Treasure City Thrift

All Ecology Action Members get 20% purchaese at Treasure City Thrift. Treasure City is located at 1720 East 12th Street, 78702.

Landfill Diversion Program

Treasure City is committed to recycling its waste in an ethical and environmentally responsible fashion, while finding creative ways to reuse items that cannot be resold. Many things destined for the landfill still have a life worth living and every item at Treasure City is either donated or reclaimed from the waste stream. We even take items that other thrift stores refuse to touch. Reusing slows the consumption process and the need for costly and energy consumptive production of new goods.

Of our donated goods, we estimate that:

* 80% are reused.
* 15% are recycled
* 5% are waste

This is our commitment towards Zero Waste. The Landfill Diversion Program partners us with Ecology Action and Yellow Bike Project and helps keep items destined for the landfill in circulation for many years to come. Become a Member of Ecology Action of Texas and receive 20% off all purchases at Treasure City Thrift with your membership card.
Where your Donations Go

The Treasure City reuse process is as follows:

Stage 1: Material Support

We provide used goods to other groups within our network along the principles of mutual aid. If your group would like to benefit from this program, contact us here

Stage 2: Store Sales

Since a thrift store should be thrifty, we price our used goods accordingly and they sell very well. All items are color tagged and after they have been in the store for one month, they are automatically discounted by 50%. Look for the current colored tag discount when you are shopping.

Stage 3: 25c Sidewalk Sale

Items that are not good enough to go out on the floor or have been on display for more than 2 months are set aside for the Sidewalk Sale. All items are 25c each of $2 for a bag. This happens every Saturday from 9am - 6pm outside the store.

Stage 4: Free Box

We maintain an informal free box in front of the store where we put clothing on a daily basis. This provides clean clothing for the local transient population.

Stage 5: Really Really Free Market

Every last Sunday fo the month from 1-5pm, the parking lot at Treasure City is overtaken by a festival of free. As a community we have many more resources than we do as individuals. If we share our resources we won't need to buy as many new ones. This uses fewer of the Earth's resources, and fewer of our working hours, leaving us more time to devote to ourselves and our communities. The market is a mixture of reuse, recycling, sharing and community building. We share skills, goods, ideas, smiles, friendship, excitement, plans and more. Note: the main store is is closed for business every Sunday.
Why We Don't Send Clothes to Developing Nations

What happens to all those old clothes you bring to the Salvation Army or Goodwill Industries? Over 90% of the clothes donated in the US are being sold all over Africa as second-hand clothing and have created a multi-million dollar business. In Zambia in the 1970s there were over 85 clothing manufactures employing over 10,000 people. Today Zambia depends solely on imported goods, making it less and less self-sufficient.

Other countries such as Kenya have seen their local textile industries decimated by imports of second-hand clothing. The justification for such imports is that the clothes are cheaper and the displaced textile workers will find more valuable employment elsewhere. Instead, workers can become permanently unemployed or employed at lower wages, and a country can lose an industry that might have provided the first stepping-stone to the development of a manufacturing sector.

Don't believe us? Watch the movie T-Shirt Travels that documents the secondhand clothing market in developing nations. email shantha@earthlink.net for more information.

Further Links

* Thinking Outside the Box about Trade, Development, and Poverty Reduction
* Africa and global trade
* Poverty and the Range of Goods: Used Clothing
* Salaula: The World of Secondhand Clothing and Zambia
* The Truth About Where Your Donated Clothes End Up
* African Cloth, Export Production, and Secondhand Clothing in Kenya
* Used-Clothes Exports to the Third World: Economic Considerations
* Helping or hindering? Controversies around the international secod-hand clothing trade
* Do second-hand clothing exports harm countries of the "Third World"?
* Used-Clothing Donations, and Apparel Production in Africa