 to 20% growth in
the overall volume of textiles that are coming in.
Charlsie: Tonny Colyn is the head of donations for
Salvation Army Canada.
So, how do you think fast fashion has impacted...this?
All of this.
It's had a massive effect.
And all of that stuff has to go somewhere.
Charlsie: The dads of these two families,
Michael Palma and Norman Breton can't believe it.
Their coats or boots might be okay,
but they want something new.
If they need or if they want, it's a big question.
A lot of times they want stuff but they don't need it.
Charlsie: Still, we can't seem to get our hands
on fast fashion fast enough.
Cheap, trendy, disposable clothes.
And we're even bragging about it.
And I ended up with a bag full of clothes.
Charlsie: We're all buying too much,
400% more, since the 1980's.
The quality isn't all that great but the
prices are fantastic.
Charlsie: But not all of our old clothes make it
to the donation bin.
Most of it, 85%, ends up in landfills.
In North America, it's estimated to be at least
25 billion pounds a year.
In Canada alone, imagine a mountain three times the size of
Toronto's Rogers Centre Stadium where they don't biodegrade
easily because many are made with fabrics that can't
be broken down.
Releasing chemicals and dyes into our rivers, soil.
That's part of the reason why fashion is one of the
world's top polluters.
So in the last few years, some of the biggest names in the
business, Levi's, Nike, Adidas, Zara
have started recycling programs.
All retailers with donation bins in stores calling out
for your old garments.
But none go as far as H&M, they will take anything,
jeans, curtains, even underwear, just check out their ads.
The thing that you never wore, this and this and that.
The thing with the colour that wasn't your colour,
bring it on.
Charlsie: This is one of H&M's latest ad campaigns.
Cut your jeans into pieces and make new jeans out of them.
Charlsie: "Cut your jeans into pieces
"and make new jeans out of them."
With your help, we literally turn your old clothes
into new garments.
Charlsie: "We literally turn your old clothes
"into new garments."
Garments in the worst condition can be transformed
into insulation material or textile fibers woven into cloth,
reborn as fashionable new clothes
of every conceivable kind.
Charlsie: What do you think about recycling clothes?
I think that's amazing.
That's a great plan.
Charlsie: We're talking about recycling clothes.
What does that make you think is happening to the stuff?
I think maybe it's, like, like, refurbish the clothes
and, like, get them to look new again.
Charlsie: What do you think happens to that stuff?
Doesn't it get recycled to make new clothes
from the old clothes?
Let's shred it into fibers and stitch it
into something new.
The only thing we will not do it waste it.
Charlsie: Bold recycling claims.
They sound great, but are they really?
[ ♪♪ ]
[ Flight Attendant Over Intercom ]
To try to find out, we head to New York City,
one of the fashion capitals of the world.
[ ♪♪ ]
With jackets, you always have to check the lining.
Charlsie: Meet Elizabeth Cline,
an anti-fast fashion crusader.
Because of what she knows, she only wears used clothes.
It's made her a pro at assessing cast-offs.
On a coat, the first thing you would do is
make sure the zippers work.
Especially fast fashion, like a lot of the fasteners will break
and chip really quickly.
Charlsie: We show her H&M's marketing and ask her what she
thinks about making new clothes out of your old ones.
Shred it into fibers and stitch it into something new.
The reality is that currently only about 1% of clothing is
actually recycled and the very literal sense of the word.
Charlsie: 1%?
1%.
Charlsie: 1%...is recycled?
If you're talking about recycling in terms of taking
fibers and breaking them down and turning them
back into new fibers, it's 1%.
Charlsie: Why is it so hard to just take my old shirt and
turn it into a new one, why can't you just do is that?
A lot of our clothes are made out of blended fibers, so maybe
this is acrylic and wool and cotton mixed together,
maybe my tights are cotton and elastin,
that makes it difficult to recycle.
The other challenge is that when you recycle cotton and wool,
it diminishes the quality of that material so it weakens the
cotton and wool strand and gives you a lesser product.
