Secondhand: Travels in the New Global Garage Sale

by Adam Minter

In another curious twist of trade, the prohibition of trading Kandla’s clothes into India has a spacious loophole. According to the law, “mutilated” clothes, which can’t be worn and can’t be sold as garments, can be sent northeast to Panipat, the town that Abdul Majid Moledina of Used Clothing Exports in Mississauga was eager for me to visit. Located fifty miles north of Delhi, Panipat has been for three decades the place where unwanted woolen clothes from the world’s wealthy countries go after nobody wants to wear them anymore. That’s a lot of clothes. Unlike summer clothes, which flow to developing countries in warm climates, winter clothes typically lack a reuse market. According to Nohar, Panipat at its peak could import close to a thousand shipping containers per month of secondhand woolen clothes. “You will see,” Nohar tells me as we eat. “The business is changing. In a few years, Panipat as we know it won’t exist anymore.”