As seen on She's Eco
Half the fun of op shopping is the hunt. The sifting through of pre-loved Mickey Mouse t-shirts and old rugby jumpers, the scanning of the jeans rack for anything but skinny-legged low-rise denim, the dig through the dollar bin gold-panning-by-the-river style for that single-coin-worthy nugget of gold. For those well-seasoned op shoppers among us, the hunt is almost as great as the catch.
But what we see on the racks and the shelves of our well-loved shops of pre-loved stuff is only the tip of the donation iceberg. The Mickey Mouse t-shirts and the low-rise jeans, whether considered one person’s trash or another one’s treasure, are indeed not the kind of trash that is so often subjected to the donation piles of opportunity shops everywhere. I’d personally rather wear a plastic rubbish bag as a skirt than be forced into a pair of skinny jeans that barely graze my hips, but the plethora of jeans and the knick-knacks I’d give a hard pass on in my local op shop are far from the real trash that the volunteers are tasked with sifting through.
For donators and shoppers alike, opportunity shops can have the potential to be the best of both worlds. Finding a new life for one’s corduroy jacket or cow-hide handbag in the closet of another whilst donating some dollars to charity and avoiding a trip to landfill seems almost too good to be true. But maybe that’s because it is? Long-seen as a sustainable alternative to the fast-fashion retailers that clog shopping centres and Instagram feeds, op shopping is a practice that makes unique second-hand fashion accessible to most through its convenient ease and economic appeal. But when only a fraction of what is donated ends up on the racks, this sustainable-seeming option suddenly reveals a dark underworld.
For all the jackets and jeans we peruse through our op shop racks, a large proportion of what is donated to these havens of second-hand clothes don’t actually make it tothe shop floor. This is because a lot of the time, between vintage evening dresses and pre-loved sneakers, there lies a whole lot of junk. Whether by accident or because of laziness, by ignorance or because of sheer apathy, much of what ends up in the donation bins of our op shops should instead be ending up in rubbish bins.
Talking to the ABC, Debbie Evans, chief executive of Lifeline Tasmania, says that only around ten per cent of op shop donations are appropriate for sale. About sixty per cent, Ms Evans says, “we can turn into rags…the rest, unfortunately, ends up in landfill.” A lot of the donations thatopportunity shops receive look less like pre-loved clothes and potential treasured items, and more like, quite simply, trash. Loved-to-death is very different to pre-loved, just as donation bins are very different to rubbish bins. The sustainability issue of op shops that see such a large proportion of items and clothing ending up in landfill stems not from the op shoppers or the volunteers, but from those of us who donate.
Perhaps the mentality of donating is what needs to change. It’s easy enough to do the old anonymous drop off of rubbish bags full of whatever you’ve Marie Kondo-ed from your wardrobe and home, but after you clear out your cupboards and de-clutter your life, there is always someone at the other end who is tasked with de-cluttering your clutter. More often than not, this someone is a volunteer.
Robert from Lifeline told the ABC that a good way to consider what is appropriate to be donated to your local opportunity shop is to consider if your potential donation is appropriate to be given to a friend. “Would I be happy to give this to a friend?” Robert suggests. “If the answer is no, then the best way to get rid of it is at the tip. But if you were to give it to a friend, then absolutely we’d love to have it.” The whole system of charity shops rely on the ethos of re-homing pre-loved goods; if donators can consider if their donations can realistically find a new home in someone else’s hands before they get dropped off, they’re already helping the volunteers and op shops before their donations even reach the doors.
However, whether it’s the op shops or the individuals that sort the trash from the treasure, ultimately there is still a large proportion of pre-loved items that end up in landfill. To put the onus on the consumer and the user of the product will lift a heavy burden off our volunteers, but it doesn’t change the fact that much of the things we run out of use forend up more often than not being used as rubbish. There’s of course a myriad of solutions to this complex cycle of consumption; buying less, buying higher quality, taking care of one’s things. If we can slow down our purchases and invest in slow fashion, by the time we go to donate there’ll be less trash to sort from the treasure.
Needless to say, don’t stop donating. Op shops run off donations and goodwill and the charity of our angelic volunteers. If we can make these angels’ jobs a little easier, to give them all the Mickey Mouse t-shirts and low-rise denim jeans that we’d give to our friends, then the sustainability drawcard of our opportunity shops can remain as an environmentally friendly alternative to all the fast fashion of shopping centres and Instagram ads. Op shops are our friends, so donate to them as so.
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