Fire-Stricken LA Is Swamped With Clothing Donations — Not All of Them Wanted

“Due to shifting needs at local donation centers, please note that we will only be accepting clothing donations that are new/unused.”

“What not to bring: personal clothing donations.”

“We’re FULL.”

These were a few of the messages posted on signs and on social media by dozens of fire relief donation centres across Los Angeles this week.

Makeshift centres hastily arranged by volunteers in parking lots, businesses and homes have been flooded with items donated to help the thousands of people in the city who have lost everything. Organisers are asking for basic items taken for granted in normal times: sheets, blankets, toys and toilet paper. But one thing many say they’re now overwhelmed by: used clothes.

“We don’t want piles of random clothing,” said “Real Housewives” star Bethenny Frankel in a video on Instagram about her own donation drive, instead recommending people donate money and gift cards so families could quickly buy what they actually need rather than sifting through an overwhelming supply of cast-off products.

When crises hit, it is a natural impulse for people to look through their closets for anything that might be of use to people in need. But as they have filled those closets with fast fashion they view as disposable, there’s often far more supply than demand, even in the worst disasters. The outpouring of cast-offs reflects a culture of rampant overconsumption that has left wardrobes bulging with unwanted old clothes and served as one contributor to pollution levels that are now driving more intense and more frequent weather extremes.

“The overwhelming clothing donations in response to the LA fires are a clear indication of several systemic issues,” said Rachel Kibbe, CEO of consulting and advocacy firm Circular Services Group. “Much of the clothing being donated is likely low-quality, fast fashion that lacks longevity or utility for recipients in need.”

The LA Dream Center megachurch received over 10,000 pounds of donated clothes, while streetwear boutique Bricks & Wood posted that it had received 30,000 items in a day. Both have said they are no longer accepting clothing donations. Hundreds of fashion brands are also offering brand new products to affected families — Anine Bing, Everlane, Aerie, Madhappy and Reformation are just a few examples. One spreadsheet listed over 200 brands offering free products across categories.

Brands are now emphasising the fact that used clothes are being rejected. A Jan. 13 post on Instagram by J.Crew stated, “Due to the overwhelming need for new clothes, we invite anyone impacted by the devastating wildfires to come by our Beverly Connection J. Crew Factory store” for free clothing and N95 masks.

Other donation centres that have stopped accepting used clothing include West Hollywood lifestyle boutique Coop, AAPI organisation Pearl Society, Pasadena Convention Center, rental service Open Closit, the Altadena Girls donation programme started by a middle-school student, fashion label Gil Rodriguez, retail area Platform LA and multiple YMCAs. Community network organisation Mutual Aid LA posted a string of Instagram stories listing donation centres that were no longer accepting apparel.

Overwhelmed

Loreen Hwang, a content creator who started a donations drive Wednesday for families who lost their homes, quickly learned that without guidance, people were using the crisis to offload overflowing closets of stuff that they just wanted to get rid of.

“First I started getting a bunch of very worn clothes that definitely couldn’t be given — that were for the trash,” said Hwang. Clothes coming in ranged from the impractical, like clubbing outfits and heels, to downright unsanitary, such as used underwear. “I had to start being more specific.”

She began posting a list every day of the types of donations she was looking for.

Once she got stricter with her requirements, people stepped up. In typical LA fashion, donations of Gucci, Valentino and Prada started making their way to her. But she’s still received so many clothes that she’s turning them away for now.

Open Closit posted on its Instagram account that items going quickly were suitcases, hair tools, workout clothes, underwear, hairbrushes, shampoo and conditioner.

Closet-emptying donations create waste of both products and volunteers’ time, according to experts. Clothes that arrive in a hodgepodge of sizes and conditions are a logistical nightmare, requiring time to sort and process. Often the donations simply aren’t fit for purpose and themselves simply end up in the trash.

“When [aid organisations] end up with all of this other excess, they try to send it to other charities, but there’s almost always too much even then, and so unfortunately, a lot of clothing does end up in landfills,” said Kat Eves, a stylist focused on ethical and sustainable fashion.

The overwhelming supply of unusable old clothes can also be discouraging to now-homeless families. Many centres are trying to set up their donation areas like shoppable free boutiques and enlisting volunteers to sort through items before putting them out. Hwang set up a makeshift shop in the Clique nail salon, and has also been driving around dropping off deliveries to affected families.

“One family came yesterday and they’re like, ‘Everything that we’ve gotten donated has made us feel like we’re refugees,” she said.

Overconsumption

Halfway around the world, this is a familiar picture for Liz Ricketts, co-founder and executive director of The Or Foundation, a nonprofit that works in Ghana’s Kantamanto market — a massive secondhand trading hub where many discarded clothes from the US and Europe ultimately end up.

“To everyone touching pit stained T-shirts and unwashed undergarments, I want to welcome you to the daily reality faced by every human labouring in the secondhand supply chain,” said Ricketts in an email. “If it wasn’t already clear, this situation should make it obvious that the Global North has too much clothing and that this clothing is considered disposable.”

Kantamanto is currently grappling with its own disaster response, after much of the market burned to the ground early in the new year. Many traders have lost everything. Relief efforts have included removing mounds of burnt clothing from the area.

Advocates like Ricketts have long sounded the alarm that many of the clothes that end up in Kantamanto are little more than waste, in too poor condition or too low value to be suitable for resale. Exactly how many of the garments that move through the market ultimately end up as trash is a point of heated debate, but the entire secondhand clothing market is creaking under the strain of growing volumes of increasingly low-value fashion waste — the inevitable outcome of the rise of cheap fast fashion and trend cycles turbocharged by social media.

“This crisis is just one example of the broader challenges we face with overproduction, overconsumption, and insufficient infrastructure to handle clothing waste responsibly,” said Kibbe. “Until we address these systemic issues, we’ll continue to see similar situations arise.”