NewAfricanWoman Issue 49 - Flipbook - Page 35
FEATURE
| FASHION & BEAUTY
I
magine this. You’re sorting through some
old clothes and find a polyester-blend
t-shirt from Zara or H&M that you realise
you haven’t worn since last summer. You
add it to the “donate” pile and then bring
the whole pile of clothes to your local donation
box. You pat yourself on the back for taking
the time to “recycle” it, rather than tossing it in
the bin, and never think about that shirt again.
After your paths have diverged, that piece of
clothing will likely go on to travel between
countries and continents, and those polyester
fibres may well still be swimming in the sea by
the time you are underground.
But how does this happen? How can textiles
that are meant to be recycled or donated in
Europe end up in landfills across the world?
A recent investigation commissioned and
written by the Changing Markets Foundation
(CMF), with on-the-ground research carried
out by Wildlight and Clean up Kenya, aims to
provide an answer.
“
The investigation found that a third of the clothing exported from the
EU to Kenya, over 37 million items, contained plastic and was of such
low quality that they immediately became waste.
Europe’s addiction to fast fashion
In 2021, the EU exported nearly 22.5 million kilograms of clothing — in the form of more than
112 million individual items — to Kenya. This is
only a small fraction of the total amount of clothing thrown away by Europeans each year, which
totals 5.8 billion kilograms or about 11 kilograms
per person.
All the while, the amount of clothing produced
worldwide still continues to rise, partly to feed
the growing demand for fast fashion across the
world and partly thanks to a problem of systemic
overproduction within the fashion industry.
This growth is being fuelled by cheap, synthetic
fibres like polyester and nylon, which are essentially plastics; in fact, more than two-thirds of
clothing is now made of these synthetic, plastic
fibres which are impossible to recycle.
Waste from fast fashion is also the largest
contributor of microplastics to marine environments; 35% of all microplastics in the ocean originate from synthetic textiles.
As of January 2021, exporting plastic waste that is
hard to recycle from the EU to non-OECD countries is banned. Nonetheless, the investigation
found that a third of the clothing exported from
the EU to Kenya, over 37 million items, contained
plastic and was of such low quality that they
immediately became waste.
Germany was the worst offender in the EU,
exporting more than 50 million clothing items
in 2021, of which over 25 million were waste and
almost 17 million were plastic-based fast fashion, closely followed by Poland, which exported
more than 12 million plastic-based items in 2021. ▶
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March 2023 New African Woman
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