Among the popular markets that are held almost everywhere on a weekly
basis, there are the specialized ones, which generally sell nicheproducts, for example organically grown agricultural products, and the
generic ones where you can find everything, especially clothes, shirts,
sweaters or t-shirts, but also plastic products or mobile phone
accessories. Two aspects stand out in these generic markets: their
customers generally belong to the poorest strata of the population,
together with immigrants of various nationalities and cultures; and the
presence of stalls displaying used merchandise, especially clothing:
shirts, t-shirts, trousers, etc. In the market that I recently visited
several times, the one in Vittoria (RG), I come across three large
stalls that sell, piled up in a jumble, small-sized items of clothing at
one euro each; nearby, two others sell more or less the same type of
items, although a little more in order at two euros and one at three and
in more varied sizes. The sellers are shouting their heads off to
attract customers, more women than men, and it seems they are doing it
well. Analyzing the clothes on sale, you notice that they have been
washed and the labels seem to come from all over the world, with English
brand names predominating, most of which are unknown. I talk to two
sellers about it and they explain that they buy them by weight in
Catania and sometimes in Palermo, telling me about their work, the
division of types and colors, sometimes the need to wash them, the
involvement of the family. They also insinuate the suspicion of not
exactly legal dealings.
It seems like a tide that periodically unloads on this last beach the
remains of the lives of other distant people. But it is only a metaphor,
since this flow of "goods" is not due to natural phenomena, but to an
organized network that literally circulates the waste of Western
consumerism around the world. And that it is a multi-layered network is
demonstrated by the existence of specific shops in the same province,
such as "Mercatopolis - Usato per Ogni Esigenza", in Vittoria, but also
in Ragusa, Scicli or Gela, where among used furniture and some old pots,
they also sell old clothes, the result of bulk purchases, also in
specialized warehouses or to families who get rid of the material
remains of a dead relative. And then of course, there are organizations,
churches and NGOs that collect used stuff in special bins or go around
the streets on announced dates to collect black bags of old clothes, to
theoretically be sent to the third world. Networks that intersect, from
the north to the south of the world or, laterally, from the West to the
East, and back again. It is not just about old second-hand dealers who
went from town to town to sell used stuff, collected as best they could,
it is about a parallel circuit to the already sufficiently opaque one of
fashion and the industrial production of clothes, with which it
intersects at various nodes, receiving the waste that fashion produces
from season to season, ever more rapidly. And dressing is necessary,
even when there is no money, even when the shops regularly offer
discounts. And millions of euros and dollars are circulating ever more
vortically.
Traditionally and not only in the West, used stuff that could be reused
was passed down from generation to generation, within families. However,
with the industrial revolution, production grew enormously, breaking the
family distribution chain, creating an autonomous market, particularly
in Great Britain and France, with destination the United States and
Russia. During the nineteenth century, London's Houndsditch Street
became the world center of the trade in second-hand goods, especially
men's old clothes, creating at the same time a local network of
searchers (for example after funerals) and a transactional commercial
one. In the same way, churches created their own circuit, especially
from England to Ireland, during the great famine that caused forced
emigration to the United States, towards which the flow of second-hand
goods increased, also multiplying towards the various British colonies.
The two great wars of the twentieth century produced, in turn, the need
for second-hand goods in Europe itself, as well as the processes of
decolonization in the old African and Asian colonies. From these bases,
the current networks, both commercial and charitable, developed.
Currently, it is difficult to identify the commercial networks involved
in this trade, especially because they easily fall into the hands of
local gangs and international mafias. However, it is possible to
partially track the fate of some types of clothing thanks to the use of
locating microchips sewn into them. For example, in 2023, Greenpeace
monitored 29 different types of used clothing items in Spain, deposited
in municipal containers. Of these, at the end of 2023, only one had been
purchased in a Romanian store, while the others continued to circulate
around the world, thousands of kilometers from their place of origin:
Chile, Pakistan, India, Togo, Egypt and Morocco. The Chilean case is the
one that has attracted the most attention, especially due to the fate of
part of these flows in the Atacama Desert: here, by sea, containers full
of used stuff compressed into large plastic bales, originating in Europe
and the United States, continually arrive. Once unloaded, a team of men,
women and children catalogue the items, by quality and type, discarding
those considered unsellable. The items chosen to return to the
distribution circuit are repackaged and start circulating again, both in
the country and in the rest of Latin America. The discarded garments are
transported into the desert, where they accumulate in veritable
mountains of fabrics for tens of kilometers, mostly made of polyester, a
synthetic polymer derived from petroleum, with its harmful consequences
on the local ecology, especially due to the fires that are produced and
which are difficult to put out in the dry climate of the desert. The
same process occurs in the largest collection center for used clothing
in Africa, Ghana, only here the discarded clothing ends up in the sea.
In Ghana, most of the used clothing comes from Europe and of this only
fifty percent is sold or travels again, while the rest is discarded,
ending up in the sea or on the coast, together with the rest of the
urban waste. In fact, beyond the ethical problems that this phenomenon
implies, we must consider the obvious fact that a large part of the poor
populations of the third world dress with this waste from the West,
destroying local traditions and suffocating the production of
traditional fabrics in natural fibers such as cotton. And, on the other
hand, the countries of the North of the world are thus freeing
themselves of the waste products of their consumerist life, transforming
the Third World into their private garbage dump.
Emanuele Amodio
https://www.sicilialibertaria.it/
_________________________________________
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