Clothing Waste a Compounding Crisis Amidst LA's Recovery
Organizers plead: "absolutely no more clothing!"
“I’m going to start dreaming about dying under a mountain of clothes,” Los Angeles-based stylist, Kat Eves, told me, one week after wildfires began in Palisades, Eaton, Altadena and surrounding areas.
As of writing, the January 2025 southern California wildfires are still burning, and over 200,000 people remain evacuated from their homes.
Amy Sins is a disaster relief expert who has moved millions of dollars of donated product in post-disaster communities, from California to North Carolina to Maui. Sins’ own home in New Orleans was on the levy during Hurricane Katrina. When the city flooded, her family lost everything they owned. After volunteers helped them recover, she “swore to pay it forward” and has done disaster relief work ever since.
Right now, L.A. is in what she calls “triage mode.” She explained disaster recovery follows a predictable cycle: in the immediate wake, everyone sprints into action with a sense of urgency for donations and volunteering.
But, she reminds us, “rebuilding is a marathon, not a sprint.”
Relief efforts commonly see a surge of clothing donations, too. “People have an immediate impulse to clean out their closet for donation,” Sins says, “I’m sure they’re thinking — ‘I’ve been meaning to clean out my closet, and this will be a win-win!’”
The reality is, volunteer energy is very finite, especially in the first few weeks after a disaster. Receiving clothing donations — as opposed to more crucial needs — absorbs a lot of volunteer time, during this vital period.
Donated clothes arrive in garbage bags, and volunteers must sort them twice. First to check they are clean with no holes, then a second time to categorize them by type and size. Finally, they must arrange to haul away the damaged clothes, and find a place to store the rest, in order to protect them from bad weather and the elements.
“Sometimes we call this a secondary disaster,” Sins said.
Discarded Clothing Piles Up
At the racetrack in Santa Anita Park, unsorted clothing piles already tower higher than volunteers’ heads.
Local organizer, Cynthia Guardado, shared a video from the donation site, saying: “absolutely no more clothes.” In the background there is a long, four-lane line of cars waiting to drop off more items.
Keep in mind, Eves says: “On a good day in L.A., thrift stores and donation centers were already dealing with too much clothing. So in a crisis like this, it’s exponential.”
Throughout the week, Guardado’s videos from Santa Anita continue:
“Let’s really be mindful and respectful about what we’re donating. We definitely don’t need any more clothes.”
“Just imagine, if it were you, and your house burned down, what would you really need? You might need a toothbrush, a new pillow, things like that. Please make sure you’re bringing things that you would want, or that you would need.”
After living through a crisis herself, Sins relates: “If we want to provide people hope, getting a bag of raggedy clothes is not heartwarming and hopeful. Especially when it’s been discarded.”
During one disaster recovery effort, she told me a donation center received what appeared to be fishnet ‘going-out’ dress. Pulling it out of the garbage bag, she thought: “It looks like the netting that would go on the outside of a pork loin! These aren’t the things that people are wearing to shovel the muck out of their house.”
Right now, community members visiting donation centers for emergency supplies are likely still evacuated, maybe sleeping on friends’ couches. Eves says, “they’re living out of suitcases, not closets. They’re getting a few things they need to get by.”
By now, most L.A. donation centers are resisting additional clothing donations, but even so, many find bags of clothes dumped in their parking lots. Unfortunately, this is also common. Once an immediate volunteer effort dies down, communities usually end up with mountains of clothes they don’t know what to do with.
Volunteers will shred some of the clothing into cleaning rags, acquire a dumpster to haul large loads away, or wait until the city sanitation department steps in. Alissa Westervelt, Operations Lead of Donations & Reuse at NYC’s Department of Sanitation, recalls the wake of Hurricane Sandy:
“Once a disaster strikes, city services are stretched thin… the people on the ground are focused on mitigating the immediate effects of the disaster, often working overtime, and managing the impacts they experienced directly.
If there is not capacity to manage incoming donations it becomes litter, a breeding ground for pests, and a public health issue.
Sanitation services are then required to collect and transport the influx of material, taxing staff, transportation, transfer stations, and landfills. Unsolicited donations quickly turn into a secondary disaster for sanitation departments.”
In 2016, while supporting a massive flood recovery in Louisiana, Sins’ organization helped with donated clothes because the influx was so great. As a result, she said: “one of my volunteers got ringworm that was treatment resistant for almost a year, directly from sorting dirty clothes.”
And, in the wake of North Carolina’s 2024 floods, a charitable partner had to fumigate because of an outbreak of fleas and bed bugs. The potential of contaminations makes accepting even high-quality clothing donations risky for organizers because one contaminated bag can damage everything else near it.
Eves stresses the importance of listening to local organizers: “If this specific event can teach us anything — before you fill your bags with donations, listen to what organizers need.”
Donors should also check-in often, to make sure an earlier need hasn’t already been filled. For example, in response to an online ping, Eves delivered water bottles and beef sticks to a local fire station, only to find many others had responded to the same request. After visiting a second fire station on the list, they told her: “This morning we could have opened a 7-Eleven, and this afternoon we could open a Costco with the amount we’ve received. We just don’t have enough room.”
Or, consider championing a family through the whole disaster relief cycle, encouraging your own community to fulfill their specific needs directly.
Eves is rallying her community to support Jason Guyton’s GoFundMe. Guyton is a 19-year-old fledging designer whose family lost their home in Altadena — including everything he saved for his upcoming clothing line. She texted her fashion network, asking everyone to donate or amplify his fundraiser:
Local circular textiles organization, SUAY, is stepping up to re-use some of L.A.’s excess clothing donations. Since 2017, SUAY has diverted over 3.7 million pounds of textiles from landfills through manual re-use efforts. On Instagram, they write:
“It takes an enormous amount of effort to keep textiles from landfills or being exported, SUAY is committed to continuing building these circular solutions but we need your help.
By sponsoring or buying a SUAY IT FORWARD bag for $20, you’re helping manage donation overflow, keeping our free store for fire relief running, preventing waste, and supporting sustainable, ethical systems.”
“It’s a beautiful thing that we all want to step into action,” Sins tells me, but she wants everyone’s support to make the most impact.
The community’s need is going to go on for years, so, she reminds us: “keep your enthusiasm for the long-haul” — making sure your support is as sustainable as your donations.
And, she concludes, “making sure the people who are receiving your kindness are prepared for it.”
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Thank you for reading! You can find me across the internet as @emilymstochl on Instagram, TikTok, and Threads! 💛 - Emily