Taiwan residents need to sort out where their old clothes go. The New Taipei City Environmental Protection Department points out that not all old clothing can be placed in old clothes recycling bins. Garments that come into close contact with intimate areas, as well as damaged or soiled clothing, should be placed in designated garbage bags and handed to the route garbage trucks; underwear, swimwear, and sleepwear fall into this category. Other clean old clothes, after being washed and sorted, can be donated to charity groups, placed in old clothes recycling bins approved by the New Taipei City EPA, or handed to cleaning crews' route recycling trucks.

Key Points

  • The New Taipei City EPA makes it clear that underwear, swimwear, sleepwear, and damaged/soiled clothing cannot be recycled and must be placed in designated garbage bags for route garbage trucks.
  • A.mart hypermarkets is running a recycling campaign from now until October 31. Recycling 5 or more secondhand garments at the customer service center earns a "NT$50 off NT$500" cash voucher, limited to one redemption per APP member.
  • A.mart's 2025 campaign data shows that secondhand clothing collected in a single month exceeded 6,500 items.

Two Channels, Each With Its Own Threshold

The New Taipei City EPA's sorting logic is quite straightforward: the criteria are whether the clothing comes into close contact with intimate areas and whether it is damaged. Items meeting these two conditions all go through the general garbage collection process. Only idle household clothing that is in good condition and has been washed and sorted qualifies for the recycling system—charity groups, approved old clothes recycling bins, and cleaning crews' route recycling trucks can all accept it. This distinction means that the old clothes recycling bins commonly seen in communities are not a universal entry point; residents need to screen items themselves before dropping them off.

Hypermarket Channel Uses Vouchers to Drive Recycling

A.mart, meanwhile, ties recycling to consumption. The campaign period runs from now until October 31, at A.mart customer service centers, with a threshold of 5 items recycled and a reward of one "NT$50 off NT$500" cash voucher; the same APP member can redeem only once during the campaign.

Judging from A.mart's published 2025 campaign recycling data, secondhand clothing collected in a single month has exceeded 6,500 items. A.mart interprets this figure as consumers' growing participation in old clothes recycling—using the convenient recycling channels of hypermarkets to support environmental protection while also making the most of vouchers.

What It Means for the Industry

For the old clothes recycling chain, the accuracy of front-end sorting directly affects the quality of usable material at the back end. The public sector uses garbage collection rules to define the boundary of what cannot be recycled, while retail channels use discount vouchers to attract consumers to bring old clothes back to stores. The two mechanisms run in parallel, reflecting that secondhand clothing recycling is moving from simply dropping items into recycling bins toward a stage that emphasizes both sorting by category and channel incentives.

Source: Where should old clothes be thrown away? Throwing them all in the "old clothes recycling bin" is wrong—hypermarket recycling earns NT$50 shopping credit | Life & Consumption | Life | NOWnews Today News · Originally published 2026-10-03