One man’s trash: EU pitch to tackle textile pollution
riles second-hand sellers
Tougher export rules risk hurting countries with major
second-hand markets.
Kenya — whose second-hand trade generates millions in
revenue — has been rallying support from industry groups in countries such as
Ghana, Tanzania and Mozambique. |
MAY 3, 2024
9:00 AM CET
BY MARIANNE
GROS
EU
countries want to stop their discarded clothes from clogging landfills outside
the bloc — but a number of countries, including Kenya, warn that doing so will
harm the local trade in second-hand fabrics.
France,
Sweden and Denmark are asking the EU to back their call to change global rules
on textile exports under the Basel Convention and thereby tackle the bloc's
growing textile pollution problem. The amount of used fabrics exported from the
bloc has tripled over the past two decades, reaching almost 1.7 million tons in
2019.
Under the
proposal, companies in the EU looking to export textile waste — clothes deemed
too degraded or stained to be resold — would have to give more information
about the content of shipments, while importing countries would have to prove
the waste is being disposed of correctly.
But traders
in used textiles in developing countries, including Kenya, are warning that the
stricter rules are too broad and will also limit exports of high-quality
textiles — hurting local businesses that resell the clothes on second-hand
markets outside the EU.
“We are
talking about 2 million people employed in this trade, and 6.5 million
households depending on this trade in Kenya alone,” said Teresia Wairimu
Njenga, chair of the Mitumba Association — Kenya’s main second-hand trade
industry group, which has been lobbying Brussels to dismiss the proposal.
Njenga said
Kenya — whose second-hand trade generates millions in revenue — has been
rallying support from industry groups in countries such as Ghana, Tanzania and
Mozambique.
Other
countries, including Pakistan and Chile, which are among the largest importers
of Europe’s used clothes and act as regional hubs for the second-hand textile
trade, will also likely be affected by any change in export rules.
Mountains of trash
The aim of
the proposal is to improve how EU countries manage their waste by boosting
collection, sorting and recycling — and by encouraging producers to make
clothes that last longer.
Currently,
about 46 percent of EU exports of used textiles end up in African countries;
the lower the quality of fashion products, the more likely they are to end up
in landfills.
In Kenya,
for example, the Changing Markets Foundation estimates that about 300 million
unusable items of clothing end up in landfills each year, representing anywhere
from 20 percent to 50 percent of the country's total textile imports.
As part of
the proposal, France, Sweden and Denmark say textile waste should be subject to
the same rules as plastic or electronic waste — meaning countries that import
it must explicitly consent to do so and must prove they can dispose of the
waste in an environmentally friendly way.
In Kenya the Changing Markets Foundation estimates
that about 300 million unusable items of clothing end up in landfills each
year, |
They also
suggest that exports of “hazardous” textile waste — fabrics stained with
chemicals or paint, for example — should be banned altogether. Several other EU
countries support the proposal, including Finland and Austria.
“What is
exported as being second-hand textiles must be just that, and not sheer
worthless, unusable, textile waste,” Sweden’s Environment Minister Romina
Pourmokhtari told POLITICO.
Sweden also
wants to create a traceability system for textile waste to stop “the abuse of
the second-hand textile market by those who are trying to avoid paying the full
price of fast fashion,” she said.
A
spokesperson from France’s environment ministry said “the aim is not to put an
end to the second-hand clothing trade but to create a truly circular economy
and help developing countries.”
The
problem, as Kenya and others see it, is that there is currently no distinction
between textiles that cannot be reused and clothes than can be resold on the
second-hand market — at least when it comes to shipments.
Under the
international system by which goods are categorized for import and export,
there is one category for worn clothes and another for used rags and textile
scraps, but there is no separate code for textile waste that is too damaged to
be resold.
As a
result, all textiles — used, scrap and damaged clothes — get bundled together
when shipped. Export restrictions would prevent unusable fabrics from ending up
in landfills, but would also limit exports of second-hand garments. That would
damage the local second-hand economy in Kenya, which has already enacted
measures to guarantee it only imports high-quality textiles, said Njenga from
the Mitumba Association.
“The reason
we are being so vocal is because these people are trying to bring in new
protocols when we have already been doing this for 40 years and have already
developed our own,” she said.
Ola
Bakowska, circular textiles strategist at the Circle Economy Foundation, noted
that the real problem is the sheer amount of textiles being produced. “The
conversation on import bans should not deter from the main problem — which is
addressing production volumes,” she said.
The textile
sorting and recycling industry has also cited flaws in the proposal, saying it
would add "administrative and financial burdens" to an already
struggling sector, as they would be responsible for notifying and getting
consent from importing countries.
For the
plan to become reality, the European Commission would have to put forward a
legislative proposal and the Council of the EU would need to adopt it, allowing
the EU to formally request the Basel Convention be amended. The parties to the
convention would then have to agree.
The
Commission "welcomes the intention behind the initiative of France,
Denmark and Sweden" and sees "merits in initiating such a
discussion," a spokesperson for the EU executive said, adding that the
Basel Convention is "the right context to discuss the issue of global
trade in used textiles."
This
article was updated to add a statement from the European Commission.
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