The missing logic behind the textile waste claims
- Thomas Lundkvist
- May 28
- 5 min read
Updated: 5 days ago
For years, one number has dominated the debate around second-hand clothing exports to Africa.
40 percent. The claim is repeated across media reports, NGO campaigns and policy discussions: that nearly half of all imported second-hand clothing immediately becomes waste.
But there is a question that is rarely asked. Who would make money from that?
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.
And according to the people actually working inside the trade, the economics behind the 40 percent claim simply do not add up.
In our previous investigation from Ghana, we visited the beaches, dumping grounds and waterways repeatedly described in international reporting as evidence of a textile waste crisis. What we found complicated the picture.
From a distance, the waste often appeared to be mountains of discarded clothing. But up close, much of it turned out to be plastic waste, packaging and synthetic debris rather than textiles.
That raised another question.
If the images themselves were often being misinterpreted, what about the economic logic behind the claims?
Because the idea that up to 40 percent of imported second-hand clothing immediately becomes waste also assumes something else: that traders and importers are somehow operating a business built around massive and permanent losses. And according to the people actually working inside the trade, that simply does not make sense.
“It does not add up”
“40% of second-hand clothing being waste is synonymous to somebody bringing products into the country whereby 40% of it they can’t make any money off,” says Marlwin Owusu from the Ghana Used Clothing Dealers Association (GUCDA). “From the business perspective, it does not add up.”
That argument returns again and again in interviews with traders and importers in Ghana.
“We are in business to make profits,” says Maame Serwaa, Retailer and importer in Accra, Ghana. “If you have a significant amount ending up as waste, you will also have an equivalent amount of losses being made. And that’s not true.”
Another importer, Kwaaning Asante Boateng, puts it even more bluntly:
“We can’t be in business spending good money to import goods only to end up selling 60% and throwing away 40%.”
The logic is difficult to avoid.
If nearly half of all imported clothing immediately became worthless waste, somebody in the chain would absorb catastrophic losses. But the trade continues to operate across Ghana, Kenya and other countries at enormous scale, supporting millions of livelihoods.
A narrative built on repetition
According to both industry representatives and traders in Ghana, the problem is not only the figure itself, but how often it has been repeated.
“The 40% figure has stemmed from one particular source and one NGO”, says Owusu.
Jessica Franken, Vice President of Government and External Affairs at SMART, says the same number has been recycled repeatedly throughout media and policymaking.
“That statistic comes from one single study that was never published, was not conducted with any clear methodology and was based largely on anecdotal evidence”, she says. “And yet that’s the number that keeps getting circulated because it’s kind of a sexy number.”
According to Franken, more systematic studies conducted in countries such as Ghana, Kenya and Guatemala have repeatedly pointed in another direction.
“These studies repeatedly show that the material that might be considered waste is anywhere from 5 to 10 percent, sometimes as low as 1 to 2 percent”, she says.
Owusu points to studies conducted or commissioned by GUCDA, research involving GIZ and studies by Oxford Economics. “If we don’t have the right information, then the wrong information is going to create the wrong perception,” he says.
“And the wrong perception is going to lead to wrong policies being formulated.”
Similar conclusions have been reached by organisations that participate directly in the second hand trade through charitable collection systems.
Karolina Skog, Chair of the Nordic Textile Network and former Swedish Minister for the Environment, says organisations such as the Swedish City Missions closely monitor the sustainability of the trade because public trust depends on it.
“The trust from our donors is our most important thing,” she says. “The investigations and Swedish research that we have taken part in reach the same conclusion: that the trade from the NGO sector in Europe to African countries is sustainable. Otherwise we would have withdrawn from it.”
Skog says her confidence is based both on independent Swedish research and third party assessments used within the sector. “Otherwise, I would recommend my board to withdraw immediately.”
Even the “waste” still has value
The logic becomes even more complicated when looking at what actually happens to lower-grade material.
Because in many cases, even garments considered unsellable according to European standards, are not simply discarded.
Owusu describes how parts of this material are repurposed inside local economies.
“Some of these garments can be repurposed when you go to the Kantamanto market,” he says. “They can be repurposed by tailors into different items. They can be used as fillers in mattresses. They can be used as mops.”
“So even what we classify as textile waste, there is still some value in there.”
That reality directly challenges the simplified idea that imported second-hand clothing moves in a straight line from container ship to landfill.
The business model that doesn’t exist
Part of the narrative around textile waste exports is built on the assumption that Europe has economic incentives to ship unusable textile waste to Africa instead of dealing with it domestically. But clear evidence for such a large-scale business model remains difficult to find.
In practice, textile waste in Europe already has established disposal routes, including incineration and domestic waste management systems that are often significantly cheaper and simpler than paying to export containers across continents.
For such exports to make economic sense, multiple actors across the chain would also need incentives to continuously absorb transport, handling and dumping costs. Someone would need to pay to get rid of the material. Someone else would need to pay to receive it and somebody would still need to manage the waste once it arrived.
Yet despite how frequently the idea is repeated, hard evidence of a systematic trade built around exporting worthless textile waste remains limited. Much of the confusion instead appears to stem from blurred distinctions between reusable second-hand clothing, low-grade textiles, unsold garments and actual waste — categories that are treated very differently under both customs systems and existing legislation.
The policies already taking shape
But despite the unresolved questions surrounding the waste figures, the narrative is already reshaping policy.
Across Europe and internationally, regulators are discussing stricter export controls, new sorting requirements and broader classifications of used textiles as waste under frameworks connected to the Basel Convention.
Franken warns that some proposals risk fundamentally disrupting the global reuse system itself.
“If you shut down exports and trade, you end up basically breaking the circular system because that’s a key function in order for it to work,” she says.
She also argues that many policymakers are acting with good intentions, but often based on incomplete information. “There is a natural tendency for policymakers to identify the problem as one thing that can be easily solved. But everybody is looking for the quick fix.”
Written and produced by
Thomas Lundkvist
Previous articles in this investigation:
Studies & Reports:
All studies and reports mentioned you can read and download here: Reports
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