Singapore sends up to 70 tonnes of discarded clothing to Malaysia every week through a cross-border textile recycling partnership aimed at giving old clothes a second life. Led by social enterprise Cloop, the initiative places collection bins across Singapore to gather used garments, which are then shipped to Life Line Clothing in Port Klang, Malaysia, for processing. This volume is already double what it was two years ago, reflecting significant growth in the programme and the scale of the challenge in managing textile waste.

At Life Line Clothing's facility, the collected clothes are sorted to determine whether they can be reused, recycled, or processed into other materials. According to CNA, only about half of the garments are resold, typically compressed into bales and shipped to overseas second-hand markets such as Kenya, Uganda, and Papua New Guinea. The rest are turned into rags or industrial wipes rather than being worn again as clothing. Items that cannot be reused or transformed are finally incinerated for energy.

This partnership model highlights the practical difficulties of textile recycling in densely populated cities. Clothes often contain fibre blends, dyes, buttons, zippers, and other components that make direct recycling difficult. Sorting is therefore crucial in deciding whether a garment continues to be worn or needs to be processed into another form. By channelling old clothes into a dedicated recycling system, Singapore has an opportunity to treat textiles as a resource rather than waste. The doubling of processing volume may indicate that more people are using the bins, that collection volumes have increased, or that the partnership has expanded its capacity.

However, recycling alone is not enough to reduce waste. Extending the life of clothing through reuse and repair, as well as responsible purchasing habits, are equally important. The collaboration between Cloop and Life Line Clothing is one example of textile waste recycling, sending 70 tonnes of old clothes each week and providing a substantial recovery channel for fabrics that might otherwise become waste.

Source: Singapore sends 70 tonnes of unwanted clothes to Malaysia every week in major textile recycling partnership · Originally published 2026-08-26