Charlsie: Bottom line, the technology just isn't there yet.
It's way too expensive and too time consuming
to make new clothes from old ones.
It's also a more skeptical side of me that knows that the
reason why H&M is focusing on textile recycling is because
it's an easy sustainability win for them.
It doesn't involve them changing their production model at all to
collect clothes and make sure that they get a second life.
It doesn't make the fast fashion system anymore sustainable.
Charlsie: Experts agree fast fashion needs to change if we
really want to make a difference.
Remember when fashion had four seasons,
winter, spring, summer and fall?
Now the trends change almost every day.
Here's how this Swedish clothing giant CEO explains it.
They have new garments coming into the stores almost every day
so if you go to an H&M store today and come back two days
later, you will always find something new.
Charlsie: H&M salespeople tell us new clothes come in
every Monday, Wednesday, Friday, and Sunday.
That works out to half a billion products a year.
And it's why H&M's recycling campaign makes
Claudia Marsales so mad.
It really is a form of greenwashing.
Charlsie: She's the head of Markham, Ontario's
waste programs, one of the few Canadian cities
to actually ban textiles from landfills.
In order for the fast fashion outlets to recycle what they
make, it would take 12 years to recycle
what they sell in 48 hours.
Like it's just-- it's just-- so that sort of tells me it's
really more about foot traffic, marketing,
greenwashing than about really addressing the broken business
model of fast fashion.
>> Charlsie: We asked H&M to come on camera and talk about
their recycling program.
They declined, assuring us they don't want to
encourage a throw-away attitude.
Their clothes are good quality and made to last.
And they are working towards a business model where,
eventually, all their clothes can be recycled.
>> At least they're trying?
>> Yes, well, but they're a cause of the problem so fast
fashion retailers, their business model is the problem.
They're making too much, they're selling it too cheap,
it's disposable clothing.
Doing a bit of back-end recycling and a bit of
commercials really doesn't address that issue.
[ ♪♪ ]
>> Charlsie: And ask some customers one of the things they
love most about the program?
It's the discount.
That incentive to keep buying.
>> I put it in the bin and then they give me a discount,
I saw it and it's like oh, snap.
You know, um, it's a way to, like,
you know, like, help me and help them at the same time.
>> Charlsie: What do you mean when you say help you and help
someone else?
>> Um, help me by, you know, saving money and help them by
providing free clothing for them.
>> We just chuck it in the bin and they did offer,
like, a $5 discount.
>> Charlsie: H&M might be collecting your old clothes.
More than 55,000 tonnes so far, but if they're barely making new
clothes from your donations, where do they all go?
These shoppers have a theory.
Where do you think those clothes go that you put in H&M?
>> They probably go to, like, people who need them,
probably like shelters or other places that use the clothes.
>> Probably give it for free, or something,
to, like, the people that need it.
>> Charlsie: Where do you think that stuff goes,
what do you think happens to it?
>> Hopefully to just some needy people.
>> Yeah. >> Mmm-hmm.
>> Who still want to be fashionable.
>> Charlsie: Many of us think our old clothes are given to the
less fortunate.
Wrong.
And maybe you're telling yourself that to feel better
about buying more, too.
Well, Cline coined a term for this.
[ ♪♪ ]
>> Charlsie: What's the clothing deficit myth?
>> So, the clothing deficit myth is the idea that when we give
clothes to charity, they're going to go to someone locally
in our community in need.
But in the era of fast fashion, there's far more unwanted
clothes than there are people in need.
[ ♪♪ ]
>> Charlsie: The Salvation Army knows all about that.
Remember, this is all the stuff they can't sell at their stores.
So what do they do with all these leftovers?
They sell it-- to a middle man.
And the retailers do the same thing with all
your donations, too.
In Canada, H&M gives the money it makes off your donations
to UNICEF.
Here's the thing.
All textiles are worth money.
The stuff that's in really rough shape is shredded for painter's
cloths or insulation, for example, then sold.
