Recycling companies are drowning in discarded clothing. They can no longer handle the influx of old textiles and are fighting to survive or closing down completely.
The bargains are drawing a horde of eager shoppers to the shopping streets this month. To make room in the wardrobe, we are massively dumping old textiles.
Since the beginning of this year, you are no longer allowed to throw old clothing in the residual waste. Everything must go into the clothing container. But those items are far from all being recycled, according to a new report by Herwin, the umbrella organization of recycling companies.
83,200 tons of textiles were discarded in Flanders in 2022. Nearly half went directly into the incinerator.
In 2022, around 83,200 tons of textiles were discarded in Flanders. Of that, nearly half went straight into the incinerator. Only about five percent enters the local secondhand market. The rest? Shipped to developing countries or processed into, for example, stuffing for car seats.
Unworn in the container
Erika works at Ateljee vzw. They sort and manage, among other things, secondhand clothing for thrift stores. “In recent years, the volumes coming in here have increased enormously. A few years ago, there was only one recycling line—now there are three.”
But Erika is also concerned about the decline in clothing quality. “Moreover, you regularly see unworn items pass by, with the tags still attached. Everything that is still decent enough, we send to the thrift stores for sale. After four weeks, the unsold goods are returned. Lately, there’s been a huge pile of returns.”
“Previously, we used to work with external buyers who took over what we couldn’t get rid of, but that no longer pays off. We store as much as we can and try to sell the items at a discount or process them into handbags, shopping bags, pencil cases, and more, but even then a lot remains. And our storage space is not endless,” sighs Erika.
Incineration as the only option
With that, Erika confirms the report from Herwin. More and more textiles are being incinerated because they are not reusable: in Flanders, this went from four percent in 2010 to seventeen percent in 2024.
Moreover, since last year, even reusable textiles are being destroyed because there were simply no buyers to be found. Incineration then becomes the only option. Where thrift stores spent around 11,000 euros on destruction in 2015, that amount rose to more than 420,000 euros last year.
Dirk Coninckx, secretary at ACVBIE, watches with dismay what could be improved. “The flow of secondhand textiles is often managed by custom work companies. But due to insufficient staff, they can no longer handle the enormous volumes. While budgets are available to hire extra personnel, and thousands of people are on the waiting list for a job in the social economy. That doesn’t add up.”
Temu, Shein and co
“The entire secondhand industry is in trouble,” adds journalist Sarah Vandoorne, who has investigated the textile industry behind the scenes for numerous articles and her book Kleerkastvasten. “There are so many players making money from our old clothes, but since the war in Ukraine and the rise of ultrafast fashion from Chinese webshops, that market has completely collapsed. Apart from local reuse, the sector relies on export, but other countries can no longer handle the influx.”
Vandoorne conducted research in Ghana. There, she truly saw the perverse effects, she says. “Much of what doesn’t get sold is dumped on large landfills and ends up via waterways on beaches and in the sea. Some regions are almost literally flooded by our cast-offs.”
Toward real recycling – transforming used clothing into raw materials for new clothing – there is currently hardly any demand. After all, it is much cheaper to produce new textile fibers. Much clothing consists of different materials, buttons... which makes recycling more difficult and therefore also more expensive. Europe is considering requiring companies to use recycled materials, because they fear that otherwise little will change.”
“Temu, Shein and other fast fashion brands bear a crushing responsibility,” says Els Houttequiet of Herwin. “Producers can push whatever they want onto the market without consequences for them. To change that, unity at the European level is needed.”
“As long as customs services have too few resources to thoroughly inspect incoming goods, producers can do as they please. We must focus on products that last longer and are easily recyclable. And we must buy less. Because every purchased item ends up in the clothing container sooner or later.”