Conference season has a cadence that industry professionals know well. The packed schedules, the badge swaps, the hallway conversations that turn into the most industry-moving parts of the event. And somewhere between sessions, there’s that inevitable moment: you realize the jacket you’ve been wearing to every panel for the past two years has seen better days.
So, you do what any on-the-move professional would do. You run to the nearest retailer, grab something that looks the part and move on. The blazer gets compliments. You get home, toss it in the wash, and just like that, it’s pilling. Into the donation bin it goes.
It’s a cycle many of us have participated in without giving it much thought. But what actually happens to that jacket after it lands in the bin? For many in the waste and recycling industry, the assumption is that it gets sorted, resold locally or, in the worst case, ends up in a landfill somewhere overseas. The reality is far more complicated, and far more interesting, than that narrative indicates.
That’s the story that Lisa Jepsen, CEO of Garson & Shaw, a secondhand wholesaler, is working to unravel.
At the 2026 Textile Recovery Summit in San Diego the week of February 23, organized by Resource Recycling, Inc., Jepsen walked me through the data, the economics and the geopolitical environment of the secondhand clothing trade to a market dominated by fast fashion, the retail industry’s strategy to produce cheaply made, quickly discarded clothing at low price points for consumers focused on the latest trend.
Secondhand clothing is a market that supports millions of livelihoods while fast fashion interests try to discredit the trade, one that, in developing countries, isn’t a last resort, but a lifeline for many.
A false narrative
From her perspective, the “waste narrative” around used clothing exports is largely a myth pushed by fast fashion interests, particularly in the United States. Jepsen explained that research in Guatemala found only 8% to 12% of unsorted used clothing is non-wearable, and is less than 5% for sorted goods.
“Some people want to give that narrative so that fast fashion can keep selling their stuff in these countries, because it’s very cheap, of course, and it’s in competition with our used clothing,” she said.
Guatemala is the largest importer of used textiles from the US, and across markets like Ghana and Central America, a single bale of secondhand clothing can ripple through an entire local economy, supporting an estimated 3 million people who buy, repair, upcycle and resell what arrives in those shipments.
But the sector is navigating a growing set of obstacles. Import and export bans in some countries are slowing the flow of goods, and rising shipping costs tied to tariffs have stretched transit times to as long as 40 days from the US to Central America, tightening margins for wholesalers already operating on thin financials.
“Many countries where they ban import of used clothing say that it will be a threat to the local textile industry, but the fact is that the local textile industry is exporting all their clothes,” noted Jepsen.” People in this country cannot afford to buy these clothes.”
Still, she remains firm: the secondhand clothing trade isn’t just a workaround for overconsumption, it’s one of the most practical solutions to it, and a meaningful economic engine for the third-world communities that depend on it most.
“The mom who is alone with her kids, they are very entrepreneurial, and they can make a living from…one bale that they will buy from an importer that can actually provide them with income so that they can put the child in school, they can get food on the table,” Jepsen said.
Closing the loop on fast fashion
Building a stronger secondhand market, one that can compete with fast fashion’s grip on global consumers and overconsumption, will require shifting how the public thinks about what they own, what they discard and what happens when they clear their closets. That work, Jepsen says, begins before textiles reach the donation bin.
“Educating the public is also very important, explaining that this is actually a good thing to do, to reuse,” she says. “And people also sometimes don’t understand that when they are donating to Goodwill, for example, or put clothes in the bin, then they think that it will be given away to somebody, but they don’t know that it’s a big business.”
Part of that education gap extends to what actually happens to secondhand shipments once they reach their destination. The narrative that donated clothing piles up in overseas landfills has persisted, and Jepsen is tired of it.
“It’s really, really important that the clothing actually gets to the market where it can be reused. That is our most important message,” she says.
And the conversation doesn’t stop at donation habits. Jepsen sees reuse as a principle that needs to be woven into how consumers think about textiles from the very beginning, before a garment is ever sorted, baled or shipped.
“We really want to promote reuse before recycling, because that is the only right thing to do,” she says.
That urgency becomes even clearer when you consider what goes into making new clothing in the first place. Fast fashion’s appeal is its price point, but the true cost runs much deeper.
“There’s really a lot of water used if you make a t-shirt, for example, and also the chemical system in this and the pesticides to grow the cotton,” she explains. “And there’s so much environmental impact of the production of new clothes that it’s nearly a sin not to reuse.”
The dynamic, in the end, is pretty straightforward, and one the recycling industry knows well. The highest and best use of materials is an obvious solution, one that keeps bales from heading to the landfill and provides a lifeline for families in developing countries.
