How Granny’s Attic manages an island of donations

When you donate a gently worn pair of jeans or last season’s jacket to Granny’s Attic, where does it end up?

Most of the time, another shopper finds a use for your old things; sometimes, your donation, too worn or old for anyone else, is trucked to Vashon’s landfill.

But as of this year, a new system has come into play: Those items that aren’t quite trash but also can’t be resold are now recycled through a global market of second-hand clothes.

The result is that Granny’s — a beloved thrift store on the island — has become a kind of clearinghouse for much of the island’s odd or misfit belongings and a connection to a larger network that stretches from Seattle to second-hand clothing markets across the world.

Not all the textiles and fabrics caught in this global trade end up helping clothe those in need. In some places, those items over-accumulate, turning into mountains of trash that are causing far-reaching environmental problems in some of the poorest countries in the world.

But Granny’s isn’t the villain of this trade, local recycling and sustainability experts say. The issue of consumer waste is one that thrift stores across the country encounter, and donations to Granny’s help it play a laudable part in keeping Vashon’s clothes out of landfills and in the hands of people who could use them.

Nancy O’Conner, President of Zero Waste Vashon, said Granny’s plays a crucial role in managing the island’s waste and notes that, beyond simply buying less, there are few easy answers to reducing waste in the 21st century.

“Granny’s is not the source of this issue,” O’Conner said. “[Islanders] are probably not aware of how much Granny’s has to deal with excess stuff.”

Rather, she said, the heart of the issue is overconsumption and all of the waste it creates.

Donations to Granny’s Attic help other islanders snag used clothes and gadgets, all while the thrift store funnels profits to local nonprofits.

Granny’s, the only nonprofit thrift store on the island, is dedicated to supporting other charitable island efforts and donates its profits to other island nonprofits. It recently awarded $247,500 in grants to 13 local organizations, including the Vashon Senior Center, Dove Project, and Vashon Youth & Family Services (VYFS), among others.

“Granny’s wants your donations,” said Brian Vescovi, the executive director of the thrift store. “Without your donations, we don’t have a store.”

Some donations arrive in clean, saleable condition. Others, unfortunately, are less ideal: Among the worst offenders have been dirty underwear, used diapers and even a rug soiled with feces, recalled Granny’s employees during a recent dump run this fall.

“We’re here to do a service,” employee Matt Voisin said while sorting through items for that dump run. “But we can’t take everything, and people won’t buy everything. Half this job is logistics and rhythm, and having things flow correctly. When we have to really pick things apart, it just slows the whole process down.”

In 2023 alone, Granny’s hauled nearly 52 tons to the island’s transfer station. That’s roughly equivalent to over 1,000 full pickup loads of items destined for the dump — an endeavor that costs the nonprofit, which bears the brunt of landfill fees.

That number reflects a post-COVID drop from previous years — the store’s waste was 126.88 tons (1.62% of the landfill) in 2019 — but the amount of trash Granny’s takes to the landfill has been slowly increasing since 2021.

Vescovi says it’s also a staffing challenge to manage the sheer volume of donations. The more items that require dumping, he said, the more time is diverted from essential tasks like pricing, sorting and getting items onto the floor.

“For the most part nobody thinks their stuff is trash,” Vescovi said. “We try as much as we can to recycle or repurpose, but the fact is, some of it has to go.”

Global recycling

To offset some of this burden, Granny’s partners with Rag Mine Clothing, a Kent-based textile recycling company that sends a truck to Vashon twice a month and collects hundreds of bags of unsellable clothes at no charge.

Granny’s started partnering with Rag Mine in January 2024, in an attempt to save landfill costs for the store and send less items to the dump altogether. And it’s worked. About a quarter of Granny’s clothes ends up in Rag Mine’s hands, helping reduce costs, according to Vescovi.

“We are taking a lot less stuff to the landfill,” he said. “But we are also taking more stuff in — so we’re finding ways to repurpose it elsewhere.”

Rag Mine handles more than 1.5 million pounds of textiles annually, exporting many clothes to facilities around the world for sorting and resale.

Rag Mine also contracts with more than a dozen statewide clients to repurpose clothing closer to home, including small businesses and individuals, such as a woman who buys 1940s items for photoshoots and another who turns cashmere sweaters into gloves.

“There’s a lot of fast fashion out there that’s just 100% synthetics,” said Justin Harvey, founder of Rag Mine.

The issue of waste is exacerbated by the growing prevalence of fast fashion – garments made with cheap, non-biodegradable materials that don’t hold up well to wear and tear, rendering them unsellable even in secondhand markets, Harvey said.

“When you’re dealing with handling tens of thousands of pounds of clothing every single week, there’s just going to be an awful component to it,” Harvey said.

Despite his intentions to only ship high-quality, usable items, Harvey admits the fate of these shipments remains largely out of his hands once they reach international ports.

The global secondhand supply chain is particularly difficult to monitor due to the complex web of intermediary buyers, international logistics and differing regulations in various countries, making it challenging to trace where and how garments are finally used or disposed of.

