Where Do Donated Clothes Go and What Can You Do About It?

You bag up last season's wardrobe, drop it at the charity bin, and walk away feeling good. But where do donated clothes actually go? The clothing donation truth is more complicated – and more sobering – than most of us want to believe.

Key Takeaways

• Only 20–30% of donated clothing ends up on charity shop shelves, sold locally
• Australia sent 220,000 tonnes of clothing to landfill in 2024 – roughly 880 million garments.
• Much of what gets exported overseas ends up disrupting local textile economies in developing countries
• Buying less and buying with purpose has more impact than donating unwanted fast fashion
• Shopping fair trade supports artisans directly – from the first stitch to your front door

So, Where Do Donated Clothes Actually Go?

The short answer: not where you'd hope.

When you donate a bag of clothing, the best items – clean, on-trend, in good condition – might make it to the shop floor. Insights have shown that less than 20% of donated clothes make it to thrift store shelves. The rest follow a longer, murkier path.

What happens to donated clothes after that first sort? 

A significant portion is sold in bulk to textile recyclers, who either repurpose the material into industrial rags and insulation or bundle it into large bales and ship it overseas.

Many textile recyclers package clothing by gender, size, and season, creating large bundles sold by weight to developing countries. These items then appear in second-hand markets where they're sold cheaply – and where they've had a damaging effect on local indigenous garment industries.

Where Do Charity Clothes End Up Internationally?

Much of Australia's donated clothing gets shipped to markets in Africa, South Asia, and Southeast Asia. Donated clothing waste commonly ends up in places like Accra, Ghana – home to the Kantamanto Market, the largest second-hand clothing market in the world – as well as Nairobi and parts of South-East Asia, where clothing often ends up in landfills or informal dumpsites.

The clothing donation truth that rarely gets told: a garment donated in good faith in Sydney can end up as landfill waste in Bangladesh, far from any benefit to anyone.

Charities aren't doing anything wrong. They're operating within a system that produces far more clothing than the world can absorb. The root of the problem is overproduction – and Australia sits near the top of that list.

Australia's Donated Clothes Landfill Problem

The scale of what's happening locally is hard to ignore.

According to Seamless, Australia's clothing product stewardship scheme, Australians sent 220,000 tonnes of clothing to landfill in 2024 – equivalent to over half (59%) of all clothing imported into the country that year.

Australia has surpassed the US as the world's biggest consumer of textiles per capita. Australians buy an average of 56 new clothing items a year, compared to 53 in the US, 33 in the UK, and 30 in China.

So we're buying more, keeping things less, and donating volumes the system simply can't absorb. Donated clothes going to landfill – here and overseas – is the inevitable result.

The Real Problem Isn't Donating. It's Overbuying.

This isn't a story about bad charity shops or broken systems. It's about too much.

Fast fashion has built a world where clothing is so cheap and so disposable that we treat it as a single-use product. We donate because it feels like the right thing to do. But when the volume of cast-offs exceeds what can genuinely be reused, even well-intentioned donations create waste.

The honest version of what happens to donated clothes is this: donating is better than binning, but it doesn't undo the impact of buying disposable clothing in the first place.

What You Can Do Instead

There are practical, meaningful ways to respond.

1. Buy less, buy better. Choosing fewer, well-made pieces that last for years reduces your overall contribution to the textile waste cycle. When something wears out, it doesn't need replacing immediately – or replacing with something cheap.

1. Donate thoughtfully. Only donate items that are clean, wearable, and in decent condition. Charity shops are already overwhelmed by low-quality donations they can't sell. If something is genuinely worn out, look for a textile recycling point rather than a donation bin.

1. Choose fair trade. When you do buy new, choose clothing made under verified ethical standards. Our sustainable handmade clothing collection features pieces made by skilled artisans paid a fair wage, working in safe conditions – clothing created with the full intention of lasting.

1. Give gifts that give back. Our range of Fair Trade gifts in Australia makes it easier to shop with purpose, supporting communities that depend on ethical trade partnerships for their livelihood and dignity.

A Different Kind of Purchase

When you shop with The Leprosy Mission Shop, your purchase works on two levels.

Our Fair Trade fashion collection connects you to artisans in India, Bangladesh, Nepal, and beyond – people whose craft is valued, fairly compensated, and grounded in long-standing traditions, unlike the majority of high-street fast fashion shops. 

You can read more about the lives behind that work in 2025: Transforming Lives Through Hope, which shares the stories our fair trade partnerships help make possible.

The same principle runs through our Fair Trade homewares – goods made with intention rather than mass-produced and quickly discarded.

Understanding where donated clothes end up leads to a bigger question: what kind of system do we want to support? Fair trade is one practical answer. It's not about perfection. It's about choosing clothing that was made well, paid for fairly, and built to be worn again and again.