People need to be more rational about clothes donations

Editor's note: One after another, urban communities have adopted donation boxes for residents' unwanted clothes. However, several media outlets recently found that a majority of the clothes people donate are dissembled and recycled for profit, instead of going to the poor. China Daily writer Zhang Zhouxiang comments:

Used clothes are rather difficult to deal with. They are made from chemicals, cotton, or wool, which consume many resources in the process of manufacturing and, if burned, they pollute the air and increase the carbon pressure upon the environment.

Therefore, it is a good thing for used clothes to be recycled in factories instead of being disposed of in garbage cans to be incinerated or transported to landfill sites. In that sense, the companies that put the donation boxes in communities have done something good and beneficial.