What Really Happens to Donated Clothes? And what can we do with them instead?
Written by: Chemitei Janet, African Regional Coordinator, & Isabelle Sain, Communications & Education Coordinator @ Threading Change
Editor: Sarah O’Rourke, Communications Manager @ Threading Change
[15-minute read]
Have you ever considered what happens to your clothes after you donate them? Or is it out of sight, out of mind? The truth is, we can't blame you. My wardrobe, just like that of many Kenyans who shop second hand, consists of clothes from all over the world. According to the 2018 United Nations Comtrade statistics, our clothes come from at least 20 countries with China, Pakistan, Canada, the UK, and the USA being at the top of our imports.
I remember being around the age of seven or eight (over 17 years ago), and being so excited whenever my mother left the storage room in our rural home open so I could go in and rummage through the piles of mitumba clothes and shoes even though they would not fit me. Not then anyway! It was the excess that didn't sell.
At that time, she would go to Mombasa: a one-day journey by bus to pick up new bales that came in by ship. Resellers would select which ones they wanted and then head back to their market locations.
Mitumba is the Swahili word for bundles, which is how these clothes arrive in the country. Second hand trade was banned in Kenya between the mid-1960s to early 1980s with the aim of promoting local textile production and protecting the local cotton industry from foreign competition. However, in the mid-1980s, these policy restrictions were eased because second-hand clothes were allowed as donations for refugees. By the early 1990s, the ban was lifted entirely, as the government shifted to the trade liberation to achieve market-friendly policies between foreign countries and Kenya.
Many other African countries didn't have any legislation that would protect them from the overflow of what the second hand industry has become today, and Kenya was no different. Second hand clothes might have circulated through international aid organizations for charity, but it's clear now that it has always been a for-profit means of disposing of the Global North’s excess.
Mitumba
When I was in primary school, the phrase “Sunday best” explained just how much we valued our clothes. These were clothes that were of great quality and would only be worn during the most important occasions, and they lasted a long time (basically until you outgrew them). They would be handed down to the next child, or gifted to other relatives who had children whom the clothes would fit.
When they tore, they would be mended, sometimes with patchwork, mostly done by our mothers or sisters, giving it a new look. This ensured that there was no regular and mindless purchase of new clothing! And when we couldn't have them mended anymore, they were turned to rags, but never thrown out outright.
Kenya is one of the largest importers of second hand clothing in Sub-Saharan Africa and imported an estimated of 185,000 tones of mitumba in 2019. New bales arrive each week at Gikomba: the largest second hand market in East Africa. The merchandise is redistributed to retailers all over the country. These clothes are sold in different market levels: street markets—usually along busy streets and roads where a lot of consumers on foot are attracted by the sweet calls of the vendors, yelling out the types of clothing they have and their cheap prices; boutiques and second hand clothing stores that are now becoming massive with chain store numbers growing every month; and social media and virtual resellers. There are market days every week where new bundles are opened. These attract individual shoppers and resellers who eye the fresh mitumba so they can be the first to pick out clothing of the best quality, which they can resell for a much higher price at their stalls or boutiques.
Finding the perfect match requires you to go through heaps of clothing which, in recent years, has become quite a task! Undesirable clothes fill up the mitumba bales that keep coming; clothes that are made of poor fabric quality, worn out, faded, stained, stretched, torn, or a combination of all of these. The bales are oversaturated with poor quality fast fashion, which lessens the value of the clothing. Mitumba became popular because they were very affordable, with great fabric quality, this is no longer the case.
When you walk around in Gikomba, there’s a section where you will find tailors, complete with their sewing machines and lots of fabric waste scattered all around them. It is the evidence of their efforts to improve the standard of some of the clothes; either to slim down oversized ones, mend zips, sew in buttons, or get rid of the worn out parts and replace it with those that are still in good shape. Clothes that stay in the market for a long time because they are undesirable might pass through multiple hands all over Kenya as these retailers try to at least resell them even if it means going at an extreme loss.
Gikomba Market
In other African second hand markets, like Kantamanto in Ghana (one of the largest in the world), it's no different.
Obroni W’awu, or Dead White Man's Clothes, present the actual impact of clothes disposal from the excess of the Global North's consumers. 40% of these clothes leave as waste and end up in landfills. Because of the decreasing quality of these bales, the retailers have to buy more of them just so they can recover their losses with no guarantee that they will be of better quality. This leads to a growing accumulation of clothing waste in Global South countries. The clothes that we donate for free, are a burden to communities and the environment. More often then not, they are not recycled into new textiles but instead, are shipped overseas (which has a massive carbon footprint in and of itself) and are left to the Global South to deal with as a problem created by the Global North’s overproduction and overconsumption.
There's a lack of conversation about the true implication of these mitumba that keep streaming into the Global South; African countries have become a landfill for the Global North's fashion waste. A conversation that's not just about boosting the local industry – but how this second hand circulation is also an injustice to both people and the planet.
What is our contributing role? We cannot afford to continuously ignore our problem of overproduction, feed our insatiable desire with overconsumption, and continue with our throwaway mindset.
I talked to two local mitumba sellers in my hometown and asked them what they do with those clothes that don't sell; the garments sit on stands, open air markets and stalls for weeks, even months sometimes but don't sell, so if lucky, eventually the stall operators sell them at a throwaway price. I asked them why and they said it's because they’d rather go through a loss by selling a garment for too low, than to discard these clothes for nothing at all.
