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In Ontario (Canada), Value Village[0] has been a staple of the working and lower-middle class for at least 15 to 20 years, and continues to be. I can afford new clothes more than I used to be able to, and I still choose to go there for some items. I regularly donate my old (still wearable) clothing to the CDA[1] or Value Village directly.

I wouldn't say no one.

[0] https://www.valuevillage.com/

[1] http://www.diabetes.ca/ - They're often responsible for the bin placement and even neighbourhood pickup of donated clothing and toys.

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I don't know why you would donate to a for profit thrift store like Value Village.

https://www.seattletimes.com/business/retail/state-ag-sues-v...

The owner has a giant estate on Mercer Island near Seattle that's second only to Paul Allen's.

I hear this argument a lot, but it is still a better alternative than a garbage can.

There are plenty of places you can donate that aren't for profit businesses pretending to be generous donors. For business clothes Dress for Success is a great option, but even Goodwill is a better option.

It is, and their marketing does a decent job of giving people donating things the warm fuzzies about it.

You can just do more good with the same amount of effort by finding distributors who aren't pocketing the bulk of the benefit. It is a small thing, and maybe not worth it to you; my general outlook here is that if it is worth the effort for me to take old stuff somewhere vs. tossing it, it is worth 10 more minutes to find the address of the local Quaker outreach, vets assistance group or some other honest nonprofit.

I don't know anything about the ownership but I do see the value and good that is created locally. Sometimes doing what's good locally may help somebody local and still make somebody else stinking rich. That doesn't mean I should stop helping out locally.

At least with Value Village I can see that people are being helped. f I donate elsewhere the benefits are difficult (if not impossible) to see.

This is the way I see it as well. They at the very least never claimed to be a charity and operated this way.

To that end, I also donate items to the Salvation Army who also makes a visible positive impact on lives and communities. They operate on a non-profit basis.

At least in Vancouver, organizations like Big Brothers do clothing drives and then sell the clothes on to Value Village. This way a charity makes some money along the way. Check around and see what’s available in your area.

I think entering a profit motive is not inherently a bad thing. When companies have a profit motive, there tends to be an extrinsic motivation to do well. When companies are able to survive on donations alone, you're relying entirely on intrinsic motivations that may not be as strong as we'd like to imagine.

Take for instance the Red Cross and Haiti as one of the most visible recent examples. They received half a billion dollars and achieved next to nothing. 25% [1] of that half billion was spent on "internal expenses." And they have very little clue or accounting of how the remaining money was even spent. Most of it was not even directly spent but instead donated to other nonprofits, who in turn took their cuts, and accountability quickly breaks down. According to that reporting from NPR, the "ambitious plan to build housing resulted in just six permanent homes" from that half a billion dollars.

That sort of waste and lack of any accountability is something that would rarely fly in any for profit business. Would that money in Haiti have been better spent by entrepreneurs looking to create housing/food and other necessities with open intentions of profiting in the long run? Maybe not a fair question since they'd have had to have tried hard to spend it worse, but that's the whole point. Aligning a good service with a good profit is, in my opinion, the true soul of capitalism. It's just such a shame that today it's often easier to make more money in less than ethical ways.

[1] - https://www.npr.org/2016/06/16/482020436/senators-report-fin...

Frankly, it's because their acceptance criteria are less stringent. When I donate there, they're fine with no-longer-wearable clothes (rag grade) and even tube TVs, both of which are pay-to-dispose at the local dump. Goodwill, on the other hand, refuses many donations that VV doesn't blink an eye at.

Sending me home with half a trunk still full of stuff that VV is happy to accept doesn't encourage bothering to go to the Goodwill. I just want to drop my old stuff, easily, at one location reasonably near my house, where it won't completely exit the value chain like it would in a landfill.

And Goodwill is even worse to its employees. Many of their workers are paid well under minimum wage, under the FLSA exemption for disabled workers. Their CEO makes over $400k though.. (The Salvation Army is quite good on a costs ratio, but has political positions I can't support.)

In Markham Ontario. The city has made textile recycling a city program. http://www.markham.ca/wps/portal/Markham/Residents/Recycling...

5-7% of garbage is textiles, and could be diverted away from a landfill.

Markham has a lot of trash sorting rules (organic, recycle, textiles, trash, etc.), which we complained about when they were implemented. Honestly, i can't imagine not having them anymore. You'd be surprised how much of your waste (by weight) is organic and can be composted. Best part is, i throw it away like trash, but the city does the whole composter stuff most people can't be bothered to.

Downtown Toronto is making a little more of a push for this these days as well.

My girlfriend and I have taken up being more strict with our sorting and we almost never through out a bag of actual trash anymore. We don't often dispose of textiles, as we reuse old shirts (ice skate rags, and other cleaning) or donate other clothing.

I didn't know about Markham's textile recycling program, though. That's great.

I'd like there to be three waste streams: fluid, compostable, everything else.

IIRC, a local study showed that fluids account for 50% of the weight of trash.

Then keep the compostable separate.

Finally, let the recycling sorters do there their thing, because do a better job and the curb side logistics are more simple.

Separate handling for specialty stuff like sharps, rechargeable batteries, prescriptions, hazardous waste, etc, of course.

What fluids end up in the trash? Leftover/spoiled vegetables and fruits for sure are water for a large part, but I can't think of anything I would throw out in fluid form.

Sorry, I can't refind the study, presentation I attended.

The local university's sustainability advocate group examined the campus' waste stream. IIRC, ~50 of the weight of the waste in trash cans was from liquids. From coffee cups, water bottles, soda cans.

Preventing this liquid from being bagged would reduce costs, weight, labor, etc.

My sole silly notion was a) put trash cans near sewers b) place a cup grinder / crusher on top of each can c) there's some kind of clever spout that diverts fluid into the sewer drain d) cup somehow falls thru to the can / bag.

Not very practical.

But maybe if it was made fun, like a big crank to manually turn, people would do it for kicks.

Plus kids clothes! My wife and I do about half of our clothes shopping for our 2.5 year old at Value Village and bring stuff there that we or she don't use anymore. She doesn't care about labels, the clothes are cheap, and she'll grow out of them in 6 months (and they may end up donated back again).

Even Value Village sends the stuff they can't sell (which is probably quite a bit) to these recyclers, who it seems now can't really use the materials.

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