In line with the Mitumba Consortium Affiliation of Kenya (MCAK) over 95% of imported secondhand garments usually are not waste, but operators face punitive taxes and laws that threaten their a long time of sustainable practices.
MCAK chairperson Teresia Wairimu Njenga says 2024 has marked its “most profitable and world advocacy marketing campaign ever” however requires world reuse and recyclers to unite within the face of maximum challenges forward.
Throughout 2024, chairperson Njenga travelled throughout the EU, to the UK, Ghana, and to the US, making representations on behalf of the commerce. Njenja mentioned every assembly revealed the identical from textile collectors, sorters, upcyclers and recyclers: that they’re going through extra value and regulation, threatening their financial viability and their competitiveness in opposition to quick trend. The EU is presently main the best way in designing insurance policies that can have an effect on the worldwide provide chains, setting a precedent that shall be adopted world wide. These insurance policies will in the end have an effect on livelihoods within the world south, together with in Kenya with 2m merchants and 6.2m households who purchase secondhand garments regularly and have to be knowledgeable by rigorous analysis and knowledge.
MCAK, alongside worldwide companions, has supported or endorsed a number of tutorial research from Ghana, Kenya, and Uganda which conclude that lower than 5% of secondhand clothes imports are waste, debunking the extensively cited however flawed 40% import waste figure.
MCAK calls once more on coverage makers to make use of strong knowledge and analysis to tell their determination making quite than counting on poorly researched and inaccurate marketing campaign and advocacy materials.
Such misinformation, which incorrectly diagnoses the importation of secondhand garments as the primary driver of waste administration failures, has been deeply damaging to the secondhand commerce.
MCAK and others proceed to name upon coverage makers to focus coverage options and funding on the broader problems with localised waste administration and recycling and the growing overproduction of quick trend throughout the globe.
Njenga mentioned: “Secondhand garments are a part of the answer to textile overproduction, not the issue — they exemplify the round economic system and are very important to Kenya and different nations like Ghana. Research present over 95% of imported secondhand garments usually are not waste, but operators face punitive taxes and laws that threaten their a long time of sustainable practices.
“Policymakers should help reuse, assortment, sorting, upcycling, and recycling, focusing on new clothes producers as a substitute of round economic system operators, particularly with the EU’s necessary textile assortment beginning in 2025. They have to not fall foul of misinformation funded by those that would benefit from the collapse of this commerce: quick trend.
