Report Says 96% of Secondhand Clothing Sent to East Africa Is Reusable

There is a new study that has found something interesting about the global secondhand clothing trade.

After analysing more than 244,500 items in markets across Uganda and Tanzania, researchers found that around 96% of the imported clothing was reusable. Only 1.1% to 1.3% was classified as textile waste. That's great, right? Not really!

If 96% of these clothes are still wearable, why are such enormous volumes leaving wealthier countries in the first place, and why are clothes being produced in such quantities?

A garment can be perfectly wearable and still have almost no resale value in the country where it was discarded.

Wealthier markets collect far more used clothing than their charity shops, resale platforms and local consumers can absorb. Constant buying and cheap fast fashion mean clothes are removed from wardrobes long before they are physically worn out.

There may be nothing seriously wrong with the garment, but there is simply too much of it.

Exporting becomes the easiest way to keep this excess moving, so the problem does not begin with whether the clothes are wearable. It begins with a fashion system producing and consuming more clothing than its own markets can handle.

So while the clothing may be reusable, much of the labour and financial risk involved in finding a new use for it has been moved to the receiving country.

The 96% figure tells us about the condition of the clothing when it arrives. It does not tell us what happens months or years later.

Every garment eventually reaches the end of its usable life. When clothing made and first consumed in a wealthy country is exported, its eventual disposal also moves abroad.

Uganda and Tanzania must then manage clothing they did not manufacture and whose first owners lived elsewhere. This becomes especially difficult when garments contain synthetic fibres, mixed materials and low quality construction that make recycling almost impossible.

The issue is that wealthy countries consume clothing at a rate that their own reuse and recycling systems cannot manage.

Instead of slowing production, they depend on lower income markets to absorb the overflow and manage the garments at the end of their lives.

Secondhand trade can extend the life of clothing and support millions of people. That value should be protected.

But reuse should not become an excuse for endless overproduction.

The fashion industry just keeps producing so much that wearable clothing must travel across the world just to find someone willing to use it.