Second-hand industry appears cautiously optimistic after Geneva waste talks

The Geneva meeting did not move proposals for stronger controls on used textiles forward for adoption at COP18. The second-hand industry has reason to be cautiously optimistic after last week’s Basel Convention meeting in Geneva. But not because the issue has gone away.

At OEWG-15, delegates discussed whether and how the Basel Convention should address the international trade in used textiles and textile waste. Some Parties and observers pushed for stronger controls, including possible prior informed consent procedures and changes to Basel annexes. Others warned that such steps could disrupt legitimate reuse markets before the problem has been clearly defined.

In the end, proposals to move used textiles closer to stronger Basel controls were not taken forward for adoption at COP18. Instead, Parties and observers have been invited to submit another round of comments by 30 November 2026.

For parts of the second-hand sector, that outcome is best understood as a pause, not a victory.

It means there is still time to bring forward evidence, data and practical experience before global waste rules are reshaped around the trade in used clothing.

Kenya argued that it would be premature to move directly towards stronger controls and called instead for further technical work. Representatives from the second-hand sector, including the Mitumba Consortium Association of Kenya, the Ghana Used Clothing Dealers Association and SMART, stressed the economic importance of the trade, the need for better data and the risk of treating reusable goods as waste.

That does not settle the issue. But it shifts the debate from a simple question of whether textile waste exists to a more difficult one: who should define it, on what evidence, and with what consequences?

Related to Reuse News investigations, the Geneva outcome underlines a central point in the wider textile waste debate: the second-hand industry is not arguing that waste should be left unregulated. The question is whether global regulation should be built around claims of large-scale waste exports before those claims have been tested against robust, transparent and verifiable evidence.

The next phase is therefore crucial. If the Basel process now focuses on technical guidance, classification, traceability and inspection tools, regulators will need to answer practical questions: What makes a garment reusable? Who decides when it becomes waste? And how can a global system avoid confusing low-value but usable clothing with waste?

The Geneva meeting did not remove the risk of future controls. But it did prevent the issue from moving forward on assumptions alone. For an industry built on reuse, that is a meaningful — if temporary — reason for cautious optimism.