Waste is growing, production won’t slow – is EPR the solution?
Overproduction is driving textile waste, polluting the planet and pushing more people into debt. How are these connected—and can extended producer responsibility (EPR) fix the mess?
We produce an estimated 150 billion clothes per year. (Fun fact: no one knows the exact number because no company is required to report their production amounts). Of these 150 billion garments, 10-30% (15-45 billion individual clothes) are not even sold or worn in the first place. Out of the purchased clothes, 60% are discarded within a year.
Our current system of overproduction is generating more clothing destined for disposal than for actual use.
Where does all of the fashion waste end up?
Even though we have a growing amount of services to keep our old clothes in circulation and use, still a big part of our discarded clothes ends up as textile waste.
According to one estimate, we produce 92 million tonnes of textile waste every year. And in the US alone, 11.3 million tons of textiles are landfilled annually.
The reality is that only 1% of textile waste is recycled into new clothes, and only around 12% is downcycled into something other than clothing (insulation materials, etc).
If you think that you don’t add to this pile of textile waste because you donate your clothes - hate to break it to you, but a good amount of clothes also from the donations eventually end up in landfills, either in the country of donation or in the countries where most of the donated clothes are exported to.
There is no clear data about where donated clothes eventually end up. The data is tricky to figure out - it’s as big of a question mark as many other topics in the fashion industry. After all, it is an industry known for profiting from its secrecy. But, based on scattered data points, it could be as much as half of the clothes.
What part of donated clothes end up as textile waste?
In the US, Goodwill is the biggest clothing donation collector. According to one estimate, around 15% of Goodwill’s donations are directly landfilled, and only 30% of their nationwide donations are sold in their retail stores in the US. And from the rest, anywhere up to 55% of their donated clothes are sold to third-party sellers, ending up mainly in the Global South for resale.
Only in Kantamanto, a clothing resale hub in Accra, Ghana, 15 million garments are received weekly for resale. The clothing comes in bales, which the Kantamanto resellers buy for around $150 per bale. To grasp the scale: a single Goodwill store in the US can sell hundreds to thousands of bales of clothes in a single week to the Global South.
Whereas at one point, reselling imported secondhand clothes was a sustainable business model for some vendors, today with the increasing prices of the clothing bales and decreasing quality of the clothes, it is starting to crumble.
In Kantamanto, Ghana, on average, 40% of each bale of clothing is either sent straight to landfill or remains financially unaccounted for. This creates two major problems. First, many clothing vendors fall into debt, as the value of the bale doesn’t cover the purchasing price. Second, the unsold textile waste often ends up in informal landfills, where it ultimately pollutes waterways or is burned, releasing toxic chemicals that harm surrounding communities. A recent Greenpeace report revealed the alarming scale of public health damage these landfilled and burned clothes produce.
Our overproduction is not resulting only in low-quality clothes and a growing amount of textile waste - it’s resulting directly in waste colonialism.
First, many clothing vendors fall into debt, as the value of the bale doesn’t cover the purchasing price. Second, the unsold textile waste often ends up in informal landfills, where it pollutes waterways, or is burned, releasing toxic chemicals that harm surrounding communities.
The big problem is, once again…🥁🥁, fast fashion.
Whereas in the past, the problems around exporting secondhand fashion to the Global South have evolved around the destruction of local fashion production - which the exporting did do, no denying there - the current distress for the resellers is the continuously decreasing quality of clothes.
The ones to blame here are fast and ultra-fast fashion and the continuously quicker trend cycles they are pushing for.
We are producing and buying more clothes, and using them for a shorter period of time. Compared to the 1980s, we are currently buying five times more clothes.
The trend cycles of fashion keep increasing even further. Fast fashion’s production speed of weekly new styles has been replaced by ultra-fast fashion’s model of hourly new styles. Luxury fashion brands, once known for their high quality, are starting to run after micro trends as well.
