The phenomenon of "fake charity, real profit" in the used clothing recycling sector is not unique to China but a long-overlooked global issue—the core contradiction lies not in commercialization itself, but in whether the industry can achieve resource circulation under transparent conditions.

Key Points

  • According to the U.S. Textile Recycling Association, the United States generates over 11 million tons of waste textiles annually, with only about 1.7 million tons recycled through charitable channels, while the rest is mostly landfilled.
  • UN Comtrade data shows that global second-hand clothing exports totaled $4 billion in 2016, with sub-Saharan Africa accounting for about 60% of global imports, and over 60% of China's second-hand clothing exports flowing to Africa.
  • Kenyan practitioners and officials revealed that at least 1 to 2 million workers in the country are employed in second-hand clothing-related industries; China generates about 26 million tons of waste textiles annually, with a recycling rate of less than 14%.

The spread of this phenomenon has deep historical and structural roots. Taking Kenya as an example, the large-scale entry of transnational second-hand clothing into Africa occurred after the two World Wars, when surplus military uniforms were sold at low prices by British and American middlemen to African colonies. After independence in 1963, the Kenyan government strongly promoted import-substitution industrialization and banned second-hand clothing imports. However, in the 1970s, turmoil in neighboring countries brought a large influx of refugees, and international organizations introduced second-hand clothing to meet refugee needs, reviving the second-hand trade. After neoliberal policies were implemented in 1991, Kenya completely abandoned trade protection, and transnational second-hand trade was legalized. In recent years, the expansion of "fast fashion" has further accelerated the flow of used clothing from Europe and America to Africa.

Research has found that Africa's local second-hand clothing trade has spawned a complete industrial chain, with dedicated markets in almost every city and town in Kenya. Since Ethiopia bans second-hand clothing imports, smuggling networks even exist along the border between the two countries. The second-hand clothing industry has become an important economic sector in some African countries and has absorbed a large number of unemployed people.

If we shift our perspective back to China, the fate of waste textiles is equally worth pondering. China generates about 26 million tons of waste textiles annually, with a recycling rate of less than 14%; at the same time, many textile enterprises face insufficient raw material supply. This contradiction points to a key question: what kind of used clothing recycling organization do we need?

Experience from developed countries shows that purely charitable recycling that completely avoids commercialization is difficult to sustain. The waste textiles recycled annually in the United States have three main processing methods: 10% to 20% of the highest-quality clothing, shoes, and bags enter local second-hand stores for sale; about 40% are resold to middlemen, repackaged, and exported to other countries; the remaining approximately 40% are delivered to comprehensive resource utilization factories to be processed into fiber products. In this process, export behavior is not for profit but to cover the high costs of recycling and processing.

A person in charge of a used clothing recycling platform stated that pure charity alone cannot effectively solve the difficulty of used clothing recycling; people donate used clothing largely to address clothing turnover in the first place. This platform clearly informs donors that the clothing will be used for commercial purposes, uses door-to-door courier pickup with the platform paying shipping costs, and recycles 3,000 tons of used clothing annually just to break even, with real profits coming from advertising revenue on its WeChat public account. Currently, the platform is working with resource recycling companies to jointly develop a second-hand textile recycling project.

In China, used clothing donation itself is "supply exceeding demand." The author believes that rather than obsessing over "procedural justice" such as whether donated clothing is truly donated, it is better to shift focus to "result justice"—how to improve the utilization rate of waste textiles through innovative used clothing recycling business models. We do not need fake charity groups that "sell dog meat under a sheep's head," but we should welcome profit-making "social enterprises" that objectively improve overall social welfare—only in this way will the goal of improving China's resource recycling rate not be a castle in the air.

Source: Behind the theft and sale of donated old clothes to Africa: The problem is not unique to China, and we cannot be ashamed to talk about making money_Global Express_The Paper · Originally published on 2017-07-23