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Episode 502: The Afterlife Of A T-Shirt

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Bales of imported clothing are wheeled into the Gikombo Market in Nairobi, Kenya.

Part of the Planet Money T-shirt Project

Charities like Goodwill sell or give away some of the used clothes they get. But a lot of the clothes get sold, packed in bales and sent across the ocean in a container ship. The U.S. exports over a billion pounds of used clothing every year — and much of that winds up in used clothing markets in sub-Saharan Africa.

On today's show, we visit a giant used-clothing market in Nairobi, Kenya to see what happens to American clothes (including, presumably, some Planet Money T-shirts) after Americans are done with them.

Buy a Planet Money T-shirt. Music: Faded Paper Figures's "Invent It All Again." Find us:Twitter/Facebook/Spotify/Tumblr. Download the Planet MoneyiPhone App.

Copyright 2021 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.

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