Many people treat the recycling bin downstairs and charitable donations as the same thing, but the actual difference is huge. Commercial recycling deals with used textiles that still have residual value. Companies bear the costs of door-to-door collection, storage, labor, sorting, disinfection and organization, packing, and transportation. Reselling clothing in relatively good condition is an important part of keeping this model running. Charitable donation, by contrast, is about giving qualifying clothing to people who actually need it. The handling logic in the warehouse is also different: condition, material, style, season, and degree of damage all affect where an item goes. The value gap in the recycling chain between a well-preserved pair of jeans and a badly pilled, deformed sweater can be very large.

Key Points

  • In 2020, domestic waste textile generation was about 22 million tons, and the recycling rate at that time was about 20%.
  • The customs commodity classification has long included HS6309 "worn clothing," and in 2026 public export statistics still contain corresponding export data records under this code.
  • The "Technical Specification for Waste Textile Recycling," whose revision was launched in 2025, covers collection, sorting, disinfection, storage, transportation, and safety and environmental protection.

As long as used clothing can still be worn, it still has commodity value. Once it enters this chain, an ordinary T-shirt undergoes multiple identity changes: at the original owner's home it is idle clothing; when it enters a recycling company it is used textiles awaiting sorting; after meeting the requirements for continued wearing it can become second-hand clothing; and after being packed and shipped in bulk it becomes goods in normal trade. The clothing itself has not changed; what changes is the transaction scenario. Some regions in Africa have mature second-hand clothing consumer markets, and reasonably priced used clothing has real demand. After sorting and packing and entering local markets, it continues to be sold through wholesale and retail links. This commercial chain objectively exists.

But it must be made clear that clothing entering the commercial recycling system and donated clothing explicitly given to charitable organizations cannot be directly equated. As for the widely circulated claim that "60% flows to Africa," existing public official materials can only confirm the existence of the commercial export and reuse chain for used clothing. They are not enough to uniformly summarize nationwide used clothing donations as "60% sold to Africa." Different regions, companies, recycling methods, and clothing quality lead to very different final destinations, and applying the proportion of one channel to nationwide donations makes it hard to obtain accurate results.

Whether something is "sold or not" itself cannot be equated with wasting goodwill. A used T-shirt with almost no cash value may not even cover the shipping cost if transported alone for hundreds of kilometers. Only large-scale, centralized processing can make used clothing recycling economically sustainable. And directly giving away all collected used clothing is not realistic either: used clothing may include underwear, damaged garments, heavily stained clothing, as well as heavy winter clothes, formal wear, high heels, and other items unsuitable for specific recipient scenarios. Clothing truly suitable for wearing again must take into account hygiene, completeness, size, season, and actual demand. This is also why recycling increasingly emphasizes sorting: "can be collected" and "can continue to be worn" are not the same thing.

Textiles that can no longer be used as clothing do not necessarily have to be thrown away. Some waste textiles can enter the recycled fiber system after processing and can also be applied to building materials, automotive interiors and exteriors, and other fields. In other words, a piece of clothing that can no longer be worn does not mean it is worthless. The ideal state is not to pile it up somewhere else, but to find its next use.

What truly affects ordinary people's feelings is often what they are told at the time of recycling: if it says used clothing recycling, then subsequent commercial sorting, reuse, or qualified used clothing trading is itself part of resource circulation; if it says charitable donation, people will naturally expect the clothing to flow according to the corresponding purpose. These two terms differ by only two characters, but the psychological contract behind them is completely different. Both commercial recycling and charitable donation have a reason to exist. What is feared is that the two paths are mixed into one vague box. Clothing can be old, but its destination should not be ambiguous.

For the used clothing trade industry, the practical meaning of this chain is that standardized commercial recycling and export channels support the value recovery of used textiles. The scale of export, sorting, and regeneration at each stage is far less important than information transparency. Only by letting residents clearly know the exact destination of their clothing at the time of drop-off can the source base of the recycling industry chain become more stable.

Source: Do 60% of used clothes donated by Chinese people really flow to Africa and become merchandise? After reading this, are you still willing to donate? · Originally published on 2026-10-03