Waste imports claims rejected by African traders

African textile traders have rounded on media reports claiming that the level of waste in imported bales of clothing could be as high as 40%.

The reaction came at the first-ever Textile Circularity conference organised by the Bureau of International Recycling in Brussels. Delegates were welcomed by president Susie Burrage who said textile reuse and recycling was at a turning point and the industry needed help to overcome the challenges it faced.

In a pre-recorded video message, Burrage said: ‘The narrative around end-of-life, or end-of-use, textiles is becoming increasingly tangled. Media headlines often paint a one-sided picture, leaving the public confused at the real story of used clothing.’

She insisted that collective efforts to deliver proper sorting, reuse and recycling and repurposing were vital to achieving a circular economy in textiles in both developed and developing countries.

Defence

The strongest defence of exports from the ‘global north’ to the ‘global south’ came from Marlvin Owusu, an executive member of the Ghana Used Clothing Dealers Association.

‘One of the biggest challenges we have is simply the misconception of second-hand clothing.’ Owusu said that while EU law defined ‘waste’ as discarded materials no longer intended for their original use, the Ghanaian view was that it was clothing that could no longer be reused or repurposed.

An independent report commissioned by his organisation using that criterion found such items made up the proportion of textiles waste arisings being imported into Ghana is only up to 5% and is often considerably less.

He said this was ‘far below the exaggerated figures that have been put on media outlets for a long time’. Reports such as that from the OR Foundation suggesting 40% waste in imported bales could not be trusted, he argued, because ‘there is no business model in the world that could support a waste level of 40%’.

Unverified

Teresiah Wairimu, chair of the Mitumba Consortium Association of Kenya, also spoke of ‘unverified figures’ for waste from those with no understanding of the African markets. In the capital Nairobi, she insisted, the figure was 1.89%.

Also talking by video link, Wairimu said she represented two million people directly employed in the clothing industry with more than 20 million others depending on it for their livelihood.

‘We are business people, we import goods for sale and our Government regulates and forbids waste. In Kenya, we only import sorted clothes and we are leading the way on building a circular economy through textile use. It is very insulting to hear we are importing waste.’

Chairman Alan Wheeler, ceo of the UK-based Textile Recycling Association, said it was very important that the voices of the global south were heard in a textile circularity debate.

In a presentation on a survey of the large second-hand Owino textile market in Kampala, Uganda, Michelle Wilson, director of programmes for the WasteAid charity, said the biggest source of waste was from the dozens of machinists repurposing clothes within the market rather than the hundreds of traders.

A final report is due later in the year but preliminary findings from a survey of 600 market participants suggested levels of waste of around 1%.

All three representatives from Africa felt the biggest challenge was for governments and businesses to improve the domestic waste management of all waste in their countries.