Mountains of T-shirts, jeans and shoes pile up on rickety tables. On a sunny winter’s day, customers persevere through the used clothing items at a central market in Tunisia’s capital. “The prices are good,” says a young man from Tunis, who regularly shops here at the so-called Fripe. Sometimes a jacket, sometimes a couple of T-shirts. Most things cost the equivalent of no more than three euros, some are for a couple But things sometimes broke quickly, says the Tunisian, pointing to the hole in the sleeve of a sweater.
Second-hand clothes are common in the North African country. Tunisians with T-shirts from a German music school or sports club are not a rare sight. Because many used goods from Germany end up in Tunisia. According to the UN, the Federal Republic is one of the largest exporters of old clothes.
Environmental disaster textile waste
According to the Federal Association for Secondary Raw Materials and Disposal (BVSE), more than a million tons of used textiles are collected in Germany every year for recycling. That is over 15 kilograms per inhabitant – and the trend is rising.
Huge quantities of used textiles from Western countries are also shipped to Ghana. The throwaway mentality of the West has triggered an environmental catastrophe here, says Sammy Oteng, project manager of the OR Foundation in the capital Accra, which is committed to more sustainability in the fashion industry.
The country’s largest second-hand market, Kantamanto alone, received 15 million items of clothing every week. “With a population of 31 million people, it’s easy to calculate that half of all Ghanaians would have to buy a piece of clothing,” explains Oteng. “That’s completely impossible.” 40 percent of all incoming old clothes are also too old or too shabby to be recycled. According to Oteng, around 70 tons of Kantamanto textiles are dumped every day in a rubbish dump on the shore of Accra’s Korle Lagoon. From there, the clothes are often blown into the lagoon and washed into the sea. “We have become the garbage dump of the West.”
Disposable fashion pollutes the environment
The trend towards cheap disposable fashion is also causing concern for the industry in Germany. According to the BSVE, synthetic fibers and material mixes are now the dominant components of the fashion industry. These materials were difficult to recycle.
Huge amounts of old clothes from the West also arrive in Chile. The hilly landscape of the local Atacama desert is now being supplemented by new gigantic mountains: piles of clothes. Near the town of Alto Hospicio, old pants, t-shirts and sweaters are piled high in the driest place on earth. In the South American country, around 40 percent of the incoming textiles are sorted out and disposed of, says the city’s environmental officer, Edgar Ortega. Around 20 tons of old clothes ended up in the desert every day.
Around half of all things from German old clothes containers or church collection points cannot be carried further, reports the umbrella organization Fair evaluation, in which non-profit old clothes collectors have joined forces. The textiles could then only be processed into cleaning rags or raw materials – or they would have to be disposed of.
Import stop against old clothes
According to the North Rhine-Westphalia consumer advice center, only around five to ten percent of the old clothes collected in Germany are ultimately passed on to those in need in this country or resold in local shops as second-hand goods. Around 40 percent of the textiles collected are sold in Eastern European and African countries. The export of the goods to African countries has long been controversial because the flood of cheap goods threatens local textile producers.
A few years ago, a group of East African recipient countries – Kenya, Rwanda, Uganda and Tanzania – tried to resist the import of used clothing with an import ban. The US then threatened to kick the countries out of the Agoa trade deal, which gives many African countries duty-free access to the US market. Only Rwanda held its own. Everyone else backed down. (dpa)