Op shops refuse taking old or rejected clothes having no space to stock

Experts say people need to make more considered decisions when buying new clothes. People were encouraged to donate their used or rejected clothes to op shops in Australia where after sorting 10 percent make it to the store floor for free delivery.

It was found that customers were heavily stigmatised and there was no dignity attached to shopping at a charity store. The term “opportunity shop”, or op shop, was invented in Australia by Lady Millie Tallis to give the shops a more dignified name.

The rest is taken by recycling firms, but one of Australia’s largest has stopped taking excess stock. Op-shop operators are worried they will need to spend more money sending donated clothes to landfill as fabric recycling firms abroad hit capacity.

The stores need to find a way to dispose of unsellable clothing, with many sending it to recycling firms where the fabric is given a second life. The Anglican Belltower Op Shop in Mount Gambier in regional South Australia uses a firm called Statewide Cleaning Cloths, which takes fabric and turns it into cleaning cloths sent across the world.



But the company has notified that it would no longer be taking stock from Australian stores. This means that rejected clothes would go to landfill. The immediate response has been to unpack what clothes before sending them to Statewide and put it on a free rack and see if the public might take it.

Concerned volunteers wanted to avoid sending clothes to landfill, but op shops receive so many donations they may have no choice. Statewide Cleaning Clothes takes clothes and sells them to Malaysia where the higher-quality items are sent to other countries and the rest converted into items like cleaning rags.



It operates across Australia and said it exported about 20 million kilograms of clothes from Australia to Malaysia in the past two years. The CEO of Asian Operations, Dale Warren, the operator of Statewide Cleaning Cloths, said the amount of second-hand textiles in the market was putting pressure on the recycling system.

Some countries like France subsidise their collection system so their material is a lot cheaper than from Australia.

On top of that, the shipping costs for the Asian corridor have increased dramatically, and those increases have an impact on the price.

People’s habits in Australia haven’t changed, and people are still discarding and donating clothing which is building up a lot more of a reserve.

Mr Warren said global markets for these materials were changing and the company’s warehouses are currently at capacity. With the difficulties finding customers to take the fabric and the industry’s current pricing meant the company would operate at a loss.

University of Technology Sydney Associate Professor Timo Rissanen has said the global second-hand clothing system was complex and getting larger as the globe produces more clothes.

The growth in total production of new clothing for the past 25 years or so has been much faster than the growth of humans.

This ranges from 80 billion items to 150 billion items, and the estimates speak to how difficult it is to paint a global picture, he said. Dr Rissanen said the joy of fashion should come from experimenting with what you have, not from buying new items.
Australians are now buying more new clothes per person than any other country.