There is a lot to say about ways to recycle and consume less of Earth’s resources. I’ve been re-thinking my ancient and somewhat boring wardrobe lately, so a particular article at www.apartmenttherapy.com (and at www.slate.com) caught my attention. It spurs one to re-think how we get clothing and how we get rid of clothing.

I generally try to buy at re-sale or thrift shops and rummage sales, but those stacks of inexpensive clothes at Costco and the back-to-school sales at the mall are so tempting. I’m not offering a prescription of what to do, because I think we all have our own conditions, values and choices to make. Here are a few facts to make you think again. RE-think, RE-think, RE-think!

Elizabeth Cline is the author of a book, “Overdressed: The Shockingly High Cost of Cheap Fashion,” about the global impact of cheap, disposable fashion. When you think about the amount of clothes we all dispose of, it should not be a surprise that an entire industry has sprung up around our cast-off clothes.

Where do your clothes go when you’re tired of them? Maybe when you were little, you passed your old clothes along to a younger sibling, but now that you’re all grown up your old clothes probably go to a charity or thrift shop. And then what happens to them? We may think they find their way to all the people in the community who need them. However, the demand for used clothing in most places is not nearly high enough to account for the enormous volume of donations.

At Salvation Army, which is typical of the large charities, the best of the best is selected out for their stores — only a fraction of what they receive. If those clothes are not sold within a month, they are removed from the racks and sent back to the processing center. Some of the unsellable clothes are donated or given to other charitable organizations that will give them away, and then the clothes that the Salvation Army is unable to use are processed into enormous bales of textiles, weighing half a ton each.

From there, the textile bales meet one of two fates. Either they are sent to a second-hand textile processor in the United States, where sellable clothing will be sorted out and the rest will be recycled into padding for car upholstery or industrial rags. Or they are sent overseas, mostly to Africa.

At any number of African ports, the giant cubes of clothing are opened and then pored over by African clothing resellers who, fueled by increasing demand for stylish clothing, pick through the bales for the most desirable finds. The flood of used U.S. clothing is having a negative effect on local African textile industries, which are underpriced by all the cheap imports.

As you were reading those options for unused clothing, did your head start calculating the carbon footprint? Sounds like many, many gallons of fuel to ship these clothes all over the world.

The lesson here is that we should all think smarter about what and when we buy, keeping in mind that purchases we make have the ability to affect everyone, not just ourselves. And this doesn’t mean you have to hang on to that pair of jeans that fit perfectly 10 years and 20 pounds ago, or a moth-eaten sweater that was last worn in 1994. But RE-think it — can  you use those old jeans for rags or to make a cool pillow or quilt throw for the kids’ room? Would the sweater be a perfect cat bed? If the clothes are in good shape, do you have friends or relatives who would love to get them? Maybe arrange a “swap” party?

And RE-think before buying too. As we’ve said before, the most trendy styles are often not “durable” and will be unwearable before they are worn out. So there you are — think, and RE-think, and then think some more!

Stillwaters is starting a new Sustainability Discussion Group. Call (360) 297-1226.

— Naomi Maasberg is director of Stillwaters Environmental Center. Contact her at naomi@stillwatersenvironmentalcenter.org