He was asked how much the city spent on shredding, and how many tons it burned, but did not answer.

Another government agency that confiscates large volumes of pirated clothing, United States Customs and Border Protection, donated $78 million in such goods last year. The donations are made only with the consent of the trademark holder, and are limited to essentials like clothing and shoes; they do not include fake Rolex watches or Gucci handbags.

In Los Angeles, shoes that would otherwise have been destroyed were given to Samaritan’s Feet, said John Saleh, a spokesman for the customs agency. Other ports that have participated are Detroit, El Paso and San Francisco. In New York, customs officials recently began working with World Vision.

“Usually the holder of the intellectual property rights allows us to do it,” Mr. Saleh said. If the trademarks can be removed, the goods are given to organizations near the ports, Mr. Saleh said. If they can’t be, they are shipped abroad.

Until recently, New York had a similar policy. In 2006, Mr. Bloomberg announced that the city would send shipments of knockoffs to aid victims of Hurricane Katrina. In that case, said Jason Post, a spokesman for the mayor, the city had the assistance of World Vision in sorting through the materials, a daunting task  but one that World Vision and the clothing bank say they still do.

Many major fashion brands have their headquarters in New York City, and Mr. Bloomberg has made prosecution of trademark infringement a priority for his administration. The companies also take actions in civil court against the pirates, an expensive process, to protect the designers’ names.

“These are people who spend hundreds of thousands of dollars, some of them millions, to get counterfeit goods off the street,” said Robert Tucker, a lawyer with the firm of Tucker and Lafiti, whose fashion clients include Chrome Hearts, Steve Madden, Zac Posen and Ed Hardy. “Everyone wants to feed and clothe the homeless. But how are you going to spend all this money and then put it back on the street?”

A special enforcement unit, reporting directly to the mayor, goes after landlords who knowingly rent to counterfeiters. Separately, the fashion and licensing industries are major financial supporters of the New York City Police Foundation, which has financed investigations of trademark infringement by a squad of police officers.

Mr. Montana of the clothing bank said his organization was eager to maintain a good relationship with the city. “This is a case of people with good intentions creating an incredibly wasteful and heartbreaking outcome,” he said. “If we can get people to work together, we can do a lot of good in the world.”