Rag Mine ships to several facilities, including one in Canada. Stanley Brown, a Washington resident, is a partner of Rag Mine who ships maintained clothes from Rag Mine to the bustling Kantamanto Market in Accra, Ghana.

This market, one of the largest secondhand clothing hubs in the world, receives more than 15 million garments weekly, with a significant portion ultimately discarded in open waste piles or swept into nearby oceans, according to the Or Foundation, which studies second-hand waste in Ghana.

Discarded mixed-fabric clothing, often containing synthetic fibers like polyester, can contribute to microplastic pollution as the garments break down. These tiny plastic fibers enter waterways, disrupting marine ecosystems and food chains and even make their way into human diets.

Australian journalist and documentarian Linton Besser visited the Kantamanto Market in 2021. After seeing the clothing mountains, which he estimates are as high as a five story building; smelling the discarded textile from Korle lagoon; and wandering the 24-acre market of bustling second hand clothing stalls, he said in an interview with The Beachcomber: “Accra does not need any more clothing.”

According to the Or Foundation, much of the unsold or unusable clothing in Accra ends up polluting local waters or being openly burned due to inadequate landfill capacity. This complex, for-profit supply chain often functions less as recycling and more as shifting waste to regions unequipped to handle it sustainably.

The Kantamanto Market imports 15 million garments weekly, earning the nickname obroni wawu—“dead white man’s clothes.” While offering affordable clothing, this trade has strained Ghana’s textile industry and environment. The Or Foundation reports that around 40% of imported clothing is discarded due to poor condition.

“The official garbage site has been full for years, so people get paid to get rid of it any way they can,” Besser said.

Shipping like-new clothes to other countries might seem reasonable in theory, Besser said, but much of this “usable” clothing still ends up discarded. He realized this during a visit to the lagoon, where he found a brand-new pair of high-end jeans—a clear example of the quick turnover in the market.

Unsold clothes typically sit in booths for just a day or two before being discarded and replaced, he said.

The cycle of overconsumption

Experts like Candace Cantaloupe, director of the Seattle Fashion Academy, said that the flow of second-hand clothing is reshaping economies and environments in low-income countries.

“It’s out of sight, out of mind,” Cantaloupe said. “It’s giving it to somebody else, and [saying] ‘Oh, here, it’s your problem now.’ ”

While this second-hand market provides affordable clothing for millions, it has simultaneously disrupted local textile industries, fostering a dependency on foreign goods and, in some areas, leading to severe pollution, according to the Or Foundation.

Cantaloupe believes the solution lies not only in changing consumer behavior but also in stronger regulations. She urges her students to question the true cost of cheaply made clothes, noting that Seattle fashion is “about as slow as one can get in fashion.”

However, she emphasizes that real change requires government action, so she focuses her efforts on advocating for stricter industry regulations.

“A huge problem is our overconsumption,” she said. “Getting something for $5 means that somebody is going to have to pay for that in some way.”

As Rag Mine and others navigate this complex system, Vashon residents confront the universal dilemma of what to include in their thrift store bags.

Neither Granny’s nor Rag Mine is responsible for creating the global trade of secondhand garments, and it’s impossible to know how much, if any, of Granny’s waste ends up in these dumps. Any store, on or off the island, that engages in recycling second hand-garments must navigate this complex global industry.

“While we continue to evaluate other ways to recycle clothing and limit our landfill usage, we may continue to work with Rag Mine,” Vescovi said in an email after The Beachcomber shared its reporting about the recycling trade.

“We were somewhat uninformed about the extent of Rag Mine’s operations in Africa and it was not our intent to add to the clothing waste,” Vescovi continued. “We continue to educate ourselves about clothing recycling and our possible future options to help keep this waste out of the landfill, be that ours on Vashon, or anywhere else.”

The answer, local experts and advocates say, is not to stop donating to Granny’s but to make mindful donations. Residents should check the store’s guidelines and remember that Granny’s doesn’t have the capacity to process every type of item.

In the end, Vashon’s beloved thrift store faces a larger dilemma that all islanders share — a desire to do right, colliding with a world overwhelmed by consumer waste.

Ruth True, a Vashon Island resident and host of the “Mindful Consuming” podcast, is involved with a textile recycling company and works on addressing the harms of fast fashion.

“I love shopping at Granny’s … because at the end of the day, reuse is as good as we can do right now,” True said.

True believes that buying secondhand is the best choice for shopping, though she encourages mindful consumption. When donating to Granny’s, she faces the same challenge as many islanders: wanting to include everything in the hope that items might be reused, rather than sending them directly to the landfill and eliminating that chance altogether.

“Granny’s is doing the best they can, because the whole system has not provided opportunities for companies,” True said. “Mixed fiber recycling, which most clothing is, is extremely difficult. … It’s a really tough problem.”

Besser, the Australian journalist, said Granny’s faces the same fundamental problem Accra does – when you get flooded with all this stuff, what do you do with it?

After conducting his investigation, Besser now donates only items in top condition to his local thrift store. “The rest goes to the landfill.”

Although sending items to the landfill feels uncomfortable, Besser notes that places like Australia and Seattle have significantly more industrial capacity to manage waste responsibly.

“We are all responsible for this problem,” Besser said.