As we are using the clothes for a shorter period, the quality of clothes has dropped. The quality of clothing materials is continuing to decrease. In 2023, 67% of the entire global fiber production was synthetic, mainly polyester. Planned obsolescence - the practice of designing products to break quickly in use - has become the standard practice of the industry.
The biggest volumes of low-quality clothes are produced, without a doubt, by fast fashion. And fast and ultra-fast fashion clothing are the ones most likely left unsold in the secondhand market - resulting in a growing amount of textile waste.
Simply put, more and more of our clothes are ending up as waste quickly after purchase - and the ones dealing with the worst quality clothes at the end of the cycle are the people down the chain, such as the resellers in Ghana.
Clothing producers got us into the mess—now they need to clean it up
The responsibility for reuse and recycling has to be moved up the chain. The brand that has decided to produce the garment in the first place, needs to be responsible for end-of-life recycling.
EPR requires the brand that has produced the product to deal with the product’s entire lifecycle, including take-back, recovery, and final disposal. Simply put, brands are required to pay a fee per produced garment, which covers the costs to recover or recycle the garment.
Currently, there is no EU-wide EPR system for textiles, although the European Commission proposed it as part of the EU Strategy for Sustainable and Circular Textiles in 2022. When it comes to national systems, France has had an EPR system for textiles in place since 2007, and the Netherlands implemented its own EPR system in 2023. In the US, California became the first state to approve a textile EPR program in 2024, with implementation set for 2026.
The EPR system in France is run by ReFashion, and the average fee collected per garment is 0,03€. In 2023, ReFashion collected €100 million in eco-fees from clothing manufacturers. This money went towards, for example, handling the collection and sorting of used clothing, raising awareness among citizens about sorting, and supporting repairs and reuse.
The EPR systems in place are a great start, but we need to build upon them. First, we need to get an EU-wide EPR system for textiles, as well as a nationwide EPR system for the US. But, in addition, we need to get the money from the collected fees to end up in the hands of the people doing the work of repurposing and recycling.
In addition to fees going into covering the collecting, sorting, and recycling of garments in the country of the collection - money needs to trickle down with the clothes exported to countries in Africa, Asia, Latin America, etc.
Already around 60% of the garments we are not able to sell or utilize in the Global North, are resold, altered, fixed, or upcycled in the Global South, creating economic value and jobs in the ecosystems in addition to prolonging the life of the garments. To make sure these ecosystems survive, keep thriving, and advance the circular fashion ecosystem, we need the money collected from brands to end up in the hands of these ecosystems to account for the 40% of imported garments that are textile waste.
Over multiple years, an amazing ecosystem has been built for example in Kantamanto, Ghana, reselling and reusing textiles from around the world. Vendors resell some of the clothes, some of the clothes are upcycled into new fashion, or downcycled into other commodities, such as cleaning mops. The ecosystem is creative and one-of-a-kind. These are the people who have the talent to keep a lot of the clothes in circulation for longer periods. The upcoming EPR systems must direct significant amounts of money to these ecosystems.
We need to get an EU-wide EPR system in use, as well as a nationwide EPR system for the US. But, in addition, we need to get the money from the collected fees to end up in the hands of the people doing the work of repurposing and recycling.
Additional resources on the topic
Want to know more about the textile waste problem and Kantamanto’s secondhand fashion ecosystem?
The Truth About The Second Hand Clothing Trade In Kantamanto | Dead White Man's Clothes by Atmos, 6 minute video
Dead White Man’s Clothes, example of what happens to clothes coming into Kantamanto, Ghana, Website
The Or Foundation (Ghanaian organisation fighting clothing overproduction), Website
The Or Foundation, 2023 Year in Review, Video series
Fast fashion, slow poison: New report exposes toxic impact of global textile waste in Ghana, Greenpeace report
Want to know more about the garment EPR systems?
Extended Producer Responsibility in the textiles industry, Article
What is EPR?, 16-minute video of Kantamanto delegation visiting Paris
What is the French AGEC (anti-waste law for a circular economy) Law?, Website
What is French ReFashion?, Website
ReFashion 2023 Activity Report, Report