Walking home today, I was stopped dead by an ad on a French shop, which went something like this:

[nameless shop] has teamed up with [big French charity] to offer you this exceptional deal!
Bring your used jeans back into the store and
1. Save 20% on the price of the new jeans
2. Help preserve the environment!

Turns out the charity is taking the jeans back and mostly selling them back for very low prices to poor people [1]. You know, I’d have thought that “help your neighbours in need” would have been a better description of what you were doing when giving back a pair of old jeans. And not a shameful one, either.

But obviously, the planet is a better draw. [2]

Sigh.

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[1] The shabbiest part of the jeans will indeed be recycled to provide building insulation-so yes, it will protect the environment. But it’s the marginal part of what they’ll collect.
[2]Don’t get me wrong, I do think we should be more careful with the planet, and less wasteful in general. But people are important, too, and we’re very far from the point where we care for them all.