And as It Turns out, Take-Back Schemes of Fashion Brands Are a Grand Scam

Take-back schemes, often touted by brands as a tool of circularity, can create an illusion that the fashion industry is dealing with its massive waste problem. However, despite grand promises of reuse and recycling plastered on brands’ collection boxes, they are failing to uphold their commitments, says a scathing report by Changing Markets Foundation.

Staff Writer

25 July 2023

3 minutes

Long Story, Cut Short

Between August 2022 and July 2023, Changing Markets tracked 21 items from 10 fashion brands through their take-back schemes.
Three quarters of items (16 out of 21, or 76%) were either destroyed, left in warehouses or exported to Africa, where up to half of used clothing are quickly shredded for other uses or dumped.
A pair of trousers donated to M&S was scrapped within a week; a pair of jogging trousers donated to C&A was burned in a cement kiln; a skirt donated to H&M travelled 24,800 km from London to waste ground in Mali, where it appears to be dumped.

So, you thought you doing a good deed, perhaps helping someone needy by giving that old pair of jeans or dress to an ‘iconic’ brand?

You’re sadly mistaken, says a Changing Markets Foundation's investigative report—Take-Back Trickery: an investigation into clothing take-back schemes—that tracked items submitted to these take-back schemes to establish what actually happens to clothing beyond the deposit bin.

TRACK & TRACE: The investigation, conducted between August 2022 and July 2023, used discreet airtag trackers concealed within clothing, tracking in real time 21 items submitted to ten fashion brands—

H&M,
Zara,
C&A,
Primark,
Nike,
Boohoo,
New Look,
The North Face,
Uniqlo, and
M&S.

—at their stores in the UK, France, Belgium and Germany.

All clothes returned to the brand’s take-back schemes were of good quality, originally bought from second-hand clothes shops, and therefore considered suitable for reuse.
After 11 months of tracking, the outcomes of the tracked items expose the discrepancy between brands’ claims and the actual fate of the collected clothing.

The journey of the trackers was categorised into four groups:

resold within Europe,
downcycled (where clothing material is turned into other products of lower quality such as stuffing) or destroyed,
lost in limbo (for clothing stuck in collection containers or along the way), and
shipped to Africa.

Downcycled or destroyed: Seven items were quickly destroyed, dumped or downcycled, either as stuffing, cleaning cloths or in one case burned for energy in a cement plant. This was despite the items being in good condition and the fashion brands asserting they consider downcycling or burning for fuel only for items not suitable for reuse or recycling.

One pair of trousers in perfect condition dropped off at M&S in the UK was downcycled at a Veolia plant within one week.
Three items in great condition were likely shredded at a SOEX facility in Germany, rather than being diverted for reuse or resale. One of these was pair of trousers in excellent condition with a clothing tag still attached, originally deposited in C&A’s collection bin in France.

This shows a failure of brands and their contractors to properly sort clothing that gets returned through take-back schemes, indicating a disregard for the waste hierarchy, which prioritises prevention and reuse before recycling, let alone downcycling.

Resold within Europe: In total, five items of clothing found a second life either in a second-hand shop or with a customer on the same continent.

Only one of the items was resold in the same country where it was initially deposited, a shirt returned to Zara’s Oxford Street shop in the UK.
Two items travelled to Ukraine for resale.
While the possibility that these found a second home is promising, the trade of used clothing in Ukraine was found to be something of a poisoned chalice, adding to the burden of waste experienced by a country at war.

Lost in limbo: Multiple items became ensnared in the global used clothing trade, lingering for months in indeterminate locations and warehouses, or in some cases never leaving their original drop-off location. In these cases, take-back schemes are clearly failing to meet the goals communicated by brands.

Whereas customers would assume that the clothes they drop off are reused or recycled into new clothes in a reasonable timeframe, in fact they have been left to languish in warehouses across Europe for up to a year.
The brands have benefited from the reputational gains of operating a take-back scheme without having done anything at all with these clothes.

Shipped to Africa: The most contentious category was clothing that ended up shipped to Africa.

Here, items entered massive second-hand clothing markets in countries with inadequate waste management systems for handling market refuse, resulting in a significant portion being bound for landfill or burned.
Two C&A items and two H&M items were in this category, travelling to the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Mauritania and Mali.
An olive green skirt deposited at H&M’s London store took a five-month, 24,800km journey, through the United Arab Emirates SOEX processing facility and later to Bamako, Mali, where it was eventually tracked to a vacant lot, suggesting possible dumping or discarding.
Multiple investigations in African countries into the issue of textile waste and used clothing imports, have revealed that 20-50% of clothing imported through second-hand trade ends up as waste.

It is highly concerning that brands’ take-back schemes are directly contributing to this problem.

And as It Turns out, Take-Back Schemes of Fashion Brands Are a Grand Scam

Enabling Systemic Circularity and a Collective Push for Industry-Wide Change

Focus Should Be on Collective Responsibility that Foster Transparency and Shared Accountability

Falling into the Blame Game Is Counter-Productive for all in the Value Chain

Fashion Industry Not Serious about Emission Reduction or Impact on Nature, Says Report

Viet Nam Facing Critical Challenges in Energy Consumption, Carbon Emissions and Resource Efficiency

EU Chemical Legislation Must Be Based on Scientific and Risk-Based Evidence, Argues EURATEX Position Paper

Organic Cotton Farming Consistently Has Lower Environmental Footprint Across Categories, Finds OCA Study

Or Foundation's 'Misinformation Campaign' Condemned, Ghana Second-Hand Clothing Traders Observe Strike