But the majority of all donated clothes are shipped overseas to
developing countries and they're sold there, too.
Not donated or given to needy people.
And if you think that means it's not going to end up in
landfills, think again.
We follow the trail of your old tee-shirts.
Around the world.
>> The black stripes here are from Canada.
>> Charlsie: You can't afford to miss this trip.
This is your "Marketplace."
[ ♪♪ ]
>> Charlsie: The real deal on your "Marketplace."
[ ♪♪ ]
>> Charlsie: We love our clothes.
Now so cheap, you can make a different statement every day.
These things are $3?
$5.
But they come with a huge cost.
Part of the reason why some fast fashion chains,
like H&M, say they've got recycling programs like this.
>> The Earth simply cannot bear so many clothes ending their
lives as waste.
H&M has a far better answer.
>> Charlsie: But we learnt less than 1% of the world's
used clothes are turned into new ones.
The majority of those donations from retailer and charity bins
are baled and sold overseas.
[ ♪♪ ]
>> This is Nairobi, Kenya, the country at the top of the list
when it comes to buying your old clothes.
Kenya is one of Canada's best customers.
In a given year, they buy more than $20 million worth of our
old clothes.
>> All the rest with the black stripes,
the black stripes here are from Canada.
These are a variety of kids clothing.
This one is a jacket.
Ladies tee-shirts.
>> Charlsie: Maina Andrew is a used clothing importer.
>> People from Canada and America,
they are actually a bit huge.
>> Charlsie: Scenes like this aren't isolated.
You'll see them all over Africa, South and Central America.
A lot of this is stuff Canadians donated for free,
only for it to be sold here for profit to vendors like
Alice Nyansarora Anunda, who brings it to her local market.
They call the clothes, "Mitumba."
>> No, that one, it's just a nickname we gave it,
"Mitumba" means, "Old" in our culture.
>> Charlsie: Nearly 13,000 kilometres away.
But take a closer look and there they are.
The names you know.
AEO, Zara, Adidas, H&M.
>> The way we open bales, we know plans where there's new
clothes, especially those which come from Canada.
>> Charlsie: But Andrew notices many of the clothes are low
quality, tough to sell.
>> We just dump them.
If people don't buy them, we just dump them.
[ ♪♪ ]
>> They do go in the piles of garbage,
very many of them.
>> Charlsie: He says this happens regularly right behind
the market, discarding and burning clothes Canadians don't
want and neither do Kenyans.
>> Sometimes they pack even very old items.
You can even pack items that are not even good,
and they end up dumping them in Africa or in Kenya.
[ ♪♪ ]
>> Yeah, we burn them and it is a lost work because we have
already bought them.
[ ♪♪ ]
>> Charlsie: All those popular brands in the crowded markets,
Elizabeth Cline has seen them, too.
She's been to Kenya.
>> There are a lot of different companies around the world that
are working on textile recycling in the truest sense of the word,
but it's really in the very early stages.
Whether it stays in the United States or if it ends up in
Africa, ultimately it is going to end up in the landfill.
>> Charlsie: We tell H&M about this Kenyan market
and all the fires.
They say its middle man I:CO, which handles pickup and
distribution of their bins, has really high standards.
But they are still working on building a better tracking
system so this doesn't keep happening.
>> Dumping is always cheaper.
It's always the cheaper option.
There's only one solution.
The producer of the clothing is responsible cradle to grave.
So they make the tee-shirt, they sell the tee-shirt,
the tee-shirt comes back, they have to recycle that tee-shirt.
They can't put it in a third world country.
>> As far as South Africa is concerned,
we banned secondhand clothing.
>> When a country survives on secondhand things,
secondhand clothes, it means there's something wrong with
that system.
>> Threatening the survival of the local textiles industry.
>> Charlsie: And now many of those countries
are fighting back.
East African countries sent the world a message recently.
They don't want our hand-me-downs and
tried to ban them.
Their government said it was destroying
their own textile market.
