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.

However, if they mean to recycle used clothes they need to tell people that and label their collection boxes as "recycle boxes" instead of misleading people by calling them "donation boxes". People expect their "donated" clothes to go to the poor, not factories.

Some reports also show certain companies sell the clothes they get in the name of "donations" overseas; which benefits neither the poor nor the environment.

But people need to be more realistic as well. Donating clothes may not render much help to the poor. Especially, as it takes a lot of human labor to collect the used clothes, sort them, clean and disinfect them and deliver them to less-developed areas.

Every step costs money and sometimes the total cost might even be higher than buying new clothes in large quantities. Sometimes the poor might not need used clothing, but they cannot trade the clothes for what they do need.

It might be a sad fact, but the most effective and efficient way of helping poor people is donating money and letting them get what they need themselves. So when people want to send a helping hand, they need to donate money, instead of simply donating their used, unwanted clothes. These items they can put in the boxes for them to be recycled.