When clearing out wardrobes during the September seasonal change, most households end up with two or three bags of old clothes that they "no longer wear but don't know where to put." Around the four disposal routes of upcycling old clothes, selling individually on Xianyu, recycling by weight, and dropping into recycling bins, the publicly verifiable actual costs and quotes are as follows.

Key Points

  • A case of altering 27 old garments in 3 months shows: 200 yuan invested in tools and materials, each "new garment" costing about 7 yuan in materials plus 2.5 hours of labor.
  • Multiple recycling mini-programs quote around 0.8-1 yuan/kg (Aiguo 0.8, Huishouyuan 0.96, Manniao 1), while selling by item on Xianyu commonly fetches 10-20 yuan, a price gap of about 20 times.
  • In 2021, China exported $624 million worth of second-hand clothing to Africa, a year-on-year increase of over 131%, surpassing Europe and the US for the first time to become Africa's largest second-hand clothing supplier, accounting for over 60% of local imports.

Upcycling Route: What Works Is "Downgrading for Wear," Not "Dramatic Fashion Makeovers"

Posts on Xiaohongshu like "16 tips for refreshing old clothes without buying new ones" can get up to 26,000 likes, but top comments generally question the everyday wearability (the top comment with 646 likes asks "who on earth would actually wear this out," and another with 181 likes warns "what should fall apart falls apart, what should sag sags"). In practice, the success rate of upgrading alterations is far lower than downgrading reuse: plain cotton old T-shirts and thermal underwear can be directly turned into pajamas and loungewear, thick cotton old clothes can be folded into cushions, and pure cotton can be cut into rags—zero tools, zero barrier; turning jeans into storage baskets or old T-shirts into shoulder bags is intermediate, requiring a pair of scissors and needle and thread; truly renovating into fashionable new styles depends on craftsmanship. Shenzhen/g

A blogger reviewed altering 27 old garments in 3 months: 200 yuan for tools and materials, saving about 3,800 yuan net at 150 yuan per new garment, at the cost of 2-3 hours per item. This math works for people with a sewing machine who treat handicrafts as entertainment; for those unskilled at handiwork with limited after-work time, it's better to just sell them and buy a well-fitting basic item.

Selling Route: Xianyu by Item, Recycling Platforms by Weight

On Xianyu, clothes in 70-80% new condition with decent styles listed at 10-20 yuan basically sell, suitable for a small number of items with good style, good condition, and recognizable brands, at the cost of time for photos, communication, packing, and shipping.
The remaining ordinary old clothes go to recycling by weight, with public quotes around 1 yuan/kg: one user sold 20 kg for 20 yuan, 30 jin for 11 yuan, and 69 jin only got back a cup of coffee. A full moving bag is about 10 kg, corresponding to a recycling price of about 10 yuan; three large bags together amount to a cup of milk tea. The real positioning of recycling by weight is not "recouping money" but free disposal.

Where Recycling Bins Go: Mainly Sorting for Export, Beware of Gray Areas

Old clothes put into community recycling bins are not by default used for donation. The process usually starts with sorting: those in good condition, clean and intact are exported overseas for resale, while damaged pure cotton garments are shredded and processed into recycled fiber products such as rags, insulation materials, and carpets. Public data shows that in 2021 China's second-hand clothing exports to Africa reached $624 million, a year-on-year increase of over 131%, making China for the first time surpass Europe and the US to become Africa's largest second-hand clothing supplier, accounting for over 60% of local imports. In December 2025, CCTV Finance exposed problems in the old clothes recycling chain: some livestream rooms sold second-hand clothes from mixed sources, including sorting factory stock and even garbage station goods, sold directly as "new clothes" without cleaning or disinfection.

Diversion Checklist

First pick items that can be sold individually on Xianyu with a two-week deadline; then pick pure cotton, loose, undamaged clothes to wear at home; then pick denim and pure cotton materials to make storage baskets and rags, keeping only what will actually be used; the rest schedule door-to-door recycling (around 1 yuan/kg), and discard moldy and stubbornly stained items as general waste. For genuine donations, choose public welfare organizations with receiving feedback mechanisms; if you mind resale, cut the hem before dropping them in, and discard intimate underwear directly.

Source: Clearing out three bags of old clothes during the seasonal change: altering one "new garment" takes 2.5 hours, selling by weight is 1 yuan per kilogram—the math for four disposal routes is done for you_Clothing Cleaning_SMZDM · Originally published on 2026-09-22