T e x t i l e I n d u s t r y N e w s o n r e u s e , r e c y c l i n g a n d c i r c u l a r i t y

Second-hand clothes are moving into global waste. But the proof is still missing.

BASEL CONVENTION 2026

After a week of negotiations in Geneva, the issue about textile waste is now firmly on the agenda for future global rules on waste exports. But one central question remains unresolved: what evidence shows that large-scale exports of unusable second-hand clothes are actually driving the textile waste problem?

If new rules are built on unclear or incomplete data, they could end up restricting a functioning reuse system without solving the real waste problem.

After a week of negotiations in Geneva, the issue about textile waste is now firmly on the agenda for future global rules on waste exports. But one central question remains unresolved: what evidence shows that large-scale exports of unusable second-hand clothes are actually driving the textile waste problem?

If new rules are built on unclear or incomplete data, they could end up restricting a functioning reuse system without solving the real waste problem.

The global second-hand trade is not a charity system. It is a business built on buying, sorting, shipping and reselling products across continents. Every bale imported into Ghana has already passed through collectors, sorters, exporters, shipping companies, customs, wholesalers and traders. At every stage, somebody pays.

The missing logic behind the textile waste claims

What looks like textile waste is actually not. It's plastic.

Mountains textile waste. That image has travelled the world — repeated, amplified and turned into a defining narrative about textile waste in Africa. But when we went there, the picture changed completely. What had been described as textile waste was mostly something else.

How did an unverified claim become a global truth and reshape global policy

What happens when an unverified and disputed claim becomes the foundation for international policy? Policymakers seem to be addressing an imagined problem and putting one of the world's largest circular textile systems at risk along the way.

Former Swedish Minister for the Environment:

If the wrong conclusions are drawn, we might be in trouble

Related to the Basel Convention former Swedish Minister for the Environment Karolina Skog warns against drawing the wrong conclusion from an incomplete picture of the second-hand trade. If policy treats second-hand trade as waste export without solid evidence, it may damage one of the few circular textile systems already working at scale.