The European Environment Agency issued a briefing on February 27 that the amount of waste textiles exported from the EU has more than tripled in 20 years and may continue to grow, which will bring about increasing Severe waste management and export challenges.
The briefing introduces that due to Europe’s limited recycling and reuse capacity of waste textiles, the EU exports a large amount of discarded or donated clothing and other waste textiles to Africa and Asia. Data show that the amount of waste textiles exported by the EU in 2000 was about 550,000 tons, and by 2019 it had increased to nearly 1.7 million tons. In 2019, the EU’s per capita export of waste textiles reached 3.8 kilograms, accounting for 25% of the EU’s annual per capita consumption of textiles. These waste textiles are mainly sold to Africa and Asia.
The brief stated that the public generally believes that donating used clothes is always useful in certain areas, but this is not entirely consistent with reality. In fact, exporting waste textiles can ultimately Whether it will be reused is uncertain. Only part of the waste textiles exported from the EU is reused, while the part not suitable for reuse ends up in landfills.
