A new global study has called for a shake-up of the recycled clothing industry, finding most donated clothes were exported to other countries or sent to landfill.
Co-author Yassie Samie, from Melbourne’s RMIT University, said the first-of-its-kind study analysed what happened to clothes and other textiles after consumers no longer want them in Amsterdam, Austin, Berlin, Geneva, Luxembourg, Manchester, Melbourne, Oslo and Toronto.
Dr Samie said across most western cities it found the same pattern of textile waste being exported, going to landfill or being dumped in the environment.
She said charity shops handled a large amount of used clothes, but the study found many were poor quality and there was little financial benefit to managing them locally.
“In Melbourne, charities export high-quality, often vintage, second-hand clothes to Europe, forcing the city’s independent resale businesses to import similar apparel back from Europe or the United States.”
Dr Samie said, overall, charities and collectors had been reporting the plummeting quality of garments over the past 15 to 20 years, decreasing resale potential.
She said local governments and charities needed to coordinate more to manage textile waste.
“We’re used to charities doing the heavy lifting, but they’ve been unable to fully handle the volume of donated clothes for a long time now.”
Dr Samie said most local governments in the cities studied did not get involved in textile waste beyond providing public spaces and licenses for charity bins and commercial resellers.
She said local governments sent dumped textiles directly to landfill, instead of diverting to recycling or reuse facilities or other local alternatives.
“This indicates the lack of mechanism and incentives in place to drive real systemic change.”
Dr Samie said Amsterdam was an exception with the municipality managing collection and sorting of unwanted clothes and encouraging collection of all textiles, including nonreusable ones.
She said from January 2025, European Union Member States must establish separate collection systems for used textiles.
“But the biggest per capita discarders of textile waste, Australia and the US, have no such regulation.”
Access the full study: Urban transitions toward sufficiency-oriented circular post-consumer textile economies
