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bne February 2019 Central Europe I 55
countries out to poorer ones”. “The top 10% quality of discarded textiles in the Nordic countries can be sold for reuse domestically, but the remainder must find markets where the populations are less wealthy. The better quality textiles remain in Europe, primarily in the east including Russia. Tropical mix and lower quality textiles are exported to Africa, the Middle East and Central Asia,” says the report, based on interviews with col- lectors in the Nordic countries.
Exporting used clothes has become a safety valve for the ever-expanding cloth- ing industries in western countries, where charities report being overwhelmed by the volumes of clothing they handle as consumption soars. “As long as there is vast over-production and over-consump- tion, and no system set up for circular- ity or proper take back and collection schemes on a global scale, we are going to have a problem [with clothing waste],” says Norris. “We do have an unequal world and there are developing markets that depend on processing our waste.”
There is a curious situation where used clothing is at the same time a chari- table donation, a waste product – and
a valuable resource. Which of these it
is depends on the quality of the cloth- ing, and the fluctuating price of used textiles, though climate appropriate- ness and sizing are also critical. “One of the big problems is that the generators of secondhand clothing tend to be in the global north, and buyers tend to be in the global south,” Norris says in a phone interview with bne IntelliNews. While used clothing is in high demand among recyclers, a lot of winter clothing that is “not in tip top condition for the East European market” still gets sent to industrial users or landfill. There’s also a mismatch in body type. “An industry has grown up around remaking clothing for much thinner people and adapt-
ing it to cultural sensibilities, but it’s a huge amount of work to make one fit the other, and if not worth it in terms of quality, it may be easier to burn or bury [the clothes].”
Skewed by fast fashion
In a recent trend, the explosion in fast fashion retailers selling cheap, quickly
produced and – observers say – lower quality goods, has “really skewed” the market for used clothing, according to Norris. The clothes now sold by many mass market retailers aren’t meant to last for the long term, as the business model is built on customers constantly coming back to the shops to buy more. “The quality of a lot of fast fashion is
so low it can be very difficult to shift it, and so there’s that borderline of are you exporting waste or are you exporting a marketable good?” she says.
UK exports of used textiles, for exam- ple, soared through the 2000s, partly helped by the opening of CEE markets like Poland and Hungary after the two countries’ accession to the EU. However,
2016 report from UK charity Waste & Resources Action Programme (WRAP) says that: “Demand for UK used textiles has started to decrease in export markets and prices have been falling since 2013.” Despite this, the UK is the world’s second largest exporter of used clothing, send- ing over $500mn worth abroad in 2017.
And as the economies of Eastern Europe develop, customers are becoming more discerning in terms of the type of clothes they are willing to buy secondhand, seeking out well known brands and top quality fabrics. “The end destinations are under constant development as economies progress. Lower grade tex- tiles that ten years ago could have been sold for reuse in Poland are no longer in
Imports of used clothing within Central and Eastern Europe over $1mn in 2017. Data source: Comtrade
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