USAgain launches an OC clothing drive to support job seekers

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• Recycling is great, as is helping people to get a new start. But in my opinion, this USAgain press release makes several misrepresentations, which I’d like to point out:

  1) Is USAgain really “local,” when its national headquarters is located in West Chicago?

  2) USAgain also touts itself as a “textile recycling company,” but its main activity is as a used clothes reseller. In February 2013, a USAgain spokesman told Indiana’s South Bend Tribune that “about 70% to 80% of what USAgain collects is sold in the reused clothing market.”

  To clarify: ‘re-use’ & ‘recycling’ are not the same. ‘Recycling’ is to process discarded items into new products. ‘Re-use’ is discarded items retaining their original form, to be used again.

  USAgain may refer to ‘re-use’ as if it were ‘recycling’ simply because it makes the company look “green.” But USAgain’s true interest in “green” is revealed through its frequent hints that it prefers “gently used” clothing, which it sells more profitably than the stained or ripped items that are only useful as recyclable material.

  3) I suspect that this clothing drive will benefit USAgain much more than WHW. After all, it’s only for the month of August; afterward, all those bins will likely remain where placed. And what happens to those donated business clothes if the donators forget to mark ‘WHW’ on their bags? Does USAgain get to sell those items for profit?

  Also consider that the clothing USAgain collects in its bins can be sold for far more than the paltry 1¢ or 2¢ per pound it has typically paid to a business or cash-strapped school that agrees to partner with the company. Prices vary, but “credential clothing” ― what USAgain collects ‘as is’ ― can sell for around 40¢ per pound. Even “mixed rags” can fetch 20¢ per Lb. Some clothing brokers sell paired used shoes for $1.65 a pound. Indeed, with enough pairs of decent shoes thrown in, USAgain might be selling the goods for an average of a dollar per pound!

  (concluded in my 2nd comment)

  • Good questions!

• (my 2nd comment)

  4) The piece quotes EPA data as saying over 12 million tons of textiles are trashed annually. That may be true, but the statistic is often twisted to mean everyone is throwing out an average of 68 pounds of *reusable clothes* every year.

  You see, EPA data does not represent *all* clothing that Americans get rid of, whether by throwing it out, or by giving it away somewhere. Rather, the EPA data pertains *only* to clothing estimated to have avoided the dump and to have been *recycled* into new products like rags and insulation.

  This means that EPA doesn’t keep track of the vast quantities of usable clothes that folks give away to friends and family, to churches, and to for-profit and nonprofit clothing collection companies.

  The global trade in used clothing is reportedly worth billions annually. The very existence of countless charities and for-profits collecting this valuable commodity strongly supports the contention that when Americans part with their still-wearable duds, they don’t recklessly toss them into the trash, as USAgain seems to imply. So it’s likely that most old clothing that *does* go to a landfill is not wearable, but actually thread-bare or ripped.

  We all need to learn to bag up our ‘non-wearables’ and take them preferably to a nonprofit like the Salvation Army or St. Vincent de Paul, which sells the stuff by the ton to help disadvantaged folks in the community. But give them to a for-profit company like USAgain, and you’re just helping someone to profit.

  My whole point: as for still wearable clothing items, for-profit companies like USAgain are reportedly causing donations of to dwindle at local charities. That would mean charitable groups in your community have less funding to help the needy.

  5) USAgain is controversial for even more disturbing reasons. Reports going back a decade suggest that the for-profit company, to quote one TV news investigation, “... routinely pretended to be a charity so business owners wouldn't ask for rent on the bin space.”

  6) Worse, Danish prosecutors link USAgain to an alleged cult called the Tvind Teachers Group. Five leaders of this group are Interpol fugitives wanted in their native Denmark in connection with a multimillion-dollar tax-fraud and embezzlement scheme.

  To clarify, it’s likely that the only Tvind Teachers Group members at USAgain are its officers, none of whom are wanted by Interpol. And the company’s laborers and local managers are probably just regular folks trying to hold down a job. But the following TV news investigation quotes a former USAgain branch manager who says she had been pressured to join the Teachers Group, reportedly an elite group within the broader Tvind organization.

  For more on this, Google search these reports:

  Millions In Clothing Donations Diverted From Charity kirotv

  Local Mayor Wants Red Bins Out Usagain in Seattle YouTube

  [The description box in the 2nd report has more info. Click 'Show more' while on that page.]

  Thanks for the chance to express my opinions. Please research before you donate.