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International Distributors |
Background Background Only fifteen years ago the situation was very different. Of course these terms existed at that time, but during this period their significance has spread widely among people. The recycling of clothes however has a long history - the masters have given their discarded trousers and shirts to their servants. In the 50's, it was common for the master builder's wife to pass on the son's clothes to the school teacher's son, who was a bit younger and who was very happy for the quality clothes. Religious groups and other organizations have been running shops with used clothes for a long time. The picture changed with the explosive growth of the consumer society: now people began to throw away, and it was not 'proper' to wear used clothes, let alone buy it. The amounts of waste increased - everywhere - causing harm to the environment and great costs in connection to its disposal, both energy-wise and pollution-wise. In the 70’s, people’s awareness of Third World living conditions gradually increased, partly due to the spread of television, and development organizations started collecting clothes with the intention of sending them to the people in the poor parts of the world. 'Ulandshjælp fra Folk til Folk' [Development Aid from People to People], founded in 1977, collected thousands of tons of clothes and sent them in large shipments to people of Southern Africa - mainly relying on voluntary efforts and getting donations for the shipments of the containers. All this was good for the recipients, as well as for the people donating the clothes. Instead of considering the clothes as less and less valuable, the attitudes changed towards seeing the used clothes as a value which others could benefit from. Contributing to the improvement of poor people’s lives also improves the donor's own life. The shipments meant that costs, economic as well as the costs of destroying the nature, were gradually reduced with the reduced amounts of wasted clothes. Awareness increased also in many other fields - pollution control, health, protection of nature, environmental improvement, etc. In the middle of the 80's this development was well on its way. Yet no one had dared so far to combine the charitable objectives with commercial methods - since the 60's this had been a no-go-area if one wanted to stay "politically correct". This in spite of the fact that everyone could see how the corporate sector constantly and dynamically developed their efficiency and methods within all areas, helped forward both by capable and inspiring people, attracted by the salary and the excitement of participating there where many new endeavors were created, as well as by the constant competition not to succumb. It was clear, however, that a huge effort was needed in the area of used clothes. To accomplish this it was necessary to resort to untraditional methods - such as being more professional and open to a commercial control of this effort. In this situation the research project International Distributors came into being. Idea of the project The project saw itself contributing to the work of finding ways which, on a global scale and in the long perspective, could give people in poor countries a well placed and perceptibly helping hand. The whole idea of the project was charitable. Without this aspect - no project. The whole question concerning collection of, and trade with, used clothes, which otherwise would have been discarded, was in 1987 a quite unchartered area - in contrast to the situation today where the trade of used clothes has developed to comprise a world wide market with many competing players. Then in June 1987 IFAS, in cooperation with Distributors International, applied the Foundation for support to a research project with the title International Distributors. The aim was to do research into, and set up models for, how materials, normally discarded as waste, and with special emphasis on clothes, could be collected and transformed into useful items for people in the poor part of the world. In stead of being thrown away the clothes were to be collected, cleaned and ironed, repaired, and all in all processed, so that a "zero value" was transformed into a higher value, which it would still have when brought to the third world and used. The research project has had a big impact on the development of the whole question of professional and commercial collection of used clothes. In Europe it turned out to be an average of 10-11 kg of clothes per person per year. The researchers collected and treated statistics from many European countries and could on this background set up models for how the collection of clothes could take place, what transport systems were needed, and how the sorting of the clothes into different categories could be approached. Where should the collection containers be placed? How did one arrange a good route for the collection truck? The sorting was developed to such an accuracy that a total of 120 categories of clothes were developed in the process which started at the sorting line. This degree of detail and precision has been totally decisive for reaching the goal of transforming zero value to new value, and for establishing an economically viable cycle. The researchers in this project then developed plans and a model for an industrial enterprise which would process the clothes - either producing recycled secondhand clothes, shreds of worn out clothes to use as filling in blankets, for example, or transformation of rags to fibers to be used for producing new textiles.
The research project has had big and good effects. For development organizations such as UFF and Humana People to People the scientific approach to the fields of refining, clarifying and generally developing the work has been activating and inspiring towards reaching optimal results in the collection of the used clothes: Placement of the clothes collection containers, statistics for the profit on each of them, cost-benefit analyses in relation to transport expenses; the development of more and more detailed categories in the sorting of the clothes, and the professional knowledge about which clients want which categories; where is the dividing line between clothes for second hand shops in Europe and clothes for sale in the Third World; what kind of clothes must be sold by the piece, what kind in big volumes to wholesale dealers; what kind is worthwhile upgrading, and what kind should rather be made into rags or shredded; how should one take fashion and seasons into consideration? etc. The shipment to the receiving countries also provided countless ways of refining and delivering a better product at less cost - by efficient baling and packing into containers to keep the transport costs down, by professional handling of shipping and customs issues, by educating people to receive the goods in the harbor and securing the further transport. The distribution of clothes also offered new possibilities for advances - this project became ground braking with its departure from the traditional opinion that one could not sell the clothes to the people one wished to help in the Third World. The project received strong support for this pioneer thinking from the Mozambican authorities, who lectured DAPP, and also Distributors International, about the fact that it is best for people to give something in return for the clothes they receive. This creates dignity, while only receiving a kind of alms (except for in emergency situations, naturally) pulls in the opposite direction. Furthermore this would get the normal economy better going. And the money from the sales could then be invested in development projects. This point of view spread from the Mozambican authorities to DAPP in Mozambique and on to the researchers of this project. Through this fairly brief project this trailblazing development began to be carried out in praxis. During the following years gradually larger amounts of values which otherwise would have been wasted, were transferred from Europe and the US/North America to poor countries, where it has meant both good clothes for many, many people, as well as development in the form of supported projects. The First Progress Report II: Research into the recycling process. III: Set up of a model for processing clothes collected in Europe. The Second Progress Report The Third Progress Report The project has now clearly reached a significant phase, where much is going
on and many concrete results are obtained in all parts of the project. The experiences from Togo and Benin are satisfactory, and the project runs according to plans. The 8th and Final Report IFAS and the Foundation finalized the project from their side by treating this final report in October 1990. Michael Grønborg, Humana People to People, explains:"As an example of this development it can be mentioned that in the wake of these experiences, Development Aid from People to People in Scandinavia started a big scale production of collection containers and started setting them up wherever possible. This meant that for a three year period, starting in 1987, the amount of clothes collected in Sweden increased from 800 tons to 3000 tons per year - and SIDA (Swedish International Development Agency) paid for the shipment to Africa. The project 'International Distributors' and the developments instigated from its experiences, thus came to be a part of the continuously growing recycling awareness of this period: there were containers for collecting glass and paper for recycling - and now also for clothes. This was an enormous increase in efficiency compared to earlier door to door collections. And it represented an additional propagation of people's deeply humanistic awareness and wish to make a difference for people in need of developing better lives and living conditions."
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