Qingdao has formed a second-hand clothing industry chain that runs from collecting clothes by weight from residents' homes, through rough sorting locally, to exporting them from southern ports to Africa and Southeast Asia. Sorting plants sell to southern export companies at about 5,000 yuan per ton, and by the time the clothes reach African distributors they fetch about 7,000 to 8,000 yuan per ton; Qingdao exports more than 2,000 tons of second-hand clothing to Africa each year, about 20% of its total civilian waste textiles.

Key Points

  • Qingdao second-hand clothing collection points buy old clothes from residents at about 0.3 yuan per jin, then sell them by the ton to upstream sorting plants, which resell them to southern export companies at about 5,000 yuan per ton.
  • More than 2,000 tons of second-hand clothing are exported from Qingdao to Africa each year, accounting for about 20% of local civilian waste textiles; about 90% of winter clothing in near-new condition is exported to Russia.
  • China generates 4 billion to 6.5 billion pieces of old clothing each year, and in 2021 alone the direct recycling value of discarded old clothes reached 40 billion yuan, with a market worth hundreds of billions already taking shape.

Practitioner Yuan Dequn left his company in early 2021 and, with a partner, founded "Qingdao Desheng Second-Hand Clothing Recycling," collecting old clothes from residents' homes across the city. The collection standard is not dirty, not torn, not worn out, and not affecting resale; clothing, shoes, bags, quilts, bedsheets, and plush toys are all accepted, at an average price of about 0.3 yuan per jin. Around the end of the year during spring cleaning, it is common for one household to sell 200 to 300 jin, and some sell as much as 500 to 600 jin. In the report, one resident sold 300 jin of old clothes at once and got nearly 100 yuan. Yuan Dequn and his partner collect nearly 1,000 jin on an average day, and he himself sorts for seven to eight hours a day, separating items into more than a hundred categories such as T-shirts, shirts, jeans, dresses, and silk scarves.

Qingdao has about 30 to 40 factories engaged in second-hand clothing sorting, concentrated in Laixi, Jiaozhou, Chengyang, and Pingdu, responsible for further fine sorting of the old clothes sent from collection points. Damaged, stained, and yellowed items, as well as high heels and irregularly shaped bags unsuitable for baling, are picked out; the rest are quality-checked, weighed, and compressed by hydraulic balers into regular rectangular blocks, with a category list attached so export customers can verify them. Qingdao sorting plants then transport the baled old clothes in bulk to export trading companies in southern port cities such as Hangzhou and Guangzhou, which load them onto ships for export.

Africa is considered the main destination for Qingdao's second-hand clothing, where local distributors take the goods and then distribute them to downstream vendors or sell them directly at stalls. Chinese clothes are brightly colored, which suits African consumers' tastes, but export categories change with fashion trends; floral T-shirts that sell well in the first half of the year may give way to solid-color styles in the second half. Exportable old clothes account for at most half of the collected volume, and the remainder is sold to other collection points at about 0.1 yuan per jin: pure white clothing is made into cotton yarn, down from down jackets is disinfected and reused, and dark pure cotton fabrics become non-woven fabric, greenhouse insulation quilts, roadbed cloth, highway protective materials, filling, automotive soundproof cotton, and even mops.

According to incomplete statistics, based on an average lifespan of 3 to 4 years per garment and 3 to 5 items discarded per person per year, China generates 4 billion to 6.5 billion pieces of old clothing annually. In 2021 alone, the direct recycling value of discarded old clothes reached 40 billion yuan, and together with stockpiles from previous years and the downstream industrial chain, a market worth hundreds of billions has begun to take shape. Data from the China Association of Circular Economy shows that the old clothing recycling rate is rising year by year, and the industry has formed a rationally laid-out system with a clear division of labor: nearly 30% is exported to Africa, Southeast Asia, and other places, while 70% is recycled domestically. Yishui and Weifang in Shandong mainly collect dark materials and white cloth for reuse, while Puyang in Henan specializes in collecting down jackets to process down quilts. During the pandemic in 2020, second-hand clothing from Europe, America, Japan, and South Korea was considered unsafe, so African wholesalers turned to China to place orders, and China's second-hand clothing industry saw explosive growth.

Source: What do you do with your old clothes? Qingdao's second-hand clothing recycling market is rising, collected by the jin and sold to Africa for seven to eight thousand yuan per ton_ Tencent News · Originally published on 2022-01-19