Jason Kottke points to an interview with the makers of a documentary on the phenomenon of second-hand clothing in Haiti. Since the 60s, the US has been shipping/dumping its second-hand clothing on less developed nations. The interview is an interesting because Haiti is a place where some aspects of the old system -- like hard currency -- are essentially optional, or gone altogether. The international hand-me-downs are called pepe, for some reason (possibly for the distributor's calls of "paix, paix" to calm crowds when new items arrived), and my favorite question was about the non-clothing pepe:

Are there controls in place to keep people from sending over real junk, such as inoperable gadgets or stained items? Do they recycle unwanted things?

As far as we could tell, there was a lot of "junk" being sent over. Even pepe cars marked "no brakes" on their windshields. However, appliances or cars might be used for their parts. Stained clothing might be used as rags or upholstery stuffing. Haitians are very resourceful in ad-hoc engineering and repurposing. That said, we did see an incredible amount of trash and pollution. It was hard to tell whether this was due to the lack of sanitation services or the flood of discarded pepe.