NewAfricanWoman Issue 49 - Flipbook - Page 36
FASHION & BEAUTY | FEATURE
TRASHION: What happens to the clothes in
Kenya?
Kenya has a thriving second-hand clothing industry that employs millions of people off the back
of these exports. These imported second-hand
clothes are known as mitumba, a kiSwahili word
meaning bale or bundle, because the clothing is
typically sold to retailers in bales.
“
About 30 to 40% of mitumba has
no market value and is actually
nothing more than textile waste, of
which about two-thirds is typically
made of plastic 昀椀bres.
As part of the investigation commissioned by
CMF, Betterman Simidi Musasia, founder and
patron of Clean Up Kenya, says they “went to the
Ground Zero of the fast fashion world to unmask
an ugly truth — that the trade of used clothing
from Europe is, to a large and growing extent, a
trade in hidden waste.”
About 30 to 40% of mitumba has no market value
and is actually nothing more than textile waste,
of which about two-thirds is typically made of
plastic fibres.
Kenyan retailers of second-hand clothing consider
every mitumba purchase a gamble of sorts; they
have no idea how much of each bale will be able
to be resold, and how much is trash, until after
they have opened it and sorted through the items.
Every day in Kenya, about 150 to 200 tonnes of
textile waste — between 60 to 75 truckloads —
ends up being dumped, burnt, or sent to overflowing dump sites. Dandora, the largest landfill
in East Africa, happens to sit at the edge of
Gikomba Market, the bustling heart of the
second-hand clothing industry in Nairobi. Of this,
Musasia says that “a large proportion of clothing
donated to charity by well-meaning people ends
up this way. Why? Because the backbone of the
fast fashion industry is plastic, and plastic clothing is essentially junk.”
One way or another, a polyester t-shirt can
continue to cause harm for years after it’s been
“donated.” With no way for it to be recycled, it
will most likely end up in a landfill or floating in
the ocean as microplastic fibres, contributing to
the disappearance of marine ecosystems.
Even in the most useful iterations of its second
life, the t-shirt might be down-cycled into rags or
used as fuel by poor communities somewhere in
the Global South, causing adverse health effects
to whomever happens to be within range of the
burning plastic.
CMF’s campaign manager, George HardingRolls says: “Unless the fashion industry is fundamentally changed, what we have seen in Kenya
and around the world will be just the beginning.
Recycling companies cannot be allowed to hide
behind their empty promises and should be
banned from exporting junk clothing.”
Vendors selling second clothes on a sidewalk in South Africa.
Credit: Shutterstock/MartindeJong
34 l New African Woman l March 2023