Only one in four items of clothing put in retailer take-back schemes or deposited in clothing banks in Ireland were reused, according to a new report.
Almost all of the items tracked – 95 per cent – left Ireland and 60 per cent ended up outside the EU. The information was provided in the Threads of Truth report by environmental NGOs Voice Ireland and Global Shapers Dublin.
“The public believes donated clothes will be reused or recycled but there is almost never a way to trace whether or not that is what happens,” said Solene Schirrer, the lead author of the Threads of Truth project.
The report, which was published on Monday, found that 13 per cent of such clothing was dumped or incinerated, while over half of the items were tracked to unconfirmed destinations such as textile warehouses, industrial areas or close to transport hubs.
RM Block
By fitting tracking devices to items of clothing and following their journeys over 10 months, the researchers were able to follow 23 items to their final destination from an initial 38 put in clothing banks or retailer take-back schemes.
Earlier this year, The Irish Times reported preliminary findings showing a pair of Penneys trousers put in a Dublin clothing bank ending up in Libya; a shirt in an Irish clothing bank ended up for sale in a second-hand shop in Poland; and a German industrial estate was the final destination for a pair of black joggers.
Now new data now shows that a black turtleneck top put in a Clothes Pod clothing bank travelled to Latvia and on to Poland before ending up in an industrial area in Karachi, Pakistan. Drawing on other reports of waste dumping and illegal landfills in Karachi, the researcher conclude that it was discarded or destroyed.
Of the 10 items put in Clothes Pods clothing banks, three were reused abroad (Nigeria, Poland and Ivory Coast), two were dumped and it was unclear where the other four ended up. Clothes Pods are operated by Textile Recycling Limited, a commercial operator with over 2,000 clothing banks in Ireland.
The Threads for Truth researchers are calling for more transparency around where donated clothing ends up. “Without clear and enforceable standards for collection, exporting and reporting, Ireland’s post-consumer textiles will continue to disappear into a global black hole,” said Ms Schirrer.
Of the six items successfully tracked for reuse, only one stayed in Ireland.
The rest of the reused items successfully tracked ended up across Europe, Africa or the Middle East. One pair of white jeans went to Polch in Germany, on to Belgium and ended up on a residential street in Jordan. A men’s shirt was sorted in Northern Ireland and exported to Nairobi, Kenya. It was subsequently tracked to the Gikomba clothing market and then to a Nairobi residential area, while a pair of cut-off white jeans ended up in a second-hand shop in Abidjan in Ivory Coast.
The Threads for Truth report highlights the fact that five out of the six reused items were made almost entirely from cotton.
Approximately 170,000 tonnes of post-consumer textiles is discarded every year in Ireland, which is about 35 kg per person, higher than the European average. Currently, about 35 per cent of post-consumer textiles is collected in Ireland. The rest ends up in black bins alongside other household waste.
“If every European [country] including Ireland had to manage its own discarded textiles, we would be overwhelmed with waste we currently have no capacity to reuse or treat,” said Ms Schirrer.
The current system relies on clothing manufacturers and retailers self-reporting on where the clothes returned via its take-back schemes end up.
Clothing banks are currently not legally obliged to report where they send discarded clothing.
In the past 25 years, clothes are made faster, sold cheaper and discarded sooner. The rise of fast fashion has resulted in a huge increase in cheap clothes made from synthetic materials which are often not suitable for resale or reuse.
While African countries often have vibrant second-hand clothing markets, some countries such as Ghana are being overwhelmed with importation of low-quality clothing which is not suitable for sale. Many of these African countries have poor or no recycling facilities, so items that can’t be sold end up being burned or put in landfill.
