Antonio de Carvalho, the owner of Green World Recycling, a textile recycling company in the Stourbridge area of central England, said in June: “Our warehouse is full.” Antonio de Carvalho makes a profit by selling the recycled clothes to overseas merchants.
Typically, traders in poorer countries such as Africa, Eastern Europe and Latin America rely on these second-hand clothing. However, since the outbreak of the epidemic at the beginning of this year, blockade measures have restricted the flow of second-hand clothing, and business in overseas end markets has slowed down.
As overseas buyers are no longer able to afford freight, Antonio de Carvalho said that since May, his price to overseas buyers has dropped from 570 pounds to 400 pounds per ton. , making it difficult for his company to cover the costs of collecting and storing clothes.
Antonio de Carvalho said that buyers also requested that the payment period be extended from 15 days to 45-60 days. This exacerbates cash flow problems. “We are losing… a lot of money and operating losses are huge.”
The second-hand clothing market is shrinking
Antonio de Carvalho’s experience reflects the difficulties faced by the entire industry. Perhaps even after the epidemic passes, the battered second-hand clothing trade will take a long time to recover.
Reuters interviews with 16 market participants in the UK, the United States, Germany and the Netherlands show that there are fewer clothing recyclers Collect clothes and clear inventory a few times a week, and consider layoffs to save cash.
At the same time, consumers who are stuck at home due to the epidemic are also cleaning out their wardrobes and donating clothes. is increasing. While this would be a good thing under normal circumstances, it currently puts greater pressure on clothing recyclers.
Jackie King, executive director of the Secondary Materials and Recycled Textiles Association (SMART), said: ” This is unlike any recession in a century. I expect there will be company failures.”
United Nations Trade Data It shows that in the five years to 2019, global second-hand clothing exports averaged more than US$4 billion per year, and the withdrawal of clothing recyclers is having a profound impact on the industry.
Official data shows that in the UK, second-hand clothing exports from March to July were about half of the same period last year. Export volumes improved in July, the latest month on record, as countries began to reopen and merchants seized the opportunity to move inventory, but exports were still down about 30% year-on-year.
U.S. government data shows that second-hand clothing exports fell 45% from March to July compared with the same period last year. The United States is the world’s largest exporter of used clothing, and up to one-third of donated clothing ends up being sold in markets in developing countries.
Kenya’s crisis
In 2018, Kenya imported 176,000 tons of second-hand clothing, equivalent to more than 335 million pairs of jeans.
And now, in one of the largest second-hand clothing markets in East Africa – Nairobi (Kenya’s capital) open-air Market Gikomba, where business is slow, with shop assistants standing idle and merchants trying to get shoppers to try on their clothes.
Image source: Reuters
Traders here have been hit by a double blow: On the one hand, the government banned imports of second-hand textiles in March due to concerns that they could carry the coronavirus. these textiles. On the other hand, as people themselves stayed at home, apparel demand and foot traffic dropped.
Nicholas Mutisya, a salesman who sells second-hand jeans and hats, said: “Before the outbreak, I could sell at least 50 pairs of pants. But now, it is difficult to sell one pair every day.”
The Kenyan government lifted the import ban in August The ban on second-hand textiles comes as traders in Kenya and industry bodies in Europe and the United States say second-hand clothes are safe and the virus cannot survive the journey to Africa.
But for salespeople like Nicholas Mutisya, the difficulties continue. His colleague Anthony Kang ‘ethe said: “There used to be five workers in our company. Now there are only two of us left.”
They sell second-hand clothes shipped from the UK in one shop and say the supply crunch has hit the industry hard. “We can no longer buy bundles (of clothes) directly, so now we buy clothes from traders we have worked with before.”
Fashionable The Dark Side
Since the 1990s, there has been a large-scale commercial trade in importing second-hand clothing from Europe, the United States and other emerging markets due to growing demand for Western fashion in Africa and Eastern Europe. began to flourish.
