They are unattended, Redbox-sized depositories placed in parking lots, by fill stations, outside strip malls. You can drive up in your car and load your second-hand clothes and shoes into a large steel drawer on the front of the bin. Presumably, someone will pick the stuff up later.
Painted bright green, yellow, blue, or red, the donation boxes are printed with information about the numerous causes and projects your donation will supposedly benefit.
For good measure, the image of a grinning African child gives the donor an encouraging thumbs-up.
For ordinary consumers, the colorful steel kiosks offer a way to donate unwanted property without a hassle. But where are the donations really going? Who owns the boxes? And can they be trusted to do the right thing?
In short, no, not even a little. The bulk of the bins placed in recent years are little more than pumpjacks for financial fraud. Your donation will only contribute to the wealth and power of an international crime syndicate-cum-cult led by one of the world’s most wanted money launderers.
Empire of the Clothing Bin Cult
Whoa, back up. Say what?
Let’s start over.
There exists in our world today a certain multimillion-dollar business empire with impressive global reach. This empire is very special because it is a secret corporate conglomeration with a unique purpose: to expand the wealth and influence of the Clothing Bin Cult — or as it is known in Denmark where it originated, the Tvind Teachers Group.
This cult’s inner circle reportedly comprises several hundred elite \“Teachers\” who are said to have taken an oath to unconditionally surrender all their time, labor and money to the collective interest of the Group. Though it’s not clear who is empowered to determine this collective interest, the highest-profile candidate is definitely octogenarian fugitive and scarecrow jetsetter, Mogens Amdi Petersen.
Petersen is the original Tvind patriarch. He is known as a charismatic man with a magnetic presence and the power to enchant, if not everyone, at least enough people to build a shadowy international following. He also helped construct a quasi-anonymous corporate empire that continues to draw in passive income streams from lucrative investments around the world, from bananas in Belize to Mozambican cashews and Malaysian timber. Petersen has been instrumental in the transformation of Tvind’s original DIY euro-cult into a truly global parasitic complex, nearly a half-century in the making.
Now wanted by Interpol and the Danish state, Petersen is thought to be currently living in Mexico’s Baja California. There, he and his friends have constructed a sprawling 500-acre compound far from prying eyes, perched on the western edge of the continent overlooking the Pacific Ocean. No one knows for sure what goes on inside the shiny new complex, with its ultramodern-cathedral aesthetics and mysterious spearlike and spherical structures. But one thing is undeniable: it cost a lot of money — including the presumptive expense of bribing the local governor to protect its rumored VIP impunity. (The Danes are still trying to persuade Mexico to extradite the fugitives.)
Alas, it is a fact of globalization: Those with the means to live transnationally are often very powerful people, able to skip around and strategically choose which set of laws to follow just as their needs and desires dictate. Petersen clearly favors Mexico, probably because much of it has become a lawless hellscape, but also because coastal Baja is so visually exquisite.