This Ain't Your Grandma's Thrift Store

Bins filled with color-coordinated items line one wall of the warehouse—red shoes, a red sweatshirt, red curtains. Above the bins, a conveyor belt feeds into a giant baler. At the other end mammoth bales are stacked one atop another, a compact hodgepodge of shoes, clothes and unidentifiables. A leopard-print swatch pokes out of one bale; in another, the ears of a white teddy bear are visible among the compressed socks and sweaters.

Two women sort through donated clothes, while three others separate shoes and handbags in the processing center of Goodwill Industries of Southwest Florida in North Fort Myers.

I stand at the midpoint of the sorting operation with the operations supervisor of the processing center, Karen Shavinsky, who gives a quick rundown of the sorting and salvage process: Clothes are dumped onto a tray and employees sift through, picking out those that are fit for sale and those that are destined for the giant baler at the end of the line.

Shavinsky holds up a bright-red child’s shirt—Polo, faintly faded. "Kid’s clothes are always good, so we want to hold onto those," she says. "This one is still in good shape." She tosses it into the retail pile. The next few items are children’s clothes, too, and all brand-name: Gap, Tommy Hilfiger, another Polo. All keepers.

A faded-black T-shirt with a peeling Monster Truck appliqué doesn’t make the cut. It’s tossed onto the rubber conveyor belt and slowly makes its way to the top of the baler, where it joins other salvage items: clothes, linens, stuffed animals and shoes that aren’t suitable for Goodwill stores. This assortment of good but not salable items is compressed and sold in bulk in other countries, at pennies on the dollar. One of Goodwill’s biggest buyers is Malaysia, where the bales are broken down, re-sorted and resold.

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