Such a strong demand has caused the fashion market to expand rapidly, according to the sustainable development charity Ellen MacArthur Foundation (Ellen MacArthur Foundation) MacArthur Foundation), global apparel production has almost doubled in the past 15 years.
In March 2019, the United Nations Environment Program stated that the fashion industry is the second largest water-consuming industry in the world, and its carbon Emissions account for 10% of the global total, more than the emissions from all international flights and shipping combined.
Meanwhile, excess clothing creates an ever-increasing amount of waste, which ends up being thrown away landfill.
According to a 2019 British Parliament report by the Environmental Audit Committee, in the UK, consumers every People buy more clothes than any other country in Europe, about five times as much as in the 1980s. The report states that approximately 300,000 tonnes of clothing is landfilled or incinerated in the UK every year.
According to the Environmental Protection Agency, the United States produces nearly 17 million tons of textile waste every year. Equivalent to 29 billion pairs of jeans. Two-thirds of it ends up in landfill.
Anna Smith, a doctoral researcher at King’s College London, is working on a system designed to eliminate waste Circular economic system. She said: “The whole problem is getting worse. People are consuming more and more.”
Including Many fast-fashion retailers, including Zara and H&M, encourage customers to return used clothing they no longer need to their stores for recycling. H&M also offers discounts to customers who support clothing recycling.
A spokesman for Zara parent company Inditex said only a small proportion of the clothing collected by the company ultimately returned to Sales in international markets. H&M said clothes recycled in its stores are processed by I:CO, a division of German textile recycling company Soex.
Recently, Japanese fast fashion brand Uniqlo launched a used clothing recycling program called Re. Uniqlo, aiming to Recycling consumers’ second-hand unused branded clothing into new products. The first product planned to be launched by Re. Uniqlo is a V-neck down jacket made from 100% recycled materials.
On one side are second-hand clothes, but on the other side e-commerce headlines report: Fast fashion collapse, 10% of global carbon emissions per year Emissions all come from “burning inventory” in the clothing industry
“Burning inventory” is nothing new
The apparel industry is a fashion industry. What are the characteristics of fashion? Trendy and popular elements are ever-changing.
There is an extreme saying in the industry that out-of-season clothing should be thrown away just like expired food. This shows that clothing products have strong seasonality, short cycles, and rapid changes.
Inventory is a stubborn problem in the clothing industry, which often puts clothing companies out of breath. News about burning clothes is not uncommon. Because of this, the apparel industry is often considered one of the most polluting industries in the world.
The burning of inventory does exist, and it is not something that has only happened in recent years.
H&M, a world-renowned fashion brand born in Sweden, saw sales growth stagnate in 2018 and operating profit fell 62% to lowest in 10 years. Inventory exceeds US$4 billion, accounting for 30% of H&M’s sales. More than 20 billion yuan worth of clothes cannot be sold. Faced with high inventory pressure and the need to maintain brand style, H&M chooses to burn 12 tons of inventory every year…
H&M will also provide electricity to a small Swedish city by incinerating its overstocked goods weighing more than 15 tons.
The BBC also reported in 2018 that the luxury brand Burberry burned through more than 28 million pounds worth in one year alone The inventory of products, with a total value of approximately RMB 250 million, which is equivalent to more than 20,000 Burberry classic British windbreakers, was burned down like this.
In fact, this is not all! In the past six years, Burberry has burned more than 90 million pounds worth of inventory, which is about 800 million yuan!
……
The practice of burning has also been questioned in terms of public opinion. In this regard, H&M actually suffers greatly! On the one hand, it shouts environmental protection slogans and builds its own brand image; on the other hand, it burns inventory and burns 12 metric tons of unsold clothes every year… This has also affected the public image of H&M’s brand.
According to surveys, 10% of global carbon emissions come from the clothing industry every year. Therefore, the method of burning inventory is adopted It is absolutely undesirable!
Inventory is profit, and when it is digested, it is cash flow, which is new purchase money in the next quarter. The products produced will be burned if they cannot be sold, which is treating the symptoms but not the root cause! </p
