The global regulatory fight over how to define second-hand clothing as product or waste

Second hand clothing has long been treated as something informal. A social good, a thrift economy, a circular alternative to buying new. Now it is moving into a very different world: trade compliance and regulatory classification.

This week, a UN-backed study supported by the European Union is set to receive renewed attention as it is formally highlighted at an OECD policy forum on 10 February. The report itself was published earlier, but its upcoming presentation signals that the international regulatory conversation around second hand textiles is entering a new phase.

Produced under the UN Economic Commission for Europe (UNECE) together with the UN Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC), the study is titled Making trade work for circularity: Improving circularity in second hand clothing through trade regulation.

The significance is not that a new law has been passed, but that regulatory frameworks are being prepared.

It is that the rules of the game are being designed.

Product or waste: the policy distinction reshaping second-hand clothing trade

At the heart of this work is the same deceptively simple issue now appearing across Basel, UNEP consultations, and EU textile policy. When is a used garment still a product, and when does it become waste under international controls such as the Basel framework?

That distinction is not semantic. It determines whether shipments move freely, whether they face waste controls, and whether reuse markets are treated as legitimate trade or as environmental risk.

The UNECE/ECLAC study argues that today’s system often fails to make that distinction clearly enough. It points to the need for stronger pre-export sorting, verifiable data, and digital documentation aligned with due diligence frameworks. In other words, second hand is no longer being discussed only as a cultural practice.

It is being discussed as a regulated category within global trade and waste governance.

From moral narratives to trade regulation: classification, traceability, verification

Bales of sorted second-hand clothes waiting to be shipped

Public discussions around second hand exports often slide quickly into moral narratives, especially about “dumping” and environmental harm in importing countries. The UNECE/ECLAC approach is different in tone. It is bureaucratic rather than emotional. Its focus is on tools: classification, traceability, verification.

That shift matters, because technical frameworks tend to travel. Once they exist, they can be absorbed into larger systems, including customs rules, Basel interpretations, and future EU requirements.

Blueprints are rarely headlines. But they become regulatory infrastructure.

Risk of miscalibrated waste controls in second-hand textile regulation

The central challenge is that the policy momentum is accelerating faster than the underlying data.

Everyone agrees that textiles eventually become waste. No garment lasts forever. But a much stronger claim is often implied: that second hand trade itself generates large volumes of immediate waste through unsold imports and unusable clothing.

That assumption is frequently treated as self-evident in international discourse, even though the scale, mechanisms, and responsibility remain contested. If regulation is built on broad narratives rather than measured flows, the outcome may be blunt controls that harm functioning reuse markets without solving the real environmental problem.

In that sense, the key issue is not whether trade should be regulated. It is whether regulation is being calibrated to measured trade flows and verified impacts.

Circular economy governance: when reuse depends on regulatory definitions

This debate is not only about clothing.

It is about how the circular economy is governed. If second hand goods are increasingly treated through the lens of waste control, the entire promise of reuse becomes conditional on documentation, classification, and international trust. And the stakes are high.

Overly restrictive rules could shift market share to larger exporters outside Europe, encourage more ultra-fast fashion production to fill gaps, or reduce access to affordable clothing in lower income markets. Poorly designed rules could also undermine the very circularity they claim to protect.

A new phase in global second-hand clothing trade regulation

The UNECE/ECLAC study is not a binding decision. But it is a signal that second hand is entering a new regulatory phase, where the question is no longer only what people do with used clothing, but what governments define it as.

Product or waste. Trade or dumping. Circularity or liability.

The coming months will show whether international regulators can build frameworks that rely on verification rather than assumption, and on measured impacts rather than moral shortcuts.

Because once the definitions harden, the system will follow.

Source: UNECE/ECLAC study (full text)