>> Secondhand clothes are quite cheap and any manufactured
textile would not be able to compete with them.
>> Charlsie: And despite everything you just watched,
Cline says H&M group is a frontrunner in
sustainability efforts.
Compared to other brands, they are leaders.
I don't know what that says about the rest of the fashion
industry, that a fast fashion chain is
at the top of that list.
Just know that your textile waste is an environmental issue.
Textile waste in landfills is one of the fastest growing
categories of waste, and it's such an easy thing to do
something about.
>> Charlsie: So what should you do with all your old clothes?
The answers, coming right up.
Do you have a story you want us to investigate?
Write to us, Marketplace@cbc.ca.
[ ♪♪ ]
>> The high cost of fashion on your "Marketplace."
Do you ever impulse buy?
>> Absolutely.
>> Charlsie: What was the last thing you bought that now you
see, and you're like, "What was I thinking?"
>> Clothing always.
>> Charlsie: On average, we buy almost 70 clothing items
every year.
That means we're buying new clothes every week.
What did you buy?
>> A lot of stuff.
>> Charlsie: Did you need anything?
>> No.
>> Charlsie: Just looking around and you bought a few things.
>> Yes, I bought lots of things.
Leggings, shirts, socks, underwear.
>> Charlsie: Most of these styles will end up trashed
in landfill.
Fast fashion is a big part of the problem,
but we don't have to buy in.
So this is 50% polyester, 50% cotton.
It's really hard to separate those fibers and make new stuff.
>> You bet.
>> Charlsie: Do you know how many litres of water goes into
making a single pair of jeans?
Almost 4,000 litres.
>> Wow. >> Whoo.
>> That's crazy.
[ ♪♪ ]
>> Charlsie: And sometimes just seeing the waste
makes a difference.
These families swear they'll change their ways.
>> They want to look at the cute things,
things that look good but not necessarily good quality.
>> We have to-- we try to teach them to use their stuff until
it's worn out.
>> Charlsie: Speaking of waste and consumption,
I've still got my bag of clothes to get rid of.
I don't really know where the best place is to go
with my stuff.
And I think people at home who see this are probably going to
have the same question.
>> Some people like to swap the clothes,
so that's the first line of defence.
If it's in really good condition,
you can take them to a consignment store.
You can also donate to a reputable charity.
Do your research on who you're giving your clothing to.
Don't buy so much.
>> Charlsie: So bottom line, when it comes to your used
clothing, don't throw it away, try and give it to somebody who
can actually use it.
Hey, girls, does anybody need a tee-shirt?
No, you sure?
Black dress pants?
Hardly ever wore them.
This is cool, right?
Zipper in the back.
>> I think I'm okay.
>> Charlsie: Any chance you want to return yours and
take these ones.
>> No, thank you.
>> Charlsie: They're a size small.
I wore them, like, twice.
>> No, thank you.
>> Charlsie: No? >> No.
>> Charlsie: Do any of you need a pair of pajama pants or know
someone who might want these?
>> I'll take them. >> Charlsie: Tee shirt?
>> I'll take them.
>> Charlsie: Any chance you want a pair of Levi's?
>> Sure, size 6, me.
>> Charlsie: Awesome! >> Awesome.
>> Charlsie: There you go and they won't go
to landfill this way.
>> No.
>> Charlsie: Maybe there is no perfect solution to this
complicated problem.
But if there's something I've learned throughout this process,
it's that there is something I can do and,
for me, that will mean buying less.
[ ♪♪ ]
>> Announcer: A special, year long Marketplace investigation.
We go undercover, inside nursing homes.
>> I was...
>> Announcer: Families fighting for better care.
>> Die, die...
>> Woman: My poor mother.
>> Announcer: Has long term care reached a crisis point?
>> Oh, we're way past that.
I think we've been in crisis for years.
>> If this happened in a day care,
that day care would be shut down in five minutes.
>> Announcer: How to fight for better care,
On the next Marketplace.