Swedish textile experts are sounding the alarm: the country’s new law mandating separate textile collection—effective January 2025—may be doing more harm than good. While intended to advance circularity, the law is inadvertently mixing damaged, non-reusable textiles with high-quality second-hand clothing, potentially undermining a reuse system that already works.
- As the EU pushes forward with its Strategy for Sustainable and Circular Textiles, Sweden is among the first movers to enact policy—requiring municipalities to collect used textiles separately starting January 2025. But early evidence suggests a crucial flaw: reusable clothes are being mixed with damaged textiles that belong in the recycling stream. This, experts argue, risks compromising both reuse and recycling potential.
THE STUDY: A study, jointly conducted by IVL and commissioned under Report C10063, presents the Sweden–Kenya textile chain as a working model of transnational circularity—supporting climate goals, reducing landfill, and creating jobs across continents. But it cautions, without smarter collection systems, the country may end up disrupting what’s already working in the name of progress.
- The study—From Collection of Used Clothes in Sweden to Reuse in Kenya—makes the case for protecting existing circular value chains. It follows post-consumer garments from Sweden to Lithuania for sorting, then through Oman and finally into Kenya’s mitumba second-hand market. The main actor here is Humana Lt, a textile sorting company handling about 38,000 tonnes of used clothing in 2024, 11,000 tonnes of which came from Sweden.
- At Humana Lt’s facilities, textiles are sorted into over 400 quality categories.
- In 2024, 76% of the total volume was prepared for reuse, 16% for recycling, and just 8% discarded as waste. These high-quality streams are essential for international reuse markets such as Kenya’s.
- Once in Kenya, garments pass through Baltic Textile Trading (BTT)’s wholesale and retail operations.
- Wholesale bales—sorted by type and quality—are sold to vendors, while the Think Twice retail chain offers used clothes across 42 outlets nationwide.
- Kenya’s consumers are highly quality-conscious. Poor-quality imports don’t sell and translate into direct losses for vendors.
- With high import taxes (about 40% of the shipment cost), the idea that the Global North is "dumping" textiles here doesn't hold up under scrutiny.
- The report shows that reuse and recycling are not interchangeable endpoints. Blending these two in the collection process harms both streams.
- Reuse offers the highest environmental and economic returns, yet it is at risk if garments are degraded through poor sorting or handling. Conversely, recycling requires clean, homogeneous input materials—something impossible if mixed with reusable clothes.
The study challenges the narrative that second-hand exports are equivalent to waste dumping. Instead, it describes a commercially viable, employment-generating, and sustainability-driven value chain. But this system is now threatened by upstream policy failures.
