Everyone talks about textile waste exports. Nobody can explain the business model.
- Thomas Lundkvist
- 7 days ago
- 5 min read
Updated: 5 days ago
The idea that Europe is exporting textile waste to Africa has become one of the most powerful narratives shaping the future of the global second hand trade. It rests on a simple assumption: that somebody is making money by shipping unusable clothing across continents and transferring disposal costs to poorer countries.
Reuse News spent more than a year investigating that assumption.
We found no documented business model, no economic incentives and no clear evidence explaining how such a trade is supposed to work. Yet despite the lack of evidence, the theory is increasingly influencing international policy and regulation.
In the first article of this investigation, Reuse News travelled to Ghana to examine one of the central claims behind the textile waste debate: that large volumes of imported second hand clothing are ending up as waste.
What we found was something very different.
The locations repeatedly presented as evidence of a textile waste crisis turned out to be dominated by plastic waste rather than discarded clothing, and we found no evidence on the ground supporting the scale of the problem commonly described in media and policy discussions.
In the second article, we examined the economics of the trade itself. If 40 percent of imported clothing really became waste, as is often claimed, traders would be operating businesses built on enormous losses. Yet importers, wholesalers and market organisations described a functioning market where products of different qualities continue to find buyers and where livelihoods depend on making those transactions work.
Related article: The missing logic behind the textile waste claims
That left us with a third question: If the waste exists, who is making money from it?
Because behind almost every environmental scandal lies an economic incentive. Someone saves money. Someone gets paid. Someone profits. Without that incentive, the system usually does not exist.
The assumption behind the narrative
At a conference in Gothenburg, Sweden, trade law expert Rodrigo Polanco offered what may be the most common explanation for how such a system would work. "If it's trash and you know it, then you're getting paid to get rid of things that you should get paid in the country where these things are produced," he told Reuse News in an interview.
When asked who would be paying, his answer was straightforward. "Someone from the exporting country is paying you to get rid of it."
Rodrigo Polanco is a professor of international economic law at the University of Bern. His recent research has focused on international trade and the regulatory challenges surrounding textiles, waste and circular economy policies. His perspective is noteworthy because it reflects a view increasingly found in policy discussions: that if textile waste is appearing in importing countries, somebody must be benefiting financially from exporting it.
The logic is easy to understand.
If large quantities of unusable textiles are ending up in countries such as Ghana , somebody must be avoiding disposal costs somewhere else. The exporter saves money. The importer gets paid. The waste problem is transferred from one country to another.
Versions of this argument appear throughout the wider debate. Sometimes explicitly. Sometimes only as an underlying assumption. The problem is that assumptions are not evidence.
And when Reuse News began searching for evidence of such a system, the picture became much less clear.
Following the money
Imagine a company in Europe sitting on a container full of genuinely unusable textiles.
Not second hand clothing. Not low grade garments. Not products that can be repaired, repurposed or resold.
Actual waste. In most European countries, established disposal routes already exist. The material can be incinerated, processed through domestic waste systems or, where economically viable, recycled.
Exporting the same material to another continent is a much more complicated undertaking. It requires collection, sorting, baling, transport to port, container shipping, customs procedures, local transport and, ultimately, disposal after arrival. Every additional step introduces cost.
For the model to work, somebody must save enough money to make the export worthwhile. Somebody else must be willing to receive the material. And somebody must still deal with the waste once it arrives.
Yet despite years of claims about textile waste exports, Reuse News was unable to identify a documented business model explaining how such a system operates in practice. We found no studies tracing payment flows from exporters to importers for the purpose of accepting textile waste. We found no documented contracts. We found no verified examples showing that exporting textile waste through second hand channels is systematically cheaper than managing it domestically.
What we found instead was a widespread belief that such a system must exist.
A trade that should be visible
The absence of evidence becomes even more striking when viewed against existing regulations.
Alan Wheeler, Chief Executive of the UK Textile Recycling Association, explains how textile waste exports from OECD countries to most developing countries are already heavily restricted.
"Exports of textile waste to countries such as Ghana are already prohibited. The evidence increasingly shows that what is being traded is predominantly reusable second-hand textile products, with independently verified studies finding only low levels of non-reusable material in sorted bales." he told Reuse News.
Critics of the trade may disagree with Wheeler's conclusion. But his observation highlights an important point.
If large scale exports of textile waste are taking place, evidence showing how existing controls are being systematically circumvented should exist. There should be documented cases, identifiable actors, financial incentives and observable payment structures. Finding that evidence has proven remarkably difficult.
A theory searching for a mechanism
What makes the issue particularly difficult to assess is that clear evidence remains remarkably scarce.
Over the course of this investigation, Reuse News searched for studies documenting cases, identified actors benefiting from the alleged trade, verified cases of textile waste being exported through second hand channels, or evidence showing that such exports are economically preferable to domestic disposal.
We found none.
The absence of evidence becomes even more noteworthy when viewed against how the trade actually operates, which we have described in this article: The missing logic behind the textile waste claims
International shipments of used textiles already pass through a range of commercial, regulatory and customs controls designed to distinguish reusable goods from waste. If large volumes of textile waste are systematically being exported under the guise of reuse, evidence of how these systems are being circumvented should be visible.
Karolina Skog, former Swedish Minister for the Environment and now representing the Nordic Textile Network and Sweden's City Missions, believes this distinction is important.
"If there were indications of systematic waste exports, we would not be involved in this trade," she told Reuse News.
The statement illustrates a broader reality. Many of the organisations operating within the reuse system insist that they are participating in a market for reusable products, not a trade in waste.
Despite years of investigation and growing policy attention, clear evidence showing otherwise remains surprisingly difficult to find.
From presumption to policy
Perhaps the most revealing moment came near the end of our conversation with Polanco.
Discussing the idea that importers may effectively be receiving waste disguised as reusable clothing, he paused before explaining the logic.
"Well, this is what you would presume."
That single word captures the challenge at the centre of the textile waste debate. Presume.
After several years of headlines, reports, campaigns and policy discussions, the existence of a large scale business model for exporting textile waste is increasingly being treated as established fact. Yet after more than a year of reporting, Reuse News found remarkably no evidence explaining how that business is supposed to work.
The assumption has become powerful enough to shape international regulation but the business behind it remains surprisingly hard to find.
Written by
Thomas Lundkvist
Additional articles in this investigation:
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