What happened to all the clothing donated during the LA wildfires?

When Southern California was engulfed in a firestorm in January, the community stepped up. Social feeds showed crowds of people descending on the Rose Bowl and Santa Anita race track bringing supplies — mostly clothing — for those who lost their homes in the Palisades and Eaton fires. There were mounds of clothing everywhere — wedding dresses, Y2K fashion, faux leather jackets and even sheer bodycon dresses.

There was so much, in fact, that mutual aid groups and nonprofits like the YMCA had to turn down donations.

Christina Bragg, a spokesperson for the YMCA, said the amount of clothing donated was unprecedented.

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“ I know the Y was not alone in this, but if you were in L.A., if you weren't directly impacted, you were trying to find a way to support those who were,” she said. “For a lot of people, we all have a lot of clothes and so there were a lot of donations of clothing, of shoes.”

Bragg said the YMCA had around 25,000 volunteers in January to help process all the donations, sorting through the clothes to make sure they could be reused.

So did all the clothing end up with those affected by the wildfires? Not quite.

What happened to excess clothing donations

While the YMCA is still responding to the needs of fire victims, Bragg said there was a concerted effort to find different places to send the excess donations: whether it was places that serve the unhoused community, youth and even the Downtown Women’s Center.

Mattias Wallander, chief executive and president of USAgain, said his organization picked up around 10,000 pounds of clothing from different YMCA locations in Southern California. For the last 25 years, his organization has sent excess used clothing to countries like Guatemala, El Salvador, Costa Rica, Nicaragua and Honduras, where it is then sold at second hand clothing stores. With the income generated, Wallander says his organization donates to places like Habitat for Humanity.

Wallander said his organization saw an increase of about 10% to 20% in clothing collections right after the wildfires.

Fire victims sift through clothing at the YMCA in Sierra Madre after the Eaton Fire.

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“ The trend is that Americans consume more and more clothing and use them fewer times,” he said, “which means that the clothing is still in pretty much pristine condition when we decide to give it away.”

About 15% of the clothes they receive is resold in the U.S., with the majority of it exported to places like Central America.

Another organization called in to pick up excess clothing was Trashie. The organization’s chief strategy officer, Annie Gullingsrud, said they collected over 56,800 pounds of clothing. Around 23,000 pounds were just from Santa Anita and the rest from charities across Los Angeles. Only around 50% of what was collected could be reused.

Typically, Gullingsrud said, when used clothing is shipped to them around 70% is of reuse quality.

“ The majority of the stuff that we got, we wouldn't send back to the L.A. organizations to reuse because no one in L.A. wants to reuse this stuff,” she said.

At the height of the wildfires, she said, people wanted to help, but “what the organizations have received or were receiving wasn't necessarily the thing that people who needed help wanted,” she added.

A wedding dress, at left, was among the items donated after the L.A. fires.

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“ People who were displaced, lost their houses needed help. They weren't looking for clothing necessarily. They were looking for toiletries or cash or food,” Gullingsrud said. “And so these organizations, they're not clothing collection organizations, but all of a sudden they were clogged.”

And sometimes if they are not set up to handle clothing donations, a lot of it ends up in landfills, like what happened after Hurricane Katrina, she said. Clothing can’t just sit outside in donation centers, she added, because it will become moldy and toxic.

When they began receiving calls to collect excess donations, Gullingsrud said, Trashie coordinated pickups across the city. The clothing was then sent to their sorting and grading facility in Texas, where it was sorted into recycle, reuse and landfill piles.

“We're not kidding ourselves; someone's probably not going to wear dirty, old running shoes,” she said.

In the recycle category, clothing is sorted by fibers — cotton, polyester or cotton-poly blends — and then “ some of that stuff will be turned into a new fiber. Some of that stuff will be turned into fill for punching bags and pet beds. Some of that will be turned into wiper (rags),” Gullingsrud said.

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Clothing donations go through a circular system, said Jennifer Wang, a textile waste and recycling management consultant. When clothing arrives at a donation bank, it is sorted into rewearable, non-rewearable and waste. The rewearable pile is then further sorted into what can be resold in the U.S. — which is typically only around 30% of donated items. Non-wearable donations are sent to markets abroad where they are downcycled.  

”That's when they open the fiber, they spin it back into a yarn that cannot be used for clothing, but it can be made into your household goods such as rugs,” Wang explained.

Not all charities have this type of sorting facility, Wang said, and it is very labor intensive. But sorting facilities are “essential for circularity” to make sure textiles don’t end up in a landfill.

“They want to understand what is the value of that goods and what is the output and so that way they can communicate with the downstream buyers,” she said.

This circular industry, Wang said, can help create revenue to support development work in natural disaster zones.

Things to consider when donating after a disaster

• If you’re donating clothing, give to a charity that has the capacity to sort clothing, especially large volumes. 
• In an emergency situation, people can have specific needs — donating money will make sure those needs are met, versus charity organizations having to divert resources to address large amounts of donated clothing. Gullingsrud said sometimes this leads to other crises within a disaster.
• Don’t make assumptions about what organizations and people need — ask.