It ain't fashion, if it ain't sustainable

Elmar Stroomer

Circularity / Kenya

26 April 2022

6 minutes

Clothes being sorted at an ACT workshop. ACT collects mostly from the middle and upper classes. Up to 70% of what it collects is women’s clothing. That is probably because women care more about climate change and sooner take the effort to bring items to their collection bins, but possibly also because they buy or need more clothing.

Importers of 'mitumba' should be held responsible for the waste this sector creates

Doing away with secondhand garments is easier said than done because people do need access to affordable clothing. Founder of Nairobi-headquartered Africa Collect Textiles (ACT), Elmar Stroomer, believes it is time to add a waste tax on imported items and the funds should be invested in high-end collection and recycling infrastructure.

Subir Ghosh

Interview

Circularity / Kenya

25 April 2022

5 minutes

Children's toys made with recycled denim. Brands and producers are becoming responsible for the waste that they generate, but that does not apply to secondhand clothes shipped to Africa, though technically it should. For developed nations it will become more and more challenging to export used clothes to countries that lack textile waste processing infrastructure.

We never wanted to copy-paste a European collection and recycling model

Nairobi-headquartered Africa Collect Textiles (ACT) is run by ordinary people with extraordinary ideas on how to divert textiles from landfills. No one believed recycling clothes would work in a country where a sizeable proportion of people wears secondhand clothes from abroad. Founder Elmar Stroomer tells us why and how it does.

Subir Ghosh

Interview

Cellulose Fibre and Sustainable Textiles 2025