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The Guardian - AU
The Guardian - AU
National
Lucianne Tonti

Dirty laundry: what really happens to your clothes when you donate them to charity?

Secondhand clothes that don’t get selected for resale get sorted and graded at centralised facilities.
Secondhand clothes that don’t get selected for resale get sorted and graded at centralised facilities. Composite: Getty Images

Every year, Australians donate the equivalent of 250m pairs of jeans to charity (around 200,000 tonnes of textiles) and send another 200,000 tonnes to landfill.

But only a fraction of donated clothes get resold in Australia. So what happens to your old jeans when you donate them? And how can consumers play their part to minimise waste in the process?

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