What actually happens after you donate a bag of clothes? Most people assume it gets sold locally to someone in need, but the reality is much bigger, stranger, and more global.
In this episode of Infinite Loops, we sit down for a roundtable on the hidden global economy of secondhand textiles: how the industry works, why fast fashion has made the problem harder, why 70% of the world uses secondhand clothing, what AI can and can’t solve, and why turning an old shirt into a new shirt is still much harder than it sounds.
TIMESTAMPS
0:00 Intro
7:15 The Reverse Supply Chain
12:07 Why Secondhand Clothing Matters
18:55 American Vintage Goes Global
20:50 Textile Recycling as a Super-MRF
25:03 Why AI Can’t Sort Clothes Yet
31:22 Policy, Waste, and EPR
40:04 Fast Fashion’s Clothing River
49:14 Why Tracking Clothes Is So Hard
58:09 Can Old Shirts Become New Shirts?
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