I remember when I visited the U.S. I saw people left their used clothes at the corner of street and I heard it was donation. I was impressed because it is very troublesome to use public recycle system in Japan (at least my area.) Daily small trashes are okay, but my area doesn't have recycle rule for large wastes or used clothes. We need to throw them as trash and we have to pay for it. "Call to the trash center, reserve the collection day, get the reservation number, go the convenient store to buy reservation seal, it costs depends on the size of trash, write the reservation number on the seal, wait the collection day, finally leave them with seal at the the appointed place. The trash center judge they can recycle it or just trash. Since it costs high to throw large-size refuse or electrics in this country. City government will pick this way, if not they may get a huge number of trash as donation. :-( So except for books, I have not hear good donation system in Japan.
I found this yesterday, Akita prefecture starts the good donation "Warashibe store". They collect donation and select only good clothes and sell it without price tag, price is decided by people who buy. The only rule is it should be more than 100 yen. The system asks people's common sense but they will learn and grow it when they realize how the system is useful and good.
Warashibe come from Japanese old story "Warashibe chojya" (Straw Millionaire ). It's a story a poor man who becomes wealthy through a series of successive trades, starting with a single piece of straw and you will know some Japanese game like "The Legend of Zelda" has the same plot basically. And in 2006, this was hot as modern warashibe story in the U.S. one red paperclip""
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