Inditex, H&M Group, Adidas and Danish fashion group Bestseller have joined forces with the nonprofit The Or Foundation to launch the Apparel Recovery Coalition (ARC), a two-year project whose first pilot is the Kantamanto second-hand clothing market in Accra, Ghana, exploring a new mechanism to make brands pay for textile waste they place on the market that ultimately ends up in recipient countries. Circle Economy serves as the coalition's secretariat. Participating companies plan to provide voluntary funding between 2026 and 2027 for market infrastructure improvements, worker training and ecological restoration.

Key Points

  • The coalition's members are four brands—Inditex, H&M Group, Adidas and Bestseller—launched jointly with The Or Foundation for a two-year term.
  • The first pilot is in the Kantamanto market in Accra, Ghana, long one of the main destinations for second-hand clothing from Europe and the United States.
  • European Environment Agency data shows that the EU exported more than 1.44 million metric tons of used textiles in 2025, more than double the 2005 figure; in 2025, Asia accounted for 48% and Africa 43%.

What ARC wants to test is a new model of extended producer responsibility (EPR) that goes beyond the "producer country–seller country" boundary: most existing EPR systems are tied to the country where the clothing was first sold, yet when a T-shirt sold in Europe or the US passes through many hands into an African second-hand market and eventually becomes waste there, the environmental and economic costs of dealing with that waste are borne by the recipient country. The Or Foundation calls this mechanism "textile waste colonialism," arguing that financial responsibility should follow clothing out of its original sales market, and ARC hopes to study how such an internationally scoped EPR model can be put into practice.

The coalition is also focusing on the used-clothing industry ecosystem that has already formed locally in Ghana, with the goal of strengthening Kantamanto market's capacity for resale, repair and reprocessing, and handling the residues of clothing that can no longer be sold or reused.

This move comes against the backdrop of the EU and its member states steadily tightening controls on textile waste. The amendment to the Waste Framework Directive passed by the EU in 2025 sets new obligations for textile and footwear producers, requiring them to bear the costs of collection, sorting, reuse and recycling once their products become waste. Member states have had to implement separate collection of textile waste since 2025. A candidate EU practice is advancing in Spain, where its EPR system is in the implementation phase.

The European Environment Agency points out that although harmonized separate collection has become mandatory, Europe's reuse and recycling infrastructure remains inadequate: in 2022, 85% of textile waste generated by European households was not collected separately and ended up mixed with other waste, mainly going to landfill or incineration. The agency also notes that 4% to 9% of textile products sold in Europe are destroyed before ever being used, equivalent to 264,000 to 594,000 metric tons per year. As for exports, EU bodies also acknowledge "significant uncertainty" about their final destination—some is reused, some is recycled or re-exported, and some ends up in landfills or is burned in the open.

From the perspective of China's used-clothing export and the global second-hand circulation industry, what ARC really touches on is the question of who bears cross-border responsibility: as the cost of waste management in export destinations becomes increasingly politicized, the logic of "whoever places it on the market pays" may extend from within a single country to cross-border chains. The success or failure of the Ghana pilot will influence how European brands fund local sorting and circular projects in recipient countries in the future, and may also change the market rules and compliance environment that used-clothing exporters face.

Source: Inditex, H&M and Adidas Join Forces to Address Fashion's 'Waste Colonialism' - Modaes Global · Originally published 2026-10-01