The dominant form of the fashion system is a waste crisis that is often mystified and now even romanticized by many Global North brands. Fashion’s impact is difficult to understand, but these firsthand stories provide us with a glimpse into the relationships involved in second hand clothing markets.
The myth that the Global South has a deficit of clothing is frankly not true.
Many people donate their clothes or bring them to donation bins, thinking that they are ‘helping’ and it gives consumers a false sense of permission to buy new and continue this destructive cycle. We know so little about post consumer products and second hand clothing markets, as it is intentionally hidden by the industry as a ‘dirty secret.’ Overlooking it sustains systems of exploitation, white supremacy, and colonialism.
“It is not an altruistic or philanthropic act to send the Global North’s waste to the Global South. ”
We have a waste crisis because the dominant opinion of the fashion system only sees the role of a person to be a consumer.
Human’s relationship to the dominant fashion system has led to the destruction of ecological prosperity, polluted communities, degraded soil, invaded ecosystems and societal collectives. There are many layers to the fashion waste issue and the onus can no longer be left up to the consumer/citizen. The current fashion system is over simplifying and neglecting to take action over the human rights abuses and environmental destruction caused by fast fashion.
There is a complete neglect on behalf of brands and governments on the responsibility and violations of the waste crisis. The current waste crisis solutions are muffling the direness of the situation and thus perpetuating the harm caused. The fashion industry uses the strategies of planned obsolescence and makes the waste crisis ‘out of sight, out of mind.’ Waste is ignored, as we have been conditioned to live with the waste issue as something that calls for individual resilience under the marketplace’s claim that it is now a resource and the waste crisis is solved. But seeing waste as a resource, although helpful in addressing that waste is in fact an issue, it ignores the root of why we have a waste problem to begin with.
Addressing waste individually, although important, is not feasible. It must be addressed through a reckoning with the fashion industry’s entire model of extraction and endless consumption.
Our waste cannot be addressed through the same systems and ways it was created in. We have seen how the dominant fashion system is using this myth about ‘throw-away’ culture so how can we think that they will also deal with waste issues while continuing to take, make and dispose. There are millions of garments flowing through second hand markets and landfills daily, there is an overwhelming amount of waste that we are not seeing. The scale of the waste crisis does not equate to the solutions and investment being put into addressing the sheer volume of waste we currently have and continue to create. Despite the efforts of brands using waste as a resource there needs to be accountability from the brands profiting the most and causing the most harm.
Most donations don’t sell, they are put into landfills or exported to other countries.
The same lack of transparency we are seeing throughout production is being mirrored after the items are bought.
About three-quarters of the clothing sent to thrift shops fails to find a second home.
Therefore, the rest is diverted to other countries, into landfills, or sold off as rags, according to the for-profit Secondary Materials and Recycled Textiles Association. The ways in which textile waste is becoming a part of the landscape with layers upon layers of waste taking up a limitless amount of space is not acceptable. It is exploiting the land, its biodiversity and as well as exploiting the labor power it takes within these secondhand markets.
Why are we sacrificing so much for fashion? There has been an oversimplification of its message across the textile/clothing donation and recycling system. The secondhand trade is here because fashion’s current model has no other way to maintain its success. It upholds classism, internalized colonialism, and calculated ignorance. Personal accounts from people that are affected by overconsumption are the voices that need centered, but the burden to be heard should not be placed on the Global South or the second hand clothing market workers. The Global North needs to step up and invite these voices into the conversation, or better yet, have them lead the conversation.
About the authors:
Chemitei is an Environmental Planning and Management graduate with a passion for sustainable fashion and landscape restoration. She is a climate and social justice activist from Kenya, and also advocates for mental health and body positivity. Her interest in fashion started when she was young watching runway shows and design competitions. Chemitei's commitment to sustainability began in 2017 when she watched the True Cost movie and even went ahead to contest for Miss Environment in her home county Elgeyo Marakwet and won. She expresses her love for fashion and the environment through actively volunteering in environmental organizations such as Greenpeace and GLFx Nairobi, and learning how she can impact change in her community. She incorporates her love for crochet in upcycling projects and loves storytelling through writing.
Isabelle is an artist whose work is an ongoing sensory experience that explores the relationships between body and space. Her work is grounded in establishing connections and events that define shared experiences to understand human interaction within the physical, political, social, and spiritual environment. Isabelle obtained her BFA in Textiles and Fashion at NSCAD University. Isabelle’s work has been exhibited in Toronto, Halifax, and Copenhagen. She has conducted a number of research projects investigating the future of fashion with KEA University, and has collaborated with several brands including Samsøe & Samsøe, and the Green Cannabis Co. In her art practice and experiences, she has created textile based design processes and solutions that establish connections to reinterpret textile production into a more environmentally and socially conscious industry. She is grounded by the preserving and passing of tradition while focusing her research on designs and systems, intersectional environmentalism, and climate justice.
Sources:
Institute of Economic Affairs: https://ieakenya.or.ke/download/the-state-of-second-hand-clothes-and-footwear-trade-in-kenya/
https://www.fashionrevolution.org/solidarity-in-the-second-hand-supply-chain/
OR Foundation Mission. OR Foundation, 2009, theor.org/mission. Accessed 27 Dec. 2021.
Ricketts, Liz. “This is not your Goldmine. This is our Mess.”Atmos, 30 Jan. 2o21, atmos.earth/fashion-clothing-waste-letter-ghana/. Accessed 27 Dec. 2021.
