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Comment by ziddoap | Hacker News Reader

Unfortunately I'm not allowed to walk around naked, so I am forced to purchase clothes at some point. And at some later point, I have to dispose of them.

Your comment doesn't seem to address that, and it's pretty fundamental to the question, I think.

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> And at some later point, I have to dispose of them.

I somewhat disagree. You do have to get your clothes, but what is about the disposing of perfectly fine clothes that's necessary? It's only because we have too many of them. Wear the clothes until they're worn. Use the rags.

getting taller, getting fatter, skinnier, needing special clothing due to injury or pregnancy, etc...

Clothes ripping by accident, food or drink spilling on them and staining them, and so on...

We should normalize stains on clothing. Visual cleanliness is overrated, as long as hygiene is sufficient.

This will never happen.

Buy dark earthy tones that don’t stain easily?

All primates groom themselves to have straight, clean looking, glossy hair. Humans are not going to voluntarily wear clothing that shouts “I’m one of poor or autistic.” People who are much, much poorer than the average OECD inhabitant care greatly about their appearance.

Yes, but lots of primate species also conduct a lot of rape and bullying. The best distinction I have between humans and other primates is that humans can change what they have believed to was their nature. Until somewhat recently, on this planet, all primates lived in a jungle.

I'm not saying it'd be easy.

Yeah, I'm not sure we're doing a great job of getting humans to voluntarily stop raping and bullying either.

Proportionally, we're doing almost incomparably better.

I don't disagree with the general concept of reducing/reusing, but...

>Use the rags.

... OP said your comment doesn't seem to address the inevitability of disposal. You only responded with another method of reuse, but let's be honest here - rags need to be disposed of at some point, too.

I guess, at that point, the textile is just trash? Literally, just trash it.

I think the article was more about no place to donate perfectly fine clothes, and the uncertainty what happens to them after donating. Having to throw away 5 items (e.g. because your size changes) will weigh on your conscience a lot less than having to throw away 15.

Yeah but a rag isn't clothes, so it is outside of the scope of how to dispose of clothes. /s

Generally if they are made of natural stuff they should be bio degradable, so compost?

>perfectly fine clothes that's necessary

I didn't mean dispose of perfectly fine ones.

>It's only because we have too many of them.

In my case, it's actually because I'm becoming rather sphere-shaped with age, and some things no longer fit. I try to donate what I can, make others into rags (of which now I just have a giant garbage bag full of rags from the last 15 years of cutting up clothing that is too worn-out to donate -- I guess my children can deal with those when I pass).

For what it's worth, I agree with you that a focus on reducing how much we buy is super important. And, in a bit of a tongue-in-cheek way, I just wanted to highlight that there are plenty of legitimate scenarios where someone has clothes that are in decent shape but are no longer usable. And as the article highlights, I have no idea if the clothes that I drop off for donation actually make it anywhere other than a dump.

None of my clothes are perfectly fine unless I've hardly ever worn them.

The disposal of unworn clothes is probably a result of the fast fashion industry. But other than that clothes still get worn out and need to get replaced.

I wish I could repair and recolor all my clothes to make them look decent again, but I just can't.

I do fix things, but when it gets to the point where you close one hole just to find another after the next wash because the whole fabric became so threadbare, it's kinda pointless. At some point you can't fix it anymore, so it'll have to be replaced anyway.

What kinda garbage are you buying ?

This used to work with my parents' generation:

* A nice new sweater to wear around town becomes

* a nice sweater to wear around the house in the winter to save heating which becomes

* an old but still warm sweater to wear for yard work which becomes

* a ratty old sweater to wear to repair your bike or car without a care for oil stains.

I'm only one generation away and live in a town with good public transport, central heating which I can't adjust (and is always turned up too high) and will probably not be able to afford a house with a yard in the next 20 years.

It's worth noting that you and I are probably wear more times than the average amount. For example I've seen numbers like the average garment is worn on average seven times[1], and garments being considered "old" if they're worn twice.[2] Even if these numbers are exaggerated it's still much lower than typical use and waste compared to the average.

[1]https://www.cbsnews.com/news/ghana-fast-fashion-environmenta...

[2]https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-08-12/fast-fashion-turning-...

7x? I probably have too many clothes - we cull some every year or so, but my wife gets me a couple new things so it almost evens out. But probably half of what I wear in rotation is at least 3-4 years old, and some items closer to 10. I have a few items from 20 years ago, but I don't fit those so well any more (but keep for sentimental issues). That 'rotation' means I wear most of these shirts and pants 20-30x per year, at least. So most of the items I have get a minimum 50+ wearings, many over 100, and they're generally still quite wearable and 'newish' looking. I can not imagine wearing something 7x and claiming it's "old". Sheesh...

I feel the same way, I think the shirt I have on is probably 5 years old. It doesn't help that "fast fashion" garments are generally lower quality and wears worse than alternatives, but a fair number of people are just done with an outfit after being seen in it a couple times.

I actively try to avoid fashion trends and instead buy nice clothes that are difficult to place in time… anything that would look normal in a movie from 50 years ago and 2 years ago is ideal. This ensures that I won’t feel social pressure to replace it before it’s even 5 years old.

It’s funny seeing so many people promote “use them as rags!”! Sure that’s possible but it’s not an absolute. We can use old electronics as a paper weight (“and more!”) if we want to but people don’t normally promote that.

Presumably natural fibers (wool, cotton, hemp etc) can be composted (conveniently ignoring buttons etc) and everything synthetic can just be landfilled (what else can we do with plasitcs).

Im a bit of a cynic but it’s acceptable to “dispose of” items. Hopefully we can keep in mind reduce, reuse, and recycle but there’s a functional limit to those things.

It seems likely any “trash handling technology” to arise to settle this has bigger fish to fry than just clothing - if any “plastic eating microbe” was employed commercially it makes more sense to me to stick it on the landfills rather than an old laundry basket

> We can use old electronics as a paper weight (“and more!”) if we want to but people don’t normally promote that.

The reason for this is that people don't usually buy paperweights that are indistinguishable from, say, an old and discarded mobile phone.

They do, on the other hand, often buy things like hand towels or dish rags that are indistinguishable from home-made ones that are just old clothes torn up.

My 4-yr old kid calls them "broken-down t-shirts" - very useful to have a bag of them in the kitchen and bathroom for spills and messes. Before I was always torn between wasting a dishcloth or using a load of paper kitchen towel which might disintegrate.

I was torn by whether or not to comment on any wordplay

Purely accidental!

For sure, am not saying people shouldn’t reuse their clothing for x, y, z. I prefer to make patches for holes in clothes with other old clothes and just think the message should be more about reduce reuse recycle in general rather than “make rags”.

Edit for clarity

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