The Rhineland-Palatinate climate protection minister Katrin Eder (Greens) is campaigning for an export ban on textile waste to non-OECD countries at the conference of environment ministers.
It’s not about old clothes that could still be used. Rather, there must be an export ban for old textiles and textile waste that would be dumped illegally in African countries instead of being recycled in the countries of origin, said Eder on Wednesday in Mainz.
According to the UN, Germany is one of the main exporters of used textiles. “It cannot be that people and the environment in third countries pay the price for our “fast fashion”,” said Eder. The environment ministers meet on Friday in Goslar, Lower Saxony.
“In recent years, gigantic dumps of textile residues have emerged, for example on the banks of the Korle Lagoon in the Ghanaian capital Accra,” said Eder. 30 to 40 percent of the used textiles that are exported to Kenya, for example, are of such poor quality that they cannot be sold. This textile waste would be dumped illegally or burned openly – microplastics and dyes then contaminating water and soil. (dpa)