Do you have a nice feeling when you deposit your clothes into a charity container or bring them back to a close the loop bin? well, maybe we shouldn´t actually feel very proud about ourselves. Why? because the second hand fashion doens´t always look cool and it´s related to a kilo sale in a fancy vintage factory with industrial lamps, dj music and overpriced drinks.

most of the clothes that we deposit in these containers start a journey around the world without an enviromental friendly ticket. Some of them are still trendy or belong to a well known brand so they are easily sold to help charity projects. But just as regular shops these business also have unsold merchandise, what´s next?

Re-donate, sell to wholesalers, maybe repurpose, send to recycling facilities etc., all very legal and transparent business estrategies, but where this fashion jump into the black market and can end up on a desert creating a mountain of waste and polluting water, air and the whole enviroment of a country?

Europa exports legally to Latinamerica tons of second hand clothes that can be classified in three easy categories -First Quality; merchandise in very good conditions – Second Quality; those clothes have seen better days but still they can make it to the fleamarkets for a ridiculous price and it will be repaired or recycled by the people who is buying it – Third Quality; left overs scraps unusable pieces of what someday was a piece of clothing and that´s the 85% of the containers, eighty five!!!

Trust me people, when we in Latinamerica say that something it´s unusable, we don´t lie. We have tried for sure to mend it, glue it, repair it, seal it, and use it in very inconveivable creative ways. There are wonderful project like the building bricks made out of textil waste