The old clothing recycling industry has long been dogged by labels such as "fake charity," "exported to Africa," "refurbished and resold," and "huge profits." An FAQ article published by the Baijingyu old clothing recycling platform on its official Weibo addressed these claims one by one: refurbishing clothes and selling them as new is illegal and strictly cracked down on by the state; regeneration, export, and compliant donation are the main destinations of recycled clothing; and it emphasized that most old clothing recycling companies on the market are private enterprises, not charitable organizations.

Key Points

  • Baijingyu stated clearly in its Weibo post: old clothes may only be sold as second-hand goods; refurbishing them and letting them re-enter the market as new is illegal, and the cost is far higher than producing new clothes
  • Old clothes no longer fit to wear undergo fiberization or garnetting to become recycled cotton, used for agricultural greenhouse quilts, plush toy stuffing, carpet raw materials, industrial soundproofing cotton, and similar recycled products
  • Newer, better-quality old clothes are sorted, packed, and exported to Africa, Southeast Asia, and other regions; Baijingyu lists logistics, technology, operations, and recycling rewards as the main cost areas its profits go toward

Are old clothes really refurbished and sold as new?
The article's answer is no. It gives two reasons: first, old clothes may only circulate as second-hand goods, and refurbishing them to sell as new is illegal, a practice the state cracks down on hard; second, the business math doesn't work — cleaning, decontaminating, tagging, selling, and shipping all cost money, while every recycled garment is a "one-off" that can't amortize costs at scale. Add to that China's textile industry's ample capacity and a near-saturated apparel market, and there is little incentive to refurbish old clothes on either the cost or demand side.

Is export the only path for recycled clothes?
Not at all — the article describes a logic of multiple parallel paths. After old clothes enter Baijingyu and its partner warehouses, they are sorted piece by piece. Garments that have lost their wearing value go the environmental regeneration route: fiberized by color and material, or garnetted into recycled cotton, ultimately becoming agricultural greenhouse quilts, plush toy stuffing, carpet raw materials, and industrial soundproofing cotton. The newer, better-quality portion is packed and exported to Africa, Southeast Asia, and other regions, directly reused in "original garment" form; the article says such affordable, good-quality clothing can partly make up for the shortcomings of local light industry.

Where does the "huge-profit industry" impression come from?
The article traces this impression to illegal recycling bins exposed online a few years ago, when slogans like "earn over 10,000 a month" and "earn a million a year" spread widely, branding the whole industry with profiteering and shady promotion. The article argues things have changed: industry transparency has improved, residents' recycling awareness has grown, the sector is increasingly standardized, and paid recycling has become popular. On the Baijingyu platform, users can choose cash rewards or product exchanges after recycling. For internet recycling platforms, logistics, back-end technology, operations, reward costs, and charity activity funding add up to a lot, and the article says most profits go to covering these expenses.

Does recycling old clothes equal charity?
The article warns this is a common misunderstanding. Most old clothing recycling companies on the market are private enterprises without fundraising qualifications, and are a different matter from public welfare and charitable organizations. Even genuine donation channels are not as simple as imagined: from collection, transport, and initial inspection to marking and numbering, sorting, cleaning, disinfection, ironing, and shaping and packaging, there are 18 procedures in all, and clothes must be at least 80 percent new. For recipients, the wrong size or style makes for an invalid donation, so the full-chain cost of donating is extremely high. The article also notes that many remote mountain areas no longer lack clothing and may even have a surplus; as various poverty alleviation policies advance, the situation of lagging regions needing large amounts of old clothes is rarely seen. With the total volume of waste textiles rising year by year, mountain areas alone are far from enough to absorb it — other outlets must be found.

Baijingyu states in the article that it positions itself as an environmental recycling platform, and every idle garment it collects is handled through environmental regeneration, environmental remanufacturing, export, and other methods to reduce the pollution old clothes cause to the environment. The article closes by listing the platform's business alongside national rural revitalization, rural education, stray cat and dog rescue, and desert saxaul tree planting. For the industry, the value of this article lies not in its stance but in its point-by-point record of the most common doubts about old clothing recycling and the corresponding factual responses, making it a useful reference for understanding the classification logic of China's domestic recycling chain.

Source: Are all recycled old clothes refurbished and resold? · Originally published 2024-01-05