Marcus Mendes
2025-06-26 15:27:00
9to5mac.com
Ever wonder where your donated clothes actually go? One TikTok user decided to find out by slipping an AirTag inside a pair of sneakers, dropping them off at a Red Cross bin, and tracking their journey with the Find My app.
In a now-viral video (via MacMagazine), TikTok user Moe.Ha documents how he tucked an AirTag into a pair of sneakers before dropping them off at a Red Cross donation bin in Munich. Five days and a few border crossings later, the sneakers resurfaced in a second-hand shop nearly 800km away, in Bosnia and Herzegovina.
According to his Find My app, the AirTag-equipped donation made pit stops in Austria, Slovenia, and Croatia before landing in a Bosnian resale store, where the sneakers were being sold for about 10 euros. Naturally, he traveled all the way there, found them on the shelf, and bought them back.
When asked where the sneakers came from, the shop employee said the items were delivered by her boss, who lives in Germany.
So… was this a scam?
Not quite. As odd as it might seem to trace your AirTagged, donated sneakers to a resale rack in another country, this is actually part of how clothing donations work. At least, for Red Cross.
Here is how their German website describes their sorting process (translation ours):
“We have around 18,000 used clothing containers across Germany. (…) After that, there are two different recycling models. In the “clothing depot model,” the clothing is sorted by the German Red Cross (DRK), and suitable items are distributed to our depots and thrift shops. The surplus is sold to a recycling company. In the “recycler model,” the entire contents of the container are sold to a company. The proceeds the Red Cross receives from this support our statutory missions.”
So, while it might seem sketchy at first, a donated pair of shoes ending up with a price tag four countries over and 500 miles away isn’t necessarily a scam, but rather part of how the system works. Still, there’s something a bit surreal about realizing that an old pair of sneakers might have seen more of Europe than their original owner.
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