<story><title>The Dark Reality Behind America’s Greatest Thrift Store Empire</title><url>https://medium.com/@aliceminium/the-dark-reality-behind-americas-greatest-thrift-store-empire-183967087a1e</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>sverige</author><text>The Salvation Army is similarly exploitive. I knew a manager of one of their facilities and had a tour that was (probably unintentionally) eye-opening. For example, he talked about how any clothes they didn&amp;#x27;t sell in a certain amount of time were sent to their &amp;quot;ragging operation,&amp;quot; made into bales, and then shipped to Africa.&lt;p&gt;The only difference from Goodwill as described here is that the population being exploited are addicts and ex-cons rather than mostly disabled folks. I want to like these organizations, I even think they started out with the right intentions, but greed takes over and ruins them.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>dpeck</author><text>I&amp;#x27;m not sure that ragging operation in and of itself is a bad thing. If the clothes aren&amp;#x27;t useful, that seems to be the next phase of life for textile.&lt;p&gt;I&amp;#x27;ve done some work with smaller charitable orgs sorting through donations and the policy was essentially that if it wasn&amp;#x27;t at minimum something you&amp;#x27;d wear to a job interview at a fast food restaurant (think clean jeans&amp;#x2F;polo shirts) then it went in the trash. Sadly this was the vast majority of donations as people tended to use the donations as a dumping ground for things they couldn&amp;#x27;t throw out themselves vs giving items that would actually help people down on their luck.</text></comment>
<story><title>The Dark Reality Behind America’s Greatest Thrift Store Empire</title><url>https://medium.com/@aliceminium/the-dark-reality-behind-americas-greatest-thrift-store-empire-183967087a1e</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>sverige</author><text>The Salvation Army is similarly exploitive. I knew a manager of one of their facilities and had a tour that was (probably unintentionally) eye-opening. For example, he talked about how any clothes they didn&amp;#x27;t sell in a certain amount of time were sent to their &amp;quot;ragging operation,&amp;quot; made into bales, and then shipped to Africa.&lt;p&gt;The only difference from Goodwill as described here is that the population being exploited are addicts and ex-cons rather than mostly disabled folks. I want to like these organizations, I even think they started out with the right intentions, but greed takes over and ruins them.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>ssharp</author><text>Genuinely curious, regarding this as well as the complaint in the article -- what should these stores do with the clothes that don&amp;#x27;t sell? It sounds like shipping them overseas is bad and throwing them away is bad.&lt;p&gt;I&amp;#x27;d assume there are large amounts clothes that don&amp;#x27;t end up selling and the only thing I know what to do with clothes I don&amp;#x27;t want anymore is donate them to Goodwill